Lina Heydrich (born von Osten).  Heydrich paid a high price for marrying Lina, since it involved breaking an engagement with another young woman connected to Admiral Raeder, who in consequence secured Heydrich's dismissal from the Navy for dishonourable behaviour.  His self-belief may have faltered; her belief in him did not.  An established NSDAP member, she helped put him in a position to move into his career as one of history's leading secret policemen.  Best regards, JR.

Lina Heydrich.

Daughter of a Nazi Party internal judge/arbitrator, Gerda Buch married Martin Bormann, rising star in the National Socialist Party, in September 1929 at the age of 19.  She appears to have been a devoted National Socialist and, in one respect at least, did her best to live up to Nazi "ideals" by giving Bormann 9 (or was it 10 ?) children, starting with Adolf Martin in 1930.  Bormann himself must have been difficult to live with.  An inveterate womaniser and keeper of mistresses, his letters (if they were collected in a book, it might be entitled "Memoirs of a Nazi Sex Addict) indicate extraordinary sexual arrogance and sexual fixations that can have left little space for attention to Gerda - in spite of all those children.  At the end of the war, Gerda was rigorously questioned by Allied interrogators (in part, I suppose, because Martin was "missing" at the time).  She was, however, suffering from cancer (not sure when it was diagnosed, exactly) and she died from poisioning of mercury (apparently used in her treatment) at Merano, Italy, in March 1946.  Best regards, JR.

Gerda Bormann.

A member of a military family, Ribbentrop returned from Canada, where he had held a variety of jobs, and enlisted in the 125th Hussars.  He seems to have had a pretty creditable war, reaching the rank of Oberleutnant, serving on both Eastern and Western Fronts, and earning the Iron Cross, First Class and the award of the Wound Badge in Black.  Following a severe wound that effectively rendered him unfit for frontline service, he was transferred to a Staff appointment and served in the capacity of a Military Attaché at the Kaiser's embassy to the Sublime Porte at Istanbul.  This was his first step towards a diplomatic career that propelled him to the dignity of Foreign Minister of Germany under Hitler - a position for which (according to most contemporaries) his stupidity, arrogance, tactlessness and abrasiveness rendered him incredibly unsuitable.  Still, he must have had some talent as a junior officer, at least ... Best regards, JR.