A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed By the Rise of Fascism – from the author of Sunday Times bestseller Travellers in the Third Reich

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To a younger generation it seems incomprehensible that after the tragic Great War people and political leaders allowed themselves to march into the abyss again. A surviving list of Nazi Party members includes the names of Oberstdorf men who were also well known for their opposition or indifference to the regime. This time looking at the Third Reich through the picturesque village of Oberstdorf in the mountains of Bavaria.

VILLAGE IN THE THIRD REICH - JULIA BOYD: 9781783966561 - AbeBooks VILLAGE IN THE THIRD REICH - JULIA BOYD: 9781783966561 - AbeBooks

In the village archive, we encountered foresters, priests, farmers and nuns; innkeepers, Nazi officials, veterans and party members; village councilors, mountaineers, socialists, forced laborers, schoolchildren, Jews, entrepreneurs, tourists and aristocrats. Anyone who stepped out of line or criticized the regime risked “protective custody” in the newly established camp for political prisoners at Dachau. In a 23 August 1970 review published in The New York Times, John Toland wrote that the book "is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. m., the faint sound of beating drums grew louder as a unit of paramilitary storm troopers marched into the marketplace, carrying torches and shouting out party slogans. It is a tale of conflicting loyalties and desires, of shattered dreams, despair and destruction – but one in which, ultimately, human resilience triumphs.Neuware -Oberstdorf is a beautiful village high up in the Bavarian Alps, a place where for hundreds of years ordinary people lived simple lives while history was made elsewhere. The military chapters tend to follow the stories of the men who went off to fight mainly with the 98th and 99th regiments of the 1st Mountain Division in France, the Soviet Union and the Balkans as well as the atrocities they saw and sometimes were involved in.

Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were

The book has opened my eyes to the idea that all of Germany throughout those years being split into good and evil is perhaps too simplistic. Pope only wishes that his friend was alive to see the reactions to the film that occupied his final decade. It is impossible to keep all the villagers clear in one’s head, and the book just goes on and on and on.I enjoyed this book since it gives a panorama of those days, desciribing attitudes, hardships and tragedies which affected the small village. For those not already in the know, it was soon apparent that this man was the village’s new National Socialist leader. It’s through their records that historians understand how the genocidal dictatorship of Hitler’s Nazi Germany happened, how fascism gains power and how attacks on the most vulnerable populations eventually affect the most comfortable. All of life is here: brutality and love; courage and weakness; action, apathy and grief; hope, pain, joy and despair—in other words, the shades of gray that make up real life as we know it, rather than a narrative of heroes and villains.