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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At the end of the war a list of the Nazis in the village was completed from various sorts. From an incomplete list it was found that there were 455 names on the list, roughly 10% of the village, which also happened to mirror the Nazis membership across Germany. Oberstdorf is one of the most famous places in Bavaria owing to ski jumping competitions and magnificent scenery for tourists to admire both in summer and winter. Ms Boyd's idea to describe life in a village during the inter-war period sounds interesting as most of the books cover towns or cities whereas countrylife is rather obscure. I recently read Julia Boyd's Travellers in the Third Reich which gave outsider impressions of pre war Germany which was good but this one was in another league. A Village in the Third Reich tells a tale of conflicting loyalties and desires, of shattered dreams – but one in which, ultimately, human resilience triumphs. A Village In The Third Reich is a fascinating and often very sad portait of forty years in the life of the Bavarian village Oberstdorf from 1915 to 1955. Nestled in the Alps, Oberstdorf was a burgeoning tourist town, relatively cosmopolitan and affluent enough, and yet like all of German slowly got swamped by the rise of National Socialism. Boyd and Patel have done a very deep dive on what seems to be a hugely comprehensive archive to tell the story of how the village adapted and changed, but also to follow the villagers as they themselves escaped, got sent to camps or went to war. There are a lot of tragic stories here, though there are reconstructions of the willing Nazi's there are also big questions about Good Germans and perhaps the unthinkable, Good Nazis.

Please try and join 5 minutes before the event start time and we will let you into the room (do try and bear with us if this takes a few minutes). a b "Julia Boyd's schedule for LA Times Festival of Books 2019". LA Times Festival of Books . Retrieved 2023-04-13. It was not quite five weeks since January 30, when Adolf Hitler had been sworn in as Germany’s new chancellor, but it was clear to everybody—even in this far-off Alpine village—that the political landscape had changed. The village lies in a part of Bavaria in a region known as the Allgäu, long recognized for the beauty of its mountains and the toughness of its people. Oberstdorf is uniquely defined by its geographical position as the most southern village in Germany. Once there, the traveler has quite literally reached the end of the road, as only footpaths lead south across the mountains to Austria. Masterly… [an] important and gripping book… [Boyd is] a leading historian of human responses in political extremis.' The Oldie

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An intimate portrait of German life during World War II, shining a light on ordinary people living in a picturesque Bavarian village under Nazi rule Buy Shortly after 8 p.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. The villagers had long since become accustomed to the presence of these noisy brownshirts on their streets, even if they did not necessarily approve. But if the trappings of the Nazi Party were not to everyone’s taste, Hitler’s message and style of leadership had caught the imagination of enough of the electorate to result in Oberstdorf casting more votes for the Nazis than for any other party. In A Village in the Third Reich Julia Boyd creates a fascinating account of the impact of the Third Reich on Obertsdorf, a small German village in the Bavarian Alps. The book, on which she has collaborated with local historian Angelika Patel, is based on meticulous local archives, diaries, newspaper stories and letters and other contemporary sources. The account it gives is all the more powerful for being told though the voices and experiences of ordinary people. For the most part I found this an interesting read. The book is well-researched and delves into many aspects of life during the Third Reich, showing how the government pervaded every part of one’s daily activities. I liked that the chapters were organized thematically rather than chronologically, which made it easier to follow. At the end of World War I, Germans were recovering from defeat. Despite the madness of hyperinflation caused by the punitive measures put forth by the Treaty of Versailles, Oberstdorf had, by the late 1920s, been transformed into a flourishing vacation resort. Even with a constant influx of Germans from the north, bringing with them new ideas and a fresh outlook on the world, the village’s rural roots and religious values remained at the heart of its identity.

Theodor Weissenberger, who was born blind, with his siblings in the garden of Villa Gschwender in OberstdorfExceptional... Boyd's book reminds us that even the most brutal regimes cannot extinguish all semblance of human feeling'Mail on Sunday Masterly... [an] important and gripping book... [Boyd is] a leading historian of human responses in political extremis.'The Oldie Fascinating… You'll learn more about the psychological workings of Nazism by reading this superbly researched chronicle… than you will by reading a shelf of wider-canvas volumes on the rise of Nazism.' Daily Mail

Their canvas is large, even a village has thousands of residents, and sometimes the sheer weight of names and stories can overwhelm. Important figures however, such as the Mayor and local Nazi party administrators reoccur, and they do their best to give everyone with a story justice. There is even a tale at the end about the resistance whose names are still being protected seventy five years on. Nevertheless it does get a little relentless in places, and the nature of the archive is such that it favours dates, arrests and official actions and the authors are loathe to fill in additional speculative colour if they can help it. There are a few eyewitness accounts which fill those memories in but there is a tendancy for it to be a little dry in places. Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism through the Eyes of Everyday People, Pegasus, 2018 Wars come and go, but life goes on. And so it went on in the village of Oberstdorf throughout the 1930s and 1940s, with the rise and fall of Nazism an undercurrent all along – except it was one that swelled in a way that even a quiet little village couldn’t ignore.Intensely detailed, exhaustively researched and rendered in almost cinematographic detail, Julia Boyd's A Village In The Third Reich is deeply evocative, redolent of those times and truly revelatory. I learned so much. This is a book I will need to return to again and again, to relearn, refresh and remember. A triumph.' Damien Lewis, author of The Flame of Resistance From the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Travellers in the Third Reich comes A Village in the Third Reich: an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Germany under Hitler, shining a light on the lives of ordinary people. Drawing on personal archives, letters, interviews and memoirs, it lays bare their brutality and love; courage and weakness; action, apathy and grief; hope, pain, joy and despair. Exceptional… Boyd’s book reminds us that even the most brutal regimes cannot extinguish all semblance of human feeling’ Mail on Sunday

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. We met Theodor Weissenberger, a blind teenager condemned to die in a gas chamber at age 19 because he was living a “ life unworthy of life.” Like others I have often wondered about where to find the bridge between the atrocious events perpetrated by the Nazi regime and the ordinary people who lived in Germany at the time and who, to greater or lesser extents became complicit in what was going on. The book is very good at describing the spectrum of fears, beliefs, hopes and indifference which allowed the Nazis to stay in power. Fascinating… You’ll learn more about the psychological workings of Nazism by reading this superbly researched chronicle… than you will by reading a shelf of wider-canvas volumes on the rise of Nazism.’ Daily MailAn utterly absorbing insight into the full spectrum of responses from ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.' The Times The Times called A Village in the Third Reich , authored with Angelika Patel, a "fascinating deep dive into daily life", [5] and The Scotsman, "a masterpiece of historical non-fiction". [6] Publishers Weekly wrote, "Boyd and Patel pose difficult questions about ordinary Germans’ complicity in the horrors of the Holocaust". [7] Personal life [ edit ]