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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The Bavarian schoolboy had penned his words as part of his primary school’s “Front and Home” assignment, which asked children to send morale-boosting letters to servicemen. This is a book full of interesting insights, but it is not a book which sets out to reinforce the received “wisdom” about the NAZIs or anything else and it may well prove controversial because of this.

A larger number of Party members joined at quite a late stage, simply because it had become impossible to have a career or further any other form of ambition without joining. While there have been countless books written about the rise of Hitler, Travelers in the Third Reich relies on firsthand accounts by foreigners to convey what it was really like to visit, study or vacation in Germany during the 1920s and ’30s. Choosing the beautiful German resort of Oberstdorf as a small village representing a microcosm of everyday life in Germany under the Nazis, this book is a very readable and (as much as anything set during those awful times can be) very enjoyable read. Apart from the fact that the author compares many historical facts and events of Nazi Germany with life in the village and its inhabitants, she has succeeded in giving victims a name and a face, and the story of the much loved little Theodor from Oberstdorf, who was euthanized because he was born blind, broke my heart.At the same time, the authors made the readers aware that their writings presented a generic historical presentation of ordinary village life during these times.

The delicacy of his position as a moderate Nazi mayor is illustrated by an anecdote that recounts how during the war he publicly reprimanded a woman for criticising the regime but then privately advised her just to be careful not to say such things to him when others were present. by Henriëtte Laman Trip-de Beaufort (1890-1982), where Jewish children were admitted, who were provided with false papers and brought to Switzerland. When armed conflict began, casualties among Oberstdorf’s men were low, but they spiralled upwards when the campaign in the east began.Those who joined simply to further their own interests could easily be incentivised to do anything Hitler wanted them to do.