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 picture is never black and white and even in a relatively small village there a multiple and nuanced responses to these questions. A remarkable moral drama, a miniature epic that is subtle in characterization, gripping in detail, and shocking in its brutal ordinariness. Oberstdorf, for instance, was originally a relatively inward-looking Catholic village in the mountains, but tourism was already changing it into a relatively “cosmopolitan” settlement.

This is an excellent social history, which makes the reality of those years personal and immediate and shows the discomfort that many had at that time.

After the war Germany was in a dreadful state without functional post offices, no phones or newspapers and curfews.

Yet even this remote idyll could not escape the brutal iron grip of the Nazi regime… From the author of the bestselling Travellers in the Third Reich comes A Village in the Third Reich, an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Germany under Hitler which shines a light on the lives of ordinary people.It was interesting to learn that several of the village leaders, including one Mayor, outwardly supported the NAZI cause but found ways to circumvent or ignore some of the more stringent dictats emanating from Berlin. It traces the rise of Hitler in the aftermath of WWl and the impact it had on a quiet skiing village in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. I don’t often review non-fiction but I loved the premise of this book; to follow the life of a single village in Germany from the end of the First World War, and all through the Second. One perhaps expected this chapter to reveal more about Oberstdorfers response to the atrocity stories against Jews and Slavs told by soldiers on leave.

It was a fascinating class that highlighted the ordinary voices of war, and it remains one of my favorite classes I ever took. Boyd makes a convincing case for Oberstdorfers' awareness of the Final Solution (even if not all supported it), and the most poignant aspects of the book deal with the treatment of Oberstdorf's small number of Jewish residents. The book gave me a whole new perspective into the life of the German people after the First World War and during the tumultuous times of the Nazi regime.One aim of the Nazis’ antisemitic propaganda was to convince even their devoted followers that their own Jewish doctor or accountant or classmate wasn’t one of “the decent ones. Its an obvious companion to Milton Sanford Meyer's 'They Thought They Were Free', looking at the lives of ten Nazi party members in another German small village.