A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism

I found this a fascinating and illuminating book, written in a way that states the way things were and how they developed, without hyperbole. The details of the lives of the Oberstdorfers and the tourists, refugees and the Nazis are so well stated and shared that it offers a seemingly unbiased setting out of what really went on from the arrival of Hitler on Germany's stage, through his suicide to the actual end of the war.If you have even a tiny interest in this period of Europe's history, I believe you will find this book of interest. If you are really interested in this period, I would suggest it should be very high on your reading list; it is so well researched.

What would I have done?Never have I asked myself that question more until I read this book and Travellers in the Third Reich.Julia Boyd and Angelika Patel's research is like putting in place a piece of a jigsaw that was missing. We can see, hear and feel how the average German was charmed, then coerced and then completly trapped in an utterly, utterly terrifying and grotesque system. In this book the difference is that we get to peek behind their closed doors.How easily it was done. How lucky are we all! Never again! A gripping and essential read.I think this book should become a must read for any student learning about WW11 too.

I thought this book was great with just one minor criticism. Early in the book, it states that Max Schmeling regained the world heavyweight championship in 1932. I only know this to be wrong as I am a huge boxing buff. He won it in 1930 and lost it in 1932, never to regain it (he had a chance in 1938 but was annihilated by Joe Louis in one round) This isn’t a big criticism and not particularly relevant to the text of the book BUT when I see one factual error, it makes me cynical in wondering how many more I would discover had I been an equally massive history buff. However, that doesn’t matter as I loved it and would even consider a trip to Oberstdorf to retrace the steps found in this book. Well recommended…..

There are of course many books, fiction and non-fiction about the Third Reich, not to mention television documentaries. Most close on 8 May 1945. This scholarly book gives a more niche approach: what things were really like at the grass roots. And it also looks at the post war aftermath. It's certainly worth reading.

A beautiful alpine village, you cannot believe in the present day it was connected to WW2. Worth a visit once you have read the book.

Detailed and really absorbing account of one village in Austria through the Second World War (and in the build up)

This is a book which takes an interesting subject matter, at an interesting time and does it no credit at all.The prose style is horrendously boring, prosaic and almost artificial. Historical works need to be better than this or else we will end up in a world where people say "history is boring". In this case, they would be right and it is a shame that the editor didn't have a word. I managed about a centimetre, after two re-attempts, and the opus is now in the charity shop pile.It seems a waste of an interesting story. Two others have bought this and none of us have got halfway.

I bought this book to see how ordinary Germans lived and thought during the rule of the Nazis. I was not disappointed, it is a readable account of how a village in Bavaria lived during the Third Reich. Not all the villagers were rabid Nazis, but with very few exceptions, Nazi Party members or not, they obeyed the State in all matters. It has always fascinated me how a nation that produced Goethe, Schiller and Beethoven could perform such barbaric acts before and during the Second World War. The book tells how, after WW1 the German nation were treated by the Allies, in a way that impugned their "German-ness" and made them feel "less than ". The advent of Hitler provided them with a sense of purpose and reinvigorated them. The village of Oberstdorf, the subject of the book, is the southernmost village in Germany and we see the changes in a greater Germany, mirrored here. Despite the remoteness of the village, the tentacles of the Nazi regime reached into their everyday life. Some of the villagers saw through the Nazis from the start, but the majority embraced the regime with varying degrees of affiliation. After the war those who embraced the Nazis fully, were made to pay when local de-Nazification courts awarded stiff fines and varying terms of imprisonment.This is a very readable account of social life in one village in one part of Germany during the Third Reich, but a fuller account is found in Richard Evans “The Third Reich in Power”.