It was during the 1920s that Oberstdorf started to develop a substantial tourist trade as a holiday resort. They are different villages, but there are many similarities with actions, and A Village In The Third Reich does get tangled in the knotty issues of who were true believers without some of the introspection, deception or perhaps self delusion of Mayer's interviews. I expected something else entirely, more like a romanticized retelling of Oberstdorf's history and place in the Third Reich. It is impossible to keep all the villagers clear in one’s head, and the book just goes on and on and on.

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

There is something disarming about reading this book too as it makes one question one’s own culpability when we know terrible things are happening in the world around us. Pope only wishes that his friend was alive to see the reactions to the film that occupied his final decade. Among the crowd, there was a palpable sense of anticipation as everyone, warmly wrapped against the cold night air, waited for events to unfold.The villagers had long since become accustomed to the presence of these noisy brownshirts on their streets, even if they did not necessarily approve. Log in Keep reading with a freetrial Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. The intricacies and conflicts of the Nazi takeover of the village are especially fascinating and, in part, I think the book would have been more interesting had the focus been more restricted to the period 1933-39. On the evening of March 5, 1933, the inhabitants of Oberstdorf, a Bavarian village some 100 miles southwest of Munich, began making their way to the marketplace, eager to hear what their mayor had to say about the federal election held earlier that day. On top of all that, evacuees from bombed cities and, later, refugees fleeing the Russians more than doubled the village’s prewar population.

A Village in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd | Goodreads

If Oberstdorf’s story has much to tell us, it also leaves many questions unanswered—questions that will forever remain part of the legacy of the Third Reich. Through the unpublished diaries of a lieutenant and a sergeant who served alongside Oberstdorf’s soldiers in the 99th Regiment of the First Mountain Division, we followed the young men as they fought in Poland, France, the Soviet Union and the Balkans, right up to the final months of retreat and defeat. 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 detailed and in some cases, such as the account of infighting among the local Nazis, becomes a bit too much so and drags a bit.

On the night of March 4, 1933, the local Nazi Party emblazoned the Himmelschrofen with a giant flare swastika. Julia Boyd has once again written an enticing history of Germany, coming at it from a different perspective than usual histories.

How the Nazi Regime Upended the Lives of These Bavarian

Speer's joint undertaking with the SS leadership resulted in the creation of Mittelwerk (Central Works) for underground production of the V-2.Speer first heard Adolf Hitler speak during an address to the combined students and faculty of Berlin University and his institute. As such, this detailed look at what happened from the end of the First World War to the devastation of the end of the Second World War gives the reader a very personal view of events from a number of the village’s inhabitants. We get a detailed account of a small thriving village tucked away near the Alps and how its inhabitants were manipulated and adapted to a power beyond their control .