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 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. Vivid, moving stories leave us asking “What would I have done?”’ Professor David Reynolds, author of Island Stories 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. The rise of Nazi Germany through the prism of one small village in Bavaria. [...] Astonishing' Jane Garvey on Fortunately... with Fi and Jane

Julia Boyd previously wrote Travellers in the Third Reich, which described the peculiar society experienced by visitors to Germany in the 30s. Its successor is more ambitious but it is a further triumph.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. Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism through the Eyes of Everyday People, Pegasus, 2018 Phillips, Tom. "Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, April 16, 2019". www.shelf-awareness.com . Retrieved 15 December 2022. And as we got to know the villagers better, it came as no surprise to learn that their response to these cataclysmic events was driven as much by practical everyday concerns, the instinct to safeguard their families—from threats both real and imagined—and personal loyalties and enmities as by the great political and social issues of the time.

When it came to the end of the war the propaganda machine which they had lived under for the previous 12 years, they were fearful for their lives. Stories about what the Russians were doing were widespread and all they could do was hope that it would not be the Russians who came. In the end the village surrendered to the French in May 1945, before the Americans took over in the July. 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.” 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. A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism, 2022. Cowritten with Angelika Patel. Dachau was to the north of the Oberstdorf, but the villages were already aware of some of the Nazi round-ups of its citizens, especially the Jews. By 1941 most were well aware of the roundups that had been undertaken in the East in their name. This leaked out via the Feldpost, or when soldiers were on leave at home.

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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. 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 Laying bare the tragedies, the compromises, the suffering and the disillusionment. Exemplary microhistory.’ Roger Moorehouse, author of First to Fight Vivid, moving stories leave us asking "What would I have done?"' Professor David Reynolds, author of Island StoriesMasterly… [an] important and gripping book… [Boyd is] a leading historian of human responses in political extremis.' The Oldie This is a tale of conflicting loyalties and desires, of shattered dreams – but one in which, ultimately, human resilience triumphs.