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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Indeed Ukraine features in the book and it’s heart breaking to think that that country is again in hell thanks to one man and his ambition.

As someone who has wondered how the Nazis managed to achieve what they did, I found this book to be absolutely fascinating. By the early 1920s it was a favoured tourist spot: its population of 4,000 was swelled to 9,000 by visitors who came for health cures and winter sports.I found this a compelling and moving read which gave me a fresh understanding of this period of German history.

Having lived in Bavaria for a time, that region and its people, culture, and history hold such a special place in my heart. The Nazi regime didn’t go out of its way to advertise what was happening in the camps and euthanasia clinics, but the word got around nonetheless.In the Village in the Third Reich What author succeeds in depicting normal daily live in Germany before and during the Second World War.

Under his mayoralty, Oberstdorf became a relatively safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution elsewhere in Germany. How could a nation that produced men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Goethe produce not merely lesser men but men so depraved and debased—men like Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler—that their names will be remembered a thousand years from now? Obersdorf is one of the most famous places in Bavaria owing to ski jumping competitions and magnificent scenery for tourists to admire both in summer and winter. 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. Disturbing, moving, from the trivial to the tragic, these personal stories and eyewitness account tell a story of Nazi Germany as never before.Oberstdorf was a village where food was scarce and people poor after WWI, until tourism became a growing source of income.

For most inhabitants, they feared war, disliked the fact that Nazi ideology changed their lives and often took the line of least resistance and hoped to come through unscathed. It was brilliant reading about how the community came together to help many of those pretending to be a German and following Hitlers regime.

These tragic chapters of the 20th century also seem to exert a dark fascination on “general readers” of history. As it is a historical text its not a novel but for me, I found it rather a historical text that I dipped in and out chapter by chapter, but this did not make my enjoyment of the book any less. Hidden deep in the Bavarian mountains lies the picturesque village of Oberstdorf – a place where for hundreds of years people lived ordinary lives while history was made elsewhere. Set in Oberstdorf, a village in the Bavarian Alps known for simple living and winter sports, life was initially little changed by political events elsewhere.