It is clear that Fink and some even higher-ranking colleagues didn’t think that this sort of policy held any benefits at all. As Julia Boyd emphasizes, too many people allowed reverence for a nation’s glorious past to warp their judgment about its morally repugnant present.

A Village in the Third Reich’ looks at history through the prism of Oberstdorf, a Bavarian village and holiday resort high up in the Alps. I was chuffed when I was allowed to read this stunning and encyclopeadic account of the Bavarian village of Oberstdorf - in the Allgäu region, and the most southern village in Germany during Nazi Germany. The Jewish Holocaust is the most obvious example, but less celebrated and in some ways even more sinister was the extermination, completed before most of the Jews were touched, of pretty well all the handicapped and disabled from the ethnic German population. When we consider Nazi Germany most of the time, we think of the big picture – a crazed demagogue, his relentless warmongering and mass murder.Within its pages we encounter people from all walks of life – foresters, priests, farmers and nuns; innkeepers, Nazi officials, veterans and party members; village councillors, mountaineers, socialists, slave labourers, schoolchildren, tourists and aristocrats.

Also included are the eyewitness accounts of the 99th mountain troops divisions - young, experienced climbers and skiers from Oberstdorf, - men used to harsh outdoor activities. The authors paint a picture of a community already emerging from a peasant economy of Catholic farmers to a commercial economy, pulling in a mass of influences from elsewhere.Many people who otherwise would never join the Nazi party joined the NSV because it seemed so apolitical and beneficial. This is a piece of history while that was part political investigation and part discussion of a (now past) future. Russians, at least those in our sample, clearly hide their true attitudes towards the war,” they said. Julia Boyd (assisted by Angelika Patel) explores this question by zooming in on a single Alpine village, Oberstdorf. She is the author of Ein Dorf im Spiegel seiner Zeit (A Village in the Mirror of its Time): Oberstdorf 1918–1952.

What the book does show is the totality of Nazi control of people’s lives and the deep trauma suffered as a result. Other villagers - many of them social outcasts who leapt at the chance to lord it over their colleagues - went all in on supporting the Nazis, some actively resisted, but most just kept their heads down and tried to carry on as usual, without attracting too much attention. The authors select a few of the prominent and not so prominent residents of the village to take a deep dive into their lives.The neutral tone of the narration is a huge plus because otherwise, it can be really easy to generalize people and make a judgment. 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 . The extent to which most of those Oberstorfers who voted Hitler in in 1932 remained loyal as his promised Third Reich failed to materialise remains elusive.

Chapter 13 is devoted to the invasion of Russia in 1941, Operation Barbarossa, interspersed with entries from the diary of a soldier, Gerd Aurich, from a town near Oberstdorf, who is dead from his wounds by the end of the year. All the German Volk—social, political, and cultural organizations—were to conform and merge with Nazi ideology and policy.

This richly textured chronicle offers valuable insights into 'the most far-reaching tragedy in human history. narfna on “What the stories never said: at the end of the day, if a man wants to kill you, he kills you.