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Village in the Third Reich Paperback – April 5, 2023

by Julia Boyd (Author), Angelika Patel (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 958 ratings
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Oberstdorf is a beautiful village high up in the Bavarian Alps, a place where for hundreds of years people lived simple lives while history was made elsewhere. Yet even here, in the southernmost corner of Germany, National Socialism sought to control not only people’s lives but also their minds.

Drawing on archive material, letters, interviews and memoirs, A Village in the Third Reich is an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Germany under Hitler, of the descent into totalitarianism and of the tragedies that befell all of those touched by Nazism. In its pages we meet the Jews who survived – and those who didn’t; the Nazi mayor who tried to shield those persecuted by the regime; and a blind boy whose life was judged ‘not worth living’.

​It is a tale of conflicting loyalties and desires, of shattered dreams, despair and destruction – but one in which, ultimately, human resilience triumphs. These are the stories of ordinary lives at the crossroads of history.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    459 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Elliott & Thompson
  4. Publication date
    April 5, 2023
  5. Dimensions
    7.83 x 1.46 x 5.08 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1783966637
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1783966639
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Elliott & Thompson (April 5, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 459 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1783966637
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1783966639
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.83 x 1.46 x 5.08 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 958 ratings

About the author

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Julia Boyd

Julia Boyd

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Julia Boyd is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism through the Eyes of Everyday People and A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism. Her previous books include A Dance with the Dragon: The Vanished World of Peking's Foreign Colony, The Excellent Doctor Blackwell: The Life of the First Woman Physician and Hannah Riddell: An Englishwoman in Japan. As the widow of a former diplomat, she lived in Germany from 1977 to 1981. She lives in London.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
958 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Rodger Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars Makes the experience human.
Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2023
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Having read at length about World War II and having lived in England and done business in Germany, this was a must read for me. It did what I had hoped. It brought this turbulent time to life in human terms. Amazing, sad and sincere.
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J.K
4.0 out of 5 stars Gives perspective
Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2023
An in depth look at Oberstdorf, the southern most village in Germany and how it was impacted by the political changes during the 1930s.
So often major events are analyzed in sweeping gestures, but rarely are individual approaches investigated, which is the case with this book.
The village inhabitants’ various reactions and participation is addressed.
I found it to be not only Informative but also quite educational.
4 people found this helpful
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Ken Kabb
5.0 out of 5 stars How did supposedly intelligent and liberal Germans become Nazis.
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2023
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An in-depth and nuanced look at a small village and its inhabitants' progression from liberal and humane values to Nazification through propaganda and peer pressure while still retaining somewhat human values. Some embraced the Third Reich whole-heartedly, others with reservations, and yet others quietly defied the Nazis and helped intended victims to survive and or escape. A good read.
3 people found this helpful
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E. Goff
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read
Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2023
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While one generally knows the story, there are so many questions as to how things transpired.
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rosemary c. espinosa
5.0 out of 5 stars the use of details.
Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2023
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The book was well written
One person found this helpful
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Michigan Reviewer
5.0 out of 5 stars It took a village?
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2023
Library book. No purchase. Excellent book. Micro view. I have always wondered who knew what and when did they know it? Especially w WWII Deutschland! Obviously many were complicit in the very nasty things that transpired under the Nazi party. Many of us do want to ask and know why so few resisted when they had to know bad things were transpiring? Great writers. People went along. Go along to get along, and see what happened? I fear for the USA today. My perception is that the far right MAGA crowd would like to see a repeat of the awful period Germany succumbed to under Hitler and the Nazi crowd. Many parallels in the book to what is happening in many nations today, besides the USA with the GOP. Real food for thought. More need to read this one!
One person found this helpful
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tj
5.0 out of 5 stars personal look at WWII
Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2023
Gripping tale of ww2Thru german village eyes and experiences.Almost Ken Burnsian with regard to making the horrible conflict come alive.I always think I've read an excellent historical novel when it's pages fly bye exciting even though I know the punch line.
One person found this helpful
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B. Rossini
5.0 out of 5 stars GuiltoFAllGermans
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2023
An outstanding. Beautifully written book of Hitlerism by way of a southernmost village. the paean to gassed-because-blind Theodore is heartbreak. Most illuminating: identifying at least some of the individual murderers and their fates. Too few murderers escaped righteous vengeance.
3 people found this helpful
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Christopher Powell, PhD
4.0 out of 5 stars Dealing with the Nazi past at the local level
Reviewed in Canada on June 3, 2023
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Julia Boyd and Angelika Patel, A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism (New York: Pegasus Books, 2023)

One of the interesting qualities of the German language is its ability to express an entire concept in one word. Schadenfreude, doppelgänger, and zeitgeist are all familiar to the anglophone. One that is not is vergangenheitsbewältigung – dealing with the past. Julia Boyd and Angelika Patel’s A Village in the Third Reich is an attempt to do just that. While the authors credit the German Federal Republic with making an admirable effort at this on a national scale, the authors attempt to describe this at the local level, using the community of Oberstdorf in southern Bavaria as their vehicle. In Germany there is a law mandating each community to maintain a written record of its history. In 2006, Oberstdorf could claim four volumes, reaching from its earliest days to the end of the First World War. It contracted Patel to write volume five, dealing with the period 1918-1952. Following its publication in German, she partnered with non-fiction writer Julia Boyd to adapt the book for a wider, English-speaking, audience (383-385), resulting in this book. It is a well written and engaging book, but not without its weaknesses.
The book begins in 1918 with the return of Wilhelm Steiner to his hometown. Nestled in the Alps, not far from the Austrian border, Oberstdorf, Germany’s southernmost community, was a tiny, remote, village that in recent years had begun the transition into a resort town. After serving on the front lines for four years, Steiner had been awarded both the Military Cross with Swords and the Iron Cross Second Class (10). He was one of over 600 Oberstdorfers who had served. Roughly one in six did not return (12). The authors use Steiner to relate the hardship and chaos witnessed by hundreds of thousands of returning veterans.
Despite starvation, revolution, counter-revolution, hyperinflation, and the onerous terms imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, life in Oberstdorf, and Germany in general, had resumed a semblance of normality by the late 1920s. That ended with the Depression. Fear and chaos returned, and with them came the rise of Nazism. Like other Germans, Oberstdorfers had not taken the Nazis seriously. Staunchly conservative and Catholic, residents of the mountain village put their faith in traditional politicians. Even with the arrival in 1927 of Karl Weinlein, a postal worker from Nuremburg who founded the local chapter of the Nazi party, Oberstdorfers continued to reject National Socialism. (43-44). But the election of September 1930, the first since the Wall Street crash, showed how much Germans were now willing to put their faith in the Nazis. In Oberstdorf, 70% voted for Hitler – three percent higher than the national average (51-52). Success also brought division for the Nazis. Opportunists hoping to get in on the ground floor flooded the Party’s membership rolls. Derisively referred to as Septemberlinge (Septemberlings) by the Old Fighters (Alte Kämpfer), control of the Party in Oberstdorf fell to a new generation of Nazis (58). Conflict between these two groups characterized Party dynamics in Oberstdorf throughout the 1930s (99-100).
The narrative takes a turn with the start of the Second World War, especially after the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union. Up to this point the focus has been the community of Oberstdorf. But from here on it is largely about the experiences of select Oberstdorfers and how they experienced the war and the Holocaust outside of the community within the grand narrative of World War Two. Largely this is related through the experiences of the men charged with fighting the war. Boyd and Patel state that within months of Operation Barbarossa, 1,500 Oberstdorfers were fighting “in the Soviet Union, on the Western Front, in the Balkans and in North Africa” (225). This is not the only historical error in the book, but certainly the most egregious. In 1941 there was no Western Front. Indeed, Joseph Stalin would have been very happy had one existed. He would have to wait three more years. With the expansion of the war eastwards, the loss of the community’s men (not always young) increased exponentially. Prior to June 1941 only six had been killed in action. In the months following the invasion of the Soviet Union, that number increased fifteen-fold (236). Following Germany’s expulsion from the USSR, soldiers from Oberstdorf participated in war crimes, including the massacre of 317 Greeks, many of them children on 16 August 1943. A few weeks later they joined in the massacre of thousands of Italian prisoners of war, also in Greece (263).
Among Oberstdorff’s tiny Jewish community, the authors present no record of any of them being killed outright. Two committed suicide prior to transportation (303), one was liberated by the Allies prior to his imminent death (305), and one, Eva Noack-Mosse, survived Theresienstadt largely due to her late arrival there. (323-324).
Following the war, 397 Oberstdorfers were charged with war crimes. All but ten, however, were considered insignificant and were allowed to return to their homes and jobs. Only one, Heinz Schubert, responsible for the murder of 700 prisoners in Ukraine, ultimately served three years in prison and was forced to pay a fine of 100 Deutschmarks, roughly ten dollars (371-372).
At just under 400 pages, A Village in the Third Reich is scrupulously sourced with twenty-one pages of notes and a five-page bibliography; although missing is Eric Johnson’s Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans (New York: Basic Books, 1999), which would have greatly assisted the authors in their questionable discussion of the Roman Catholic Church as an oppositional force in Nazi Germany. Also missing is a list of interview subjects and archival collections consulted. Despite these shortcomings, this is a very good book. The authors have each provided an essay on the writing of the book, both of which make for fascinating reading. The book is best when chronicling life in Oberstdorf before and after the war. Even when the authors slide into Second World War grand narrative, it is still engaging and informative. It is well written in accessible language and would be equally valuable in a university classroom, or just for personal interest. Ultimately, Boyd and Patel have succeeded in vergangenheitsbewältigung on a local level.
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Pensioner Power.
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and thought provoking read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 26, 2024
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Having read "Travellers in the Third Reich", my brother recommended "A Village" as the better of the two books. I did doubt him, as I found "Travellers" a great read. I was wrong, this is the better of the two. Nothing to do with the writing, merely the more intimate nature of the life of the village.
Both books represent a unique insight into life in the Third Reich.
Highly recommended.
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BayernTrips
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascism in a microcosm
Reviewed in Germany on April 14, 2023
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Fascinating look at how National Socialism entered the lives of everyday people in a small agricultural town. Focusing on individuals, it‘s much easier to put yourself in their shoes and see how such horrors can come about. If you’ve every wondered how normal people could succumb to Nazism, this is your book.
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Kindle Customer empties
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 2, 2023
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Well written and well researched. A fascinating look at one small village in Germany before, during and immediately after the Second World War.
One person found this helpful
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renium
4.0 out of 5 stars Nützliche Histore
Reviewed in Germany on July 31, 2023
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Man erhält sehr viele interessante historische Informationen,
die man sonst praktisch nirgends bekommt.
Für mich als Oberbayer erin wichtiges Puzzlestück, um mehr der
Geschichte meiner Heimat kennenzulernen.
Abwertung auf 4 Sterne wegen eines fast unerträglich langweiligen Schreibstils.
Hinweis an die Autorin, das sollte kein Lehrbuch werden!
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