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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Lane, Barbara. "Review of Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, by Albert Speer" (PDF). Semantic Scholar. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. S2CID 56399040. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2019 . Retrieved 24 August 2019. It’s not been deliberate but I seem to be constantly reading both fiction and non-fiction about the Second World War and the Holocaust. After so many books have been, and are being, written about this period, it’s amazing that there are still so many new stories to tell.

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd | Goodreads Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd | Goodreads

Boyd makes full use of memoirs, local newspapers, letters, and other research to tell the story of one, rural community, during a time of national change. She takes us from soldiers returning from the trenches of WWI, through the political turmoil of hyperinflation and the Weimar Republic, to the regime of the Third Reich, which promised so much but delivered devastation. Boyd using unpublish diaries is able to follow the lives of the villagers and their day to day encounters with the rise of the Nazis, through to the end of the war when the village was occupied first by the French and then the Americans. What emerges is a picture is how some supported the Nazis other adapted to survive and how some knew it was best not to say what they thought out aloud.This non-fiction depicts the cultural, social and political changes over the 40 years in a village whose life focused around sheep breeding, some farming and tourist industry as Obersdorf became more and more popular in the covered period. Such a detailed analysis was possible due to vast archives preserved and to memoirs, letters and memories of those whose ancestors lived in the village before the WW2 and through it.

best books about Nazi Germany (116 books) - Goodreads best books about Nazi Germany (116 books) - Goodreads

The book finishes with the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 and Allied occupation along with the De-Nazification tribunals that very imperfectly attempted to punish the guilty. Toland, John (23 August 1970). "Inside the Third Reich". The New York Times . Retrieved 24 August 2019.

The main body of the book effectively ends when Speer, by this point having joined Karl Dönitz's government seated in Schleswig-Holstein, receives news of Hitler's death. This is followed by an epilogue dealing with the end of the war in Europe and the resulting Nuremberg trials, in which Speer was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for his actions during the war. [1] :55,71,78–79,83,105,115–116,138,188,651,674,696 Special weapons [ edit ] This is brilliantly done. If you have an interest in history and looking for a captivating read that doesn’t shy away from discussing ordinary people’s potential culpability then read this book. 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. 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 good at describing the spectrum of fears, beliefs, hopes and indifference which allowed the Nazis to stay in power. 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.