A village in the Third Reich How ordinary lives were transformed by the rise of fascism

Utilizing research gathered from archival materials, personal interviews, diaries, and memoirs, Boyd and Patel examine the effect of the Nazi party on the small Bavarian village of Oberstdorf, presenting a microcosm of the effects of Nazism on Germans. Initially, the villagers, far from Munich, discounted what they considered loud, brash members of the Nazi party, but when elections of 1933 resoundingly supported the Nazis, the villagers knew times were changing. This would be the last multi-party election for Germans until 1946. There was a resistance, though, with aid from a Nazi mayor who helped save Jews and others (Dachau is not far from there). The final chapters relate the villagers' bloodless coup and arrest of Nazi leaders and sympathizers, the occupation by the French and then the Americans, and lastly the post-war reconstruction and the challenge of removing Nazis from all aspects of German life. But it is the tales of day-to-day life and struggles of the villagers that help the reader understand how people either wholeheartedly believed the Nazis' agenda, resisted it, or pretended to follow in order to get by.

Historian Boyd (Travelers in the Third Reich) and Patel, a native of Oberstdorf, Germany, recount in this nuanced history how the rise and fall of Nazi Germany affected Patel's hometown. Located in the Allgäu, a region in Swabia known for "the beauty of its mountains and the toughness of its people," Oberstdorf is the southernmost village in Germany. Detailing the "swift and ruthless" transition from the political tumult of Weimar Germany to Nazi totalitarianism, the authors note that by 1934, the atmosphere in Oberstdorf "had changed profoundly. Shop windows that had once displayed quilts now flaunted swastikas and brown shirts." A turning point came in 1940, when Hitler's sinister new "racial hygiene" law led to the euthanization of a blind 19-year-old whose family who had been in Oberstdorf for generations. By 1943, Oberstdorf was overrun with evacuees from Allied bombing campaigns, refugees from the Soviet invasion, and wounded soldiers, putting a heavy strain on the village's infrastructure and food supplies. While crediting Mayor Ludwig Fink, a "moderate Nazi," and others with shielding local Jews and Jewish refugees from persecution, Boyd and Patel pose difficult questions about ordinary Germans' complicity in the horrors of the Holocaust. Making excellent use of Oberstdorf's "particularly well-maintained" archive, this richly textured chronicle offers valuable insights into "the most far-reaching tragedy in human history." (Apr.)

How a storied, seemingly idyllic Bavarian town gradually embraced Nazi ideology. Working with Patel, a local historian who was designated the task of writing a history of Oberstdorf covering the years of Nazi rule. Boyd, author of the award-winning Travelers of the Third Reich, delved into this project almost reluctantly, knowing little about the place. Yet it soon become apparent that this story of a small town in Germany served as a microcosm for the entire nation, which ultimately succumbed to Nazi rule. As a Catholic-majority village of about 4,000 near the Austrian border, with few Jews living there in the late 1930s and many tourists and skiers lured to its spectacular mountains, Oberstdorf boasted a vigorous municipal government--until March 5, 1933, when the populace voted in the Nazi Party. Following the "political chaos of the Weimar Republic," Boyd shows how the Nazis gained favor, after which immediate directives from Berlin--in the form of the Enabling Act, providing "the Nazis the legal means to eliminate their political opponents swiftly and brutally," and other edicts--changed everything for the local government, which was immediately replaced by Nazi functionaries. The "new men" had arrived in town, and any local opposition was repressed. Nazis corralled the town's youth into clubs and organizations and filled school curricula with race lessons and antisemitism. Then the Nazis looked toward abolishing religious practices and neutralizing their authority. Boyd looks carefully at the role of the local mountain troops in the Eastern Front, especially Operation Barbarossa, and the tribunes of final reckoning by the French and Moroccan invaders, followed by the Americans. The author effectively portrays the horrific toll of the war on one small town, personalizing it among the perpetrators, but readers may find it difficult to sympathize with some of the characters she introduces. A thorough, chilling social history of how Nazi ideology took hold at the local level. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.