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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There were some quite emotional parts to the story – for example I doubt I will ever forget the chapter on how the regime murdered people with disabilities which depicted the injustice through a case study. The film presents original videos from the Nazi Germany period and conversations with Speer, in which the great deception he tried to present at the Nuremberg trials and in his book is revealed. 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 thought ‘not worth living’. By 1930, it became clear that the people of Oberstdorf had changed their minds about National Socialism when Hitler won a plurality of votes in the September federal election.

Village in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd — Emma Finnigan PR A Village in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd — Emma Finnigan PR

Today Oberstdorf is a destination village for those who love alpine and winter sports in winter and mountain climbing in summer. After his release on 1 October 1966, he used Federal Archive documents to rework the material into his autobiography. Anyone who stepped out of line or criticized the regime risked “protective custody” in the newly established camp for political prisoners at Dachau. All of life is here: brutality and love; courage and weakness; action, apathy and grief; hope, pain, joy and despair—in other words, the shades of gray that make up real life as we know it, rather than a narrative of heroes and villains. We are shown Ernst Fink, the village’s Nazi Mayor but at the same time responsible for many acts to protect local Jews and other inhabitants who fall the wrong side of the regime.

But if this is primarily a tale of political tragedy, it is also one in which human resilience triumphs. When armed conflict began, casualties among Oberstdorf’s men were low, but they spiralled upwards when the campaign in the east began. 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 . 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 thought ‘not worth living’.

Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism Through Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism Through

The military chapters tend to follow the stories of the men who went off to fight mainly with the 98th and 99th regiments of the 1st Mountain Division in France, the Soviet Union and the Balkans as well as the atrocities they saw and sometimes were involved in. Neuware -Oberstdorf is a beautiful village high up in the Bavarian Alps, a place where for hundreds of years ordinary people lived simple lives while history was made elsewhere. About the village of Oberstdorf in southern Bavaria (which the author chose due to there being a lot of sources available). Assisted by Oberstdorf resident Angelika Patel, she gives us the finest of fine detail to demonstrate how village residents defied the regime when and where they could.It was a fascinating class that highlighted the ordinary voices of war, and it remains one of my favorite classes I ever took. Julia Boyd and Angelika Patel have used diaries, letters, newspaper reports and the official papers of Oberstdorfers as a lens through which to look at the rise of Nazism in Germany. The main driver was: ‘If we don’t get these voices now, soon we won’t have the opportunity to do so,’” says Sam Pope, an associate producer of Final Acccount. A well-written and interesting account that reflects not only a wideranging trawl through a range of sources but also a shrewd organisation that captures the variety of responses to the Reich. I enjoyed this book since it gives a panorama of those days, desciribing attitudes, hardships and tragedies which affected the small village.

Travellers in the Third Reich - The Historical Association Travellers in the Third Reich - The Historical Association

When Holland embarked on the project in 2008, he wrote a mission statement in the form of a semi-haiku: “My grandparents were murdered / I want to shoot old Nazis / I am a film-maker.Speer went on to quote Hitler as telling him privately after the remilitarization of the Rhineland, "We will create a great empire. Boyd tells us that for those remaining Nazi sympathisers who still believed revolting theories of racial superiority, “it was, of course, a day of profound bitterness”.