The education system was so subsumed to Nazi ideology that one teacher confessed to a friend that he’d choose imprisonment in a concentration camp to teaching students such garbage, except that his family members would also be punished. 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.

And, coming from a country where the war always seems to have been won by English speaking people, it was refreshing to see how the French (aided by the Moroccans) liberated the village. The euthanasia programme of the Nazis is also felt in the village and ultimately responsible for the murder of a blind boy. 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. He found the inhabitants resistant to political propaganda and decided it was because they had been corrupted by tourist money. But it’s non-fiction and with copious extracts from contemporaneous newspapers and documents, it’s the worst type of non-fiction for me (I stress, it’s me, not the fault of the book).

The local focus of books was a sensation, as most history was at that time still written from the traditional power perspectives. He stopped short of openly saying that he was going to kill them all, but he did in fact directly and personally set in motion the killing of eighty-thousand-odd of the most handicapped or “feeble minded” people. For most inhabitants, they feared war, disliked the fact that Nazi ideology changed their lives and often took the line of least resistance and hoped to come through unscathed. We rarely think or hear about the resistance in Germany, except perhaps with regards to the protection of Jewish families.

It's very informative and even though it occasionally becomes a little confusing, it's still worth a read. It was not lost on me that the first ‘blitzkrieg’ attack by Hitler was on Lwow (nowadays we know this as Lviv in Ukraine). After the initial chapters on the rise of Nazism, the book also describes the outbreak of war and the war itself, including poignant stories of Oberstdorf soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front. However, the chapter is mostly devoted to the Nazi’s euthanasia program and child murder for which there already exists an extensive, if gruesome, history.What are we to learn about the appeal and rise of Nazism by examining one small village in Bavaria, or Saxony, or anywhere for that matter, when it is a phenomenon repeated throughout Germany? Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CERV.

The authors select a few of the prominent and not so prominent residents of the village to take a deep dive into their lives.Indirectly, the book also reveals the social change brought about not only by Nazism and war, but also by other factors. She is the author of Ein Dorf im Spiegel seiner Zeit (A Village in the Mirror of its Time): Oberstdorf 1918–1952. The thing is, this was a quota, and where there was a shortage of very disabled people, less disabled ones could have been selected for termination and in many cases they were. The killing of an arbitrary percentage of the weakest in society closely parallels the activities of Lenin and Stalin, who believed that ten percent of the Bourgeoisie needed to be killed at regular intervals to effect social change by creating vacancies which people of a different social class might fill. She has now followed this with A Village in the Third Reich, a book which describes the impact of Hitler, Nazism and World War II on everyday life through the eyes of the inhabitants of the Bavarian mountain village of Oberstdorf.

Boyd makes a convincing case for Oberstdorfers' awareness of the Final Solution (even if not all supported it), and the most poignant aspects of the book deal with the treatment of Oberstdorf's small number of Jewish residents. One of the most important things to point out to any wood-be reader, is that this is not so much a novel as a recount of life in a village in Germany before, during and after WW2. Moderate Nazi” is the ultimate contradiction in terms, and there is no indication that Fink was trying to destroy the whole system from within.

After the war Germany was in a dreadful state without functional post offices, no phones or newspapers and curfews. Reading about the good, the bad, and seeing the total humanity (or lack thereof) in the individuals within Obertsdorf and the surrounding area was enlightening.