A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed By the Rise of Fascism

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.