Julia Boyd - 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

A compelling historical narrative... both flatters and challenges our hindsight. [Boyd] lets her voices, skilfully orchestrated, speak for themselves, which they do with great eloquence.

Daily Telegraph

Fascinating... surreal scenes pepper Boyds deep trawl of travellers tales from the scores of visitors who were drawn to the new Germany in the 1930s.

Spectator

Contains many amazing anecdotes... It warns us that we, with our all-seeing hindsight, might ourselves have been fooled or beguiled or inclined to make excuses, had we been there at the time. I can thoroughly recommend it as a contribution to knowledge and an absorbing and stimulating book in itself.

Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday

Meticulously researched... Julia Boyds research has been exhaustive. She has visited archives all over the world and assembled a vast and entertaining cast of travellers... makes for thought-provoking reading.

Caroline Moorehead, Literary Review

A fascinating book.

Robert Elms, BBC Radio London

To a younger generation it seems incomprehensible that after the tragic Great War people and political leaders allowed themselves to march into the abyss again. Julia Boyds book, drawing on wide experience and forensic research, seeks to answer some of these questions.

Randolph Churchill

With an almost novelistic touch, [Boyd] presents a range of stories of human interest... The uncomfortable moral of Travellers in the Third Reich is that people see and hear only what they already want to see and hear.

David Pryce-Jones, Standpoint

Fascinating... This absorbing and beautifully organised book is full of small encounters that jolt the reader into a historical past that seems still very near.

Lucy Lethbridge, The Tablet

In the 1930s the most cultured and technologically advanced country in Europe tumbled into the abyss. In this deeply researched book Julia Boyd lets us view Germanys astonishing fall through foreign eyes. Her vivid tapestry of human stories is a delightful, often moving read. It also offers sobering lessons for our own day when strong leaders are again all the rage.

Professor David Reynolds, author of The Long Shadow: The Great War and the 20th Century

Drawing on the unpublished experiences of outsiders inside the Third Reich, Julia Boyd provides dazzling new perspectives on the Germany that Hitler built. Her book is a tour de force of historical research.

Dr Piers Brendon, author of The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s

What was Nazi Germany really like in the run up to the Second World War? Julia Boyds painstakingly researched and deeply nuanced book shows how this troubled country appeared to travellers of the 1930s who did not have the benefit of hindsight. A truly fascinating read.

Keith Lowe, author of Savage Continent

Engrossing... skilfully woven together to create a three-dimensional picture of Germany under Hitler that has many resonances for today.

Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller

A revealing and original account. Some of Adolf Hitlers fellow travellers, lulled by self-deception, gulled by propaganda, deluded themselves about Nazi Germany as they deceived others.

Sir John Tusa

Julia Boyd has conducted a vast range and volume of research... She spins a tapestry which is full of vivid detail... A glorious read for anyone with an interest in the history of the twentieth century.

Sir Christopher Mallaby, former ambassador to Germany and France

Unique, original and engagingly written. This account of visitors and tourists to Germany brings to life these difficult decades in a most refreshing way [and] should attract a wide circle of readers.

Dr Zara Steiner, author of The Lights that Failed: European International History 19191933

For my mother Joan Raynsford
18 November 192018 November 2021

O n the evening of 5 March 1933, the inhabitants of the Bavarian village of Oberstdorf began making their way to the marketplace, eager to hear what the mayor had to say about the federal election held earlier that day. Mingling with the native residents of this pretty resort, with its wooden houses and taverns, were large numbers of holidaymakers from north Germany drawn to the village by the winter sports it had to offer. The surrounding snow-clad peaks, silhouetted against a sky brilliant with stars, provided a natural grandeur to the scene. Among the crowd there was a palpable sense of anticipation as everyone, warmly wrapped against the cold night air, waited for events to unfold. Many of those present no doubt chatted to their friends about the extraordinary sight they had witnessed the night before when, as a prelude to the election, numerous bonfires had been lit in the mountains. Most spectacular of all had been the huge swastika formed of flickering flares, set high up on the Himmelschrofen mountain.

It was not quite five weeks since 30 January, when Adolf Hitler had been sworn in as Germanys new chancellor, but it was clear to everybody even in this far-off Alpine village that the political landscape had already changed radically. What Oberstdorfers could not have known that evening was that they had just voted in the last multi-party election to be held in the country until 1946.

The marketplace where they had all gathered lay at the core of this devoutly Catholic village. Dominated by the church of St John the Baptist, its spire visible for miles around, it was also where Oberstdorfers came to remember their fallen soldiers at memorials to the FrancoPrussian War (187071) and to the First World War (191418), the latter housed in a small chapel next to the church. In the middle of the square stood two flagpoles, one flying the black-white-red flag of the old German empire, the other a swastika. The crowd fell silent as a gun salute marked the official start of the rally. Then, an outsider, a relative newcomer to Oberstdorf, stepped on to the podium, causing surprise among the villagers who had been expecting their mayor to speak. For those not already in the know, it was soon apparent that this man was the villages new National Socialist leader. His speech was short but his authoritative manner left little doubt in anyones mind that he intended to take control over much more than the local Nazi Party.