To understand something as enormous as World War II, go small. Focus on one person, one sliver of time, or — as in the case of the terrific "A Village in the Third Reich" — one town.
British writer Julia Boyd takes readers from the demoralizing end of World War I, to the rise of Adolf Hitler, then straight through World War II — all through the experiences of the residents of the small Bavarian town of Oberstdorf.
Boyd's research is impeccable, drawing on extensive village archives, as well as diaries, interviews, newspaper accounts, letters and unpublished memoirs. What emerges is a clear picture of a traditional Alpine village, with its cows and festivals and deep Catholic faith, and the immense changes it went through in the 1930s and '40s. Its young people were compelled to join the Hitler Youth, its few Jewish residents were persecuted, its men were sent off to war — including young Claudius Asal, killed just 12 days before the war's end, at age 16. And, after the war, the starving village was occupied by French, Moroccan and American troops and flooded with thousands of traumatized refugees.
Like most people across Germany, the citizens of Oberstdorf had felt humiliated by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that ended the first world war and "the realization that their country was now a global outcast." And so they were primed for a strong leader when Hitler promised prosperity and order.
Almost immediately, he insinuated himself into daily life through the 1933 Equalization Act, which required every organization — from government bodies to the smallest musical group — to dissolve and reform as a Nazi organization, with a Nazi leader, a swastika on display, and "Heil Hitler!" to conclude each meeting.
"It was the means by which Nazi tentacles would reach into every last corner of society," Boyd writes, and it worked, normalizing obedience to the regime.
Focusing on one village was a brilliant way to understand the Third Reich on a human, day-to-day level. It wasn't Boyd's idea, though, and she gives full credit to Angelika Patel, the Oberstdorf woman who wrote about this as a civic history project and then later offered her research and assistance to Boyd.
Boyd's prose is clear, confident and measured, connecting national events to Oberstdorf as often as possible, a device that never feels forced — only human. She consistently uses the word "murder" to describe the actions of the Nazis. They didn't kill, or exterminate — they murdered. The stark word carries a little more power each time she writes it.
