Fresh air and fascism in the Bavarian Alps

The village of Oberstdorf lies in the Bavarian Alps, geographically remote but, as this gripping book demonstrates, deeply etched by the politics and violence of the Third Reich. 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 result is a fascinating and often surprisingly discordant cacophony of experiences.

Oberstdorf was a small village but it had a wide range. By the early 1920s it was a favoured tourist spot: its population of 4,000 was swelled to 9,000 by visitors who came for health cures and winter sports. There were several hotels, a cable car, a cinema and a sanatorium. It had been on a railway line since 1888 and there were two local newspapers. The authors paint a picture of a community already emerging from a peasant economy of Catholic farmers to a commercial economy, pulling in a mass of influences from elsewhere.