Life under dictatorship, then and now

"A Village In The Third Reich" reviewed.

Life under an authoritarian dictatorship has been on my mind ever since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. Russia is now more isolated from the rest of the world than at any time since the Brezhnev era, and the Putin regime has become increasingly repressive and Margarita Simonyan’s propaganda machine increasingly strident and intense.

This happened around the same time that I read A Village in the Third Reich, a truly fascinating and disturbing account of the Bavarian resort village of Oberstdorf under twelve years of Nazi totalitarianism. Based on government documents, residents’ letters and diaries, and reports from the local newspaper - which condemned antisemitism before Hitler took power, and published instructions on how to boycott Jewish shops afterward - the book illustrates how nearly every aspect of daily life in this typical German town was affected by the rise of the Third Reich.

It’s been overshadowed by other legislation which awarded absolute power to Hitler, but …