Life in Hitler's Germany

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

A warning that this episode contains descriptions of genocide and terms for groups which were classified that way at the time.

Personal accounts of the Second World War are far and wide, and an invaluable tool for learning about one of the most devastating conflicts in history - but what can we learn from collective histories, specifically that of a small Bavarian Village? In this episode of Warfare, James is joined by author Julia Boyd to look at the shared history of the inhabitants of Oberstdorf, and how the arrival of fascism changed their lives.

Using first hand accounts from the people who lived through the war, Julia is able to shine a light on some of the lesser known aspects and consequences of living in Nazi Germany, and how people responded in the face of rising Nazism. Using a mix of interviews, archive materials and letters, Julia demonstrates just what life was really like for ordinary Germans during this tumultuous time in world history.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hidden deep in the German Bavarian mountains lies the picturesque village of Oberstorf,
0:07.0	a place where for hundreds of years people lived simple lives, where history was made elsewhere. Yet even this remote idyllic village
0:15.2	couldn't escape the brutal iron grip of the Nazi regime. I'm your host James
0:20.0	Rogers and to kick us off for a new year here on warfare I've invited the historian
0:24.6	Julia Boyd onto the podcast. Julia takes us through the everyday and not so everyday lives
0:30.2	of a village in the Third Reich. During on personal archives, letters, interviews, and memoirs,
0:35.0	she lays bare the brutality and love,
0:38.0	courage and weakness, action and apathy of those who lived under Nazi rule.
0:45.0	Hi Julia, welcome to the warfare Podcast. How you doing today?
0:54.3	Hi, very nice of you to invite me.
0:56.6	No, not a problem at all. It's great to have you on the podcast.
0:59.7	We have covered the third Reich from many angles here.
1:03.7	We've looked at the rise and fall of Hitler, we've looked at the military campaigns, the
1:07.6	atrocities, and even the aftermath of the Reich when Germany went through that painful process of rebuilding in the late 40s and early 50s.
1:17.0	But what we've never done is we've never looked at the Reich through the eyes of the ordinary people who lived there and so I'm excited to have you on the
1:24.7	podcast Julie because you can take us back in history take us back to the 1930s and 40s in
1:30.4	Germany to those picturesque Bavarian villages under Nazi rule.
1:35.0	I suppose it's like the ones we might see in Band of Brothers as the 101st Airborne make
1:39.8	their way towards Hitler's Eagles nest. But that series, a lot of the population are deemed
1:44.8	to be Hitler's chosen ones who have led a life of luxury through the 30s and 40s. Were they all Hitler's chosen ones?
1:55.0	Absolutely not. In fact, I think you really have to go back to the end of the First World War to understand where the villagers were coming from when with the rise of the Nazi party and the rise of Hitler because I think it's very difficult to understand people's different positions and of course in the village there were many different few points
2:13.7	they were there were the dedicated Nazis at one end of the spectrum and at the other end there were people who loathed the Nazis
	...

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