Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism Through the Eyes of Everyday People by
February 2019
Julia Boyd delved into a treasure trove of previously unpublished diaries, letters and other sources to write this account of “everyday people” - specifically, non-Germans, - visiting and even living in Germany from the early 1930s until after the outbreak of WWII. It was a motley crew of families and young people going on vacation, journalists and writers working in the country, foreigners who had married Germans, diplomats, religious folks and a remarkable number of foreign exchange students - the most fascinating one, to me, being Ji Xianlin, a Chinese PhD student who spent the entire war (along with several fellow students) in Germany because he couldn’t get back home. Some of these visitors seemed totally clueless as to what kind of place Germany was becoming (or had already become); others were ardent supporters of the Nazis, even after the war had begun; and still others - probably the majority - seemed to know deep down that something was amiss but (consciously or unconciously) chose to look the other way and just enjoy the beautiful scenery and apparently warm hospitality. I was shaking my head at how people could possibly go on vacation in a post-Nuremberg-Laws or even post-Kristallnacht Germany - but then I thought of countries I’ve visited with less-than-stellar human rights records and realized that I’ve been guilty of that same kind of wilful blindness. It makes you think…