Book Review of A Village In The Third Reich by Julia Boyd with Angelica Patel

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How NAZIs could be both better and worse than you thought they were.

This is an account of how the NAZIs affected Oberstdorf, the most Southerly village in Germany.

The proximity of Oberstdorf to mountain routes into Austria and Switzerland made the village a relatively prosperous resort in peacetime and also ensured that its inhabitants played a role in some key points in twentieth century history, especially the annexation of Austria because military reservists were well placed, well orientated and physically well-suited, to simply march across the border and take possession of key locations. The toughness and cold weather experience of the men (mostly working in outdoor trades) from Oberstdorf and the surrounding district also made them first choice for fighting on the Eastern front and the village paid a heavy price because of this.

Instructively, for the British reader, the village had minimal interactions with Britain in both peace and war. Tourists came mostly from Northern Germany and Holland. Even in wartime when villagers were listening to banned radio broadcasts from outside the Reich in the hopes of finding out what was really going on, it was to a Swiss station that they tuned. (The author doesn’t say, but, surrounded by mountains, that may well have been the easiest station both to receive and to understand.) Still, for such a rural community the inhabitants were outward-looking and knew that their prosperity depended upon strangers. The national NAZI leadership never, in fact, managed to turn even the opinion of some local NAZI officials completely against the strangers in their midst, never mind that of the general population. There was, at least at some key points in time, majority support for the NAZIs in the village, even though some key policies were disliked and the bullying antics of uniformed NAZI party members widely disapproved of.

Indeed, most of the local political confrontations were between different types of NAZI. These don’t appear to have been rival factions so much as different groups of people who had joined The Party for different reasons at different times and who held different priorities. Those who had joined because they thought something drastic simply had to be done about Germany’s core problems, were focused on doing that and either didn’t spare a lot of time for persecuting scapegoats, or even quietly sabotaged the persecution whenever a safe opportunity arose. Those who had joined out of a sense of victimhood, particularly in the early years of The Party, were utterly committed to the persecution of those they saw as persecuting themselves, and were furiously opposed to those, often more senior than them, who seemed to have other things to care about!

A larger number of Party members joined at quite a late stage, simply because it had become impossible to have a career or further any other form of ambition without joining. Those who joined simply to further their own interests could easily be incentivised to do anything Hitler wanted them to do. They may not have been as individually monstrous as some of the grudge-bearing, hatred-driven members with very low party card numbers, but in the general scheme of things they were the ones who enabled Hitler to carry out his policies. The Party was never designed to REPRESENT its members, but to be a tool by which The Leader controlled the membership and through them the Reich. If Hitler has left a legacy at all, this is it. Because all over Europe there are political parties which wouldn’t be seen dead supporting anything that might be perceived as a NAZI policy or ideology, but which are none-the-less well-honed instruments for implementing their leader’s will rather than representing that of their membership or the wider electorate. This sort of thing has become normalised in UK politics since 1994.

As for the actual policies: a lot of them, such as improving the position of farmers in society and investing in agriculture would have been reasonable or even beneficial if that was what had actually happened. But Fuhrerprinzip or the “leadership principle” meant that it was considered actually offensive for anyone in a leadership position to be seen to consider the opinions of anyone who wasn’t. And so the community of Oberstdorf, whose citizens knew an awful lot about cattle-farming in an alpine environment, found policies being dumped on it from above by people, most of whom knew nothing about farming. The seeds of failure were duly sown, not just in agriculture but across the whole of the Reich economy and German society. Even technical education, something which Germany had once been very good at, was massively dumbed down in favour of tighter control. Having lauded the men literally at the grass roots of the economy, the NAZIs proceeded to ignore them, and this, again, is something a lot of modern political parties are guilty of.

Other policies of Hitler were incapable of being beneficial however they were carried out. The Jewish Holocaust is the most obvious example, but less celebrated and in some ways even more sinister was the extermination, completed before most of the Jews were touched, of pretty well all the handicapped and disabled from the ethnic German population. Hitler had stated, in a speech, that it would benefit the German people if something like eighty thousand of the million or so babies which were born in the Reich each year were to die. He stopped short of openly saying that he was going to kill them all, but he did in fact directly and personally set in motion the killing of eighty-thousand-odd of the most handicapped or “feeble minded” people. The thing is, this was a quota, and where there was a shortage of very disabled people, less disabled ones could have been selected for termination and in many cases they were. This policy wasn’t publicly proclaimed, but local NAZI officials in Oberstdorf knew it was coming and the NAZI Mayor Fink brought his own handicapped son back from an institution, to the village where he was less likely to be selected and killed. In other instances, he quietly advised Jews and perhaps others how to register their residency in a way that made it less likely they would be “selected” for any sort of special measures. It is clear that Fink and some even higher-ranking colleagues didn’t think that this sort of policy held any benefits at all. They did not dare to openly oppose the policies, but implemented them as sparingly as they could, whereas the more self-interested NAZIs just did exactly what they were told in the hope of being rewarded for doing so.

The killing of an arbitrary percentage of the weakest in society closely parallels the activities of Lenin and Stalin, who believed that ten percent of the Bourgeoisie needed to be killed at regular intervals to effect social change by creating vacancies which people of a different social class might fill. It comes from the same class of ideas as Fuhrerprinzip, in that it’s a top-down, single-narrative way of magically creating a better world without having to engage in debate or with any complicated real-world issues. It’s hard to know where this idea originally came from, but the author’s previous book “Travellers in the Third Reich” makes it clear that Hitler and the other top NAZIs were greatly impressed by the writings and speeches of George Bernard Shaw on the topic. As were Lenin and Stalin.

It is, therefore, the Hitler policy which this reviewer most expects to see replicated in the present day, because although very few people in influential positions would admit to being admirers of Hitler, it’s almost compulsory in certain political circles to profess an admiration for George Bernard Shaw.

This is a book full of interesting insights, but it is not a book which sets out to reinforce the received “wisdom” about the NAZIs or anything else and it may well prove controversial because of this. The authors have sought out and found an awful lot of good primary source material and their work is the sum of this, rather than any particular agenda. It is, therefore, a more valuable book than others which might be easier to swallow.

A Village In the Third Reich by Julia Boyd, with Angelika Patel is published by Eliot and Thompson on the 5^th of May 2022

Book Review of Amy and Lan by Sadie Jones

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The fullness of a rural childhood

This a beautiful book, in the sense that the author shows us beauty even in the hardships, disappointments and tragedies of growing up on a shared farm in the English/Welsh borders.

Having three and a bit families together on a single isolated property requires a fair amount of self-discipline if it is to be completely successful and some of the adults in this story lack that. One of the messages of this book is that if you go to live beyond the ken of the authorities and most social conventions, and you lack self-discipline, there’s a pretty good chance that you will betray those who love you and thereby betray yourself. But the greater message is that setbacks, failure and even betrayal only mean that there’s more of the story still to come. Perhaps we should be careful about seeking the modern must-have goal of “fulfillment”, because fulfillment tends to be the end of the story!

The children in this story change as they grow up, whilst remaining true to themselves and loyal to those, animals and landscape as well as humans, that they love.

Amy and Lan by Sadie Jones is published in the UK by Random House on the 7^th of July 2022

Book Review of You Have a Friend in 10A by Maggie Shipstead

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An interesting collection of short stories by the author of “Great Circle”

There are eleven stories in the collection, ten of which are immediately readable and one of which, “Acknowledgements,” requires the reader to see the joke in order to persist. Acknowledgements is, as author’s acknowledgements always risk being, the potted autobiography of a literary twannock. One hopes it isn’t aimed at anyone in real life.

“The Cowboy Tango” is the best of the bunch, because the author ventures out of the artistic and show business worlds and into the great outdoors, where she avoids using too much purple prose to portray people actually living in the sort of spectacular landscape where people go on adventure holidays. “Backcountry” has an equivalent setting, but is about slightly different things.

“Angel Lust” and “You Have a Friend in 10A” both touch on the world of young starlets and the seeds of “Great Circle” are there to be seen, but just the seeds. You have a Friend in 10A is also about religious cults, or rather one cult in particular! The author’s take seems to be that what looks like abusive behaviour from the outside, might be what the starlets have decided to live with in order to live their dream. This is not the politically-correct view of the moment, but that might be how Hollywood veterans see it.

“Souterrain” is set in Paris and is the sort of thing that Anais Nin might have written if she hadn’t been writing erotica to pay the rent. “The Great Central Pacific Guano Company” touches on the undoubted truth that any well-trained French official will choose a futile death over being rescued by anyone English. “In the Olympic Village” is very nearly the sort of thing that Anais Nin was paid to write, set in an unnamed Olympic City (possibly Los Angeles) towards the fag end of the games.

There’s a clue to what the twist in the tail of “Lambs” is, in the dates the author gives for the lives of most the important artistic characters.

“La Moretta” is an ill-fated East European road trip in a Simca. It was a bit of a shock to find that the author is old enough to know what a Simca is, or maybe that was just research!

“You Have a Friend in 10A” by Maggie Shipstead is published in the UK by Random House on the 26^th of May 2022.

Book Review of My Name is Yip by Paddy Crewe

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A morally complex adventure set in a “difficult” part of America’s history.

This is a well-researched novel set in Virginia and Tennessee when they were still frontier states, around 1830. This is not a very popular era for American authors and screenwriters at the moment, perhaps because it’s before slavery was widely seen as wrong in America but well after the point where the British could be blamed for all evil. At no point is any form of professional law-enforcement encountered by anyone in the story and I think that is probably quite authentic. The main protagonist, the “Yip” of the title has a very strong sense of right and wrong, of kindness and cruelty. His sidekick, Dud Carter, has a more flexible idea or right and wrong, but is still capable of kindness and selfless bravery. But the terms “legal” and “illegal” simply do not occur. Neither does any form of paper money play any role. The scene is set for pure adventure, where happiness is always something in the future, after cruelty, danger and tragedy have been faced.

Yip is mute since birth and all his life, but he learns to read and write and this gives him a voice which some of his illiterate neighbours do not have. Slavery and racism are starkly depicted, but the reality is that master and slave are defined by social convention because the law, which did allow slavery on paper, is completely absent from everyday life and people do what they have the strength to get away with and they tend to test that limit until they meet someone stronger. Handicapped or disadvantaged white people can be and are exploited as ruthlessly as black ones.

Gold is discovered and the first consequence is a brutal murder, which sets a trend. The inevitable gold-rush attracts many desperate people, because this is not a society where paper money, bank accounts and abstract concepts of wealth have any standing at all. Everybody hopes to get rich, but even if substantial amounts of gold were there to be discovered, there are simply too many hands at work for anyone much to be better off than they would have been if they had stuck to their old jobs.

The single-minded desperation of so many people in a tiny town with almost no resources other than the promise of gold, where there is no regulation or law enforcement, cannot possibly end well and happiness (and sanity) can be found only by Yip turning his back on his home town and the gold-rush and walking away.

My Name is Yip by Paddy Crewe is published in the UK by Random House on the 5^th of May 2022

Book Review of Tell Me An Ending by Jo Harkin

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An absorbing novel about trauma and memory.

This is a well thought-out story about the impact of the fictional technology of memory editing on the lives of some well-drawn and interesting characters. That technology is shown to have some strengths and some value, but the key limitation is that people will only pay thousands of pounds to edit out a memory which really troubles them, which means that almost every patient is troubled and unstable in some way. The technology is also open to exploitation by organised crime, but is this actually abuse when it removes the motivation for killing someone?

Most of the characters have opted not to know that their memory has been edited, and this raises problems of its own, such as attempts to get further edits to deal with the problems left behind by the first. And that’s before evidence emerges that the edits are potentially reversible. It’s a tale of problems posed by technology, to which moral solutions have to be found.

The other message of this novel is that a “peaceful life” could be an oxymoron for some individuals and that they may feel they have to choose between the two. That’s a realisation which stands independently of the technological environment of this novel.

I recommend this novel with five stars mainly because it shows that obliterating a traumatic memory may simply leave a patient ill-equipped to cope with the after-effects of that trauma. I have no confidence that the technology described here is going to remain fictional forever, or even for very long, so it’s worth thinking about before it all comes to pass.

Tell Me An Ending by Jo Harkin is published in the UK by Random House on the 12^th of May 2022

Book Review of Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson

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An idyll shattered on the cusp of war.

This competent historical novel, set at the beginning of the Second World War, was read and reviewed even as the opening stages of the war in Ukraine were unfolding. But the atmosphere it evokes is quite different:

Britain in September 1939 may have been about to endure a siege by U-boat in the following years, but it was not under siege yet. Wages and living standards may seem quite poor to us, but they were so much better (and so many more people were receiving them) than in the period just after the Great War or in the Great Depression that other authors (who were there at the time) would come to look back at 1939 as a mini golden age. It was even possible to fly to America (“from Southampton” i.e. by flying boat), something that had only just happened and which (though the NAZIs did not realise this in time) completely changed the balance of power in the world. On the one hand, most of the characters in the story are anxious about the impending war, but on the other hand the little luxuries that make life bearable are still widely available (after a long period where they couldn’t be afforded) even if international flights are an expensive novelty. The author captures these contrasts very well.

It is a murder mystery and the twists in the plot are quite major and come at just the right moment, rather than being constant and intended to keep the reader in a state of tension. There’s a difference, too, between feeling guilt and being guilty which is very shocking but also very true to life. The upheaval caused by the mass evacuation of children from the big cities provides an opportunity for two shocking crimes, but also an opportunity for justice to be served over other crimes which had gone unnoticed before that upheaval.

Two central older female characters are lesbians. This isn’t wokism: there were indeed lots of all female couples and households after the Great War and, unlike in the period after the Second World War, the situation was quietly understood and in general nothing was ever said. The two lesbian characters worry (only slightly) about a scandal, and it may be realistic that they should have worried, but the situation was commonplace; it was NEVER illegal and as George Orwell would one day remark, “the worst insult in the English language is ‘nosey parker!’” Or, at least it was before the Second World War and the Cold War. The author does not show people taking lesbianism for granted, but she is at least realistic in the way that none of her other characters choose to see anything amiss about two ladies old enough to have lost fiances, living together and being openly fond of each other.

This is a very good book.

Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson is published in the UK by Faber and Faber on the 19^th of May 2022

Book Review of Mammy Banter (The Secret Life of an Uncool Mum) by Serena Terry.

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Everything you need to know about parenthood but were rightly too frightened to ask about.

There are books which tell prospective parents how to bring up infants, and there are books which purport to tell actual parents how to cope with a teenager. This is a novel, set in Londonderry, which does a good job of conveying what it’s like when unplanned parenthood leads to a mid-thirties couple having to do both things at the same time. It’s a warts and all comic account, but it’s not all wart and, unusually for someone telling the story from a woman’s point of view, the device the author uses is a husband who gets things right even when his wife somewhat unilaterally realigns her life (and his) in a chaotic manner. The author presents some convincing examples of men being bastards, but her message is not “all men are bastards” and she’s courteous enough to offer a realistic depiction of one who isn’t.

Mammy Banter by Serena Terry is published in the UK by Harper Collins on the 3^rd of March 2022.