Julia Boyd has written what has to be one of the most fascinating books of the using new material for private collections and archives around the world. She also asks the poignant question of without the benefit of hindsight, how do you interpret what’s right in front of your eyes? Clearly not an easy question to answer, but one Julia Boyd sets out to do with Travellers in the Third Reich. Personal comfort. People were having a good time. Social life was fun and full. Food, drink, entertainment, travel, festivals. Just like our lives are when we choose to look away from the hardships others are enduring.

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd | Goodreads Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd | Goodreads

The countryside remained beautiful, the medieval towns picturesque and the beer cheap. So why spoil a good holiday worrying about the Jews?' This book BRILLIANTLY chronicles how and why ordinary people endured, accepted, and often cheered Hitler’s rise and if you don’t think you could do the same thing then you definitely need to read this book. Some things that were often noticed by travelers: NAZI’s had improved the economy and were loved by the masses for that. Youth were particularly caught up with the movement. NAZI’s were great at spectacles such as the Olympics, rallies and torchlight parades. Many travelers noted that the NAZI’s emphasized the need for annexing (taking) lands around them that had once been part of Germany or which now were seen as places needed as a buffer to protect the safety of the Fatherland. Sounds like a familiar old excuse today.What did they make of the mistreatment of the Jews in the 1930s? Their own anti-Semitism contributed to an underwhelming response. Many thought that the Germans were justified in wanting less Jewish influence in their society and bought into mainstreamed lies about Jewish citizens' disproportionate or malevolent role. The regime was not successful in hiding their actions from either the local or tourists, but the tourists were more easily fooled. One group was taken to tour Dachau, where "the criminals paraded before them were in fact camp guards in disguise." (2618) Those who were present on Kristallnacht were horrified by the wantonness of the violence, but after that, the Jews disappeared from view, allowing visitors to think very little about them, with the exception of a delegation of American Quakers, who were given the runaround by Nazi officials. I'd just like to note a few points about this collation of first hand writing by foreign visitors to Wiemar Germany and the Third Reich. First, it is extremely well done in terms of weaving together many source documents into a coherent whole. Just as a technical exercise in handling a lot of diverse material, it succeeds well. Better than that, the authorial text which links all the contributions is grown-up and expects readers to also be – it does not assume they are ignorant of history, which is a welcome change from the modern trend to explain the simplest thing. One of the reasons I read this was to see grisly parallels in how even in the present day, we allow fascism to creep up through our own wilful ignorance: A few less positive observations. The blurb on the cover (probably done by the publisher rather than the author) says this is 'the rise of fascism through the eyes of everyday people'. Well, some of the words are from everyday people, but an awful lot are not – ambassadors, families of ambassadors, some politicians, and other people in prominent positions. Yes, there are also school girls, students, manual workers on holiday, but overall, this description is stretching things. The other point is that although the author is pretty neutral in the first half of the book, her own opinions obtrude a bit too much later on.

Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism Through the Eyes of Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism Through the

Knowing that anti-Semitism and animosity towards communism were widespread sentiments in the 1930s, the Nazis happily made use of the idea that there was a common enemy. As part of this effort, from the mid-1930s onwards, guided tours of Dachau became a kind of tourist attraction – and it worked. ‘Adjutant says most prisoners Communist,’ Victor Cazalet MP wrote in his diary. ‘If that is the case, then they can stay there for all I care.’ Two other visitors praised the Nazis for giving these ‘dregs of humanity’ a new chance. When James Grover MacDonald, American High Commissioner for Refugees coming from Germany, questioned the necessity of Dachau, his guide told him “Germany was still in the throes of a revolution, and that whereas in most revolutions political prisoners were shot, at Dachau ‘we try to reform them’.” What none of them could have known was that the prisoners they saw on their guided tours were usually guards in disguise. After gaining political power, it didn't take long for him to seize total control and begin to roll out the nationalist policies across the country. The people that were drawn to Germany at this time came from all walks of life and saw the way that it was changing, but there were glimpses of the persecution that was starting to happen across the country as the vision of the Aryan ideal was implemented. The Olympics were the point where the Third Reich could showcase itself on the world stage and athletes and visitors where shown a sanitised country. Those that managed to peer behind the scenes though, were startled and horrified by what they saw. Reicho didybė aprašyta taip stipriai ir taip įtaigiai, visokie festivaliai ir masiniai renginiai, kad net norisi laiko masina nusikelti. Kažkaip susišaukia su dabartine turizmo bangą į Šaiurės Korėją. Tiek daug mums žinomų vardų ir švenčių kurios minimos, pvz oktober fest arba Thomas Cook kuris šlovino ir skatino turizmą į Vokietiją Some of what we are told is irrelevant! Three examples should suffice—we are told of when Göring’s lion cub pees on him, of when Göring’s bison refuses to mate before an audience and of when the released Olympic doves defecate on a group of American Olympic athletes. Perhaps the author is trying to be funny. There is a lot of information that you just do not know what to do with! They were master propagandists. Hitler understood completely the power of theatre: the weekly rallies, the speeches, the marching songs, the torchlight processions and, importantly I think, the semi-erotic power of all those alpha males in beautifully designed uniforms. Let us not be naïve about any of this.And finally, there were some who thought that what happened in Germany was none of anyone else’s business. There are echoes of this today when people ask what right the United States has to insert itself in the domestic affairs of other countries. Every time the United States points out glaring human rights violations in China or other places the response is sure to be that the West’s history is not exactly spotless. In the 1930s “What Germany could not comprehend…was why Great Britain insisted on acting as the moral godmother to the rest of the world. And why did the British press and Parliament concentrate on Germany’s supposed iniquities, and ignore the shortcomings of other countries such as Russia.” (p. 329) The book ends with chilling accounts of life in Germany during the war, as shortages gave way to terror and constant bombing raids. The Americans bombed during the day and the British at night, and slowly Germany industry was destroyed, and it cities – some of which were among the great cultural jewels of civilization – were reduced to piles of rubble. By the end of the war anything, even communism, would have been better than freezing and starving in the cellars of bombed-out cities. Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism Through the Eyes of Everyday People by Julia Boyd is a fascinating snapshot of the 1930s and war years in Nazi Germany as seen through the eyes of visitors.

Travellers in the Third Reich - The Historical Association Travellers in the Third Reich - The Historical Association

I received a copy of Julia Boyd's Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Facism Through the Eyes of Everyday People for Christmas 2018, and it only took me some months to get to it due to my copy being at my parents' house whilst I was away at University. Boyd's work of non-fiction has been called variously 'fascinating' ( Spectator), 'compelling' ( Daily Telegraph) and 'meticulously researched' ( Literary Review). When I see travel guides & tourist promotions for Israel/Palestine, it looks very like what Boyd is describing. People talk of the scenery, the lovely people, the night life, the culture; but there is no mention of the apartheid wall or the approximately 5 million Palestinians who have been living under a brutal military occupation for over 52 years, deprived of all civil, political & legal rights. Did anything change in the attitudes of the travelers after their experience? It doesn’t appear so in most cases. People saw what they wanted to see and ignored the things that might have troubled them. It was common early in the 30s for NAZI’s to give tours of work camps such as Dachau. Most travelers were untroubled. Of course they were getting a much sanitized tour in which guards were dressed as prisoners and were not experiencing abuse.W.E.B. DuBois loved Germany. He received much of his education there and revered its history and culture, and appreciated that it had been a respite from the endemic racism he had faced in the United States. Yet on returning after the Nazis had taken over Those celebrities, actors, politicians, singers, and academics who visit Israel/Palestine today will probably be featured in a similar book to Boyd’s when the Zionist apartheid regime currently ruling Israel/Palestine has also been confined to the dustbin of history. Maybe, then we will see a truly multicultural democracy where citizenship isn’t defined by ethnoreligious identity On the general absence of much concern by the book's overwhelmingly Gentile "travelers" about pre-1938 German anti-semitism, it should be noted that Americans, and no doubt Britons as well, were quite accustomed to having their vacations Judenfrei, as documented in the post-war novel Gentleman's Agreement. Boyd should perhaps have mademore of a point of this for today's reader, but of course she couldn't be expected to fill in all the social history necessary to put the experiences reported in perspective. There were even Americans who saluted and met Hitler! In a restaurant, a parade, a ceremony and thought he was just superb! Kind, soft-spoken, intelligent, and he likes children!