Unlike many histories of Germany in the 20th Century this book does not consider the nation as a whole, but rather focuses on Oberstdorf, the southernmost village in Bavaria, and examines the lives, and experiences of individuals, from the time the troops returned from the First World War up to the granting of full sovereign rights to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955, but of course concentrating on the period when Hitler was in power.

Although it attempts to understand how so many of the German people were seduced by the Nazis, and indeed gave them enthusiastic support in the early days of the Third Reich, it never compromises the view that is shared by all decent people, then and now, that Nazism was the most evil regime ever visited upon the world, and that its leader was a demon from hell.

In 1918 the reality of life for Germans, and their contemporaries in England was very different. We lived in a nation that had existed for hundreds of years, had been the dominant power in the world for over a century, had an Empire seven times the size of ancient Rome, had emerged bloodied, but victorious from a world war, and had the respect of most of the world. They lived in a nation which had only existed for forty eight years, had a small number of colonies, which they had now lost, and had been defeated in a war for which, unsurprisingly they had attracted the opprobrium of the world.

Of course when the National Socialists competed for power they did not make public policies of launching a war that would kill eighty million people, of deliberately murdering in cold blood entire peoples, primarily the Jews, but also the Slavs and others, and destroying any vestige of a democratic society. Nevertheless the magnifying of the age old hatred of the Jewish people was obvious, as was the disgusting persecution the latter increasingly suffered as the years passed under Hitler.

The book follows the fortunes of a large number of the people of Oberstdorf, from the depths of defeat, depression and the hyperinflation of the 1930s, through the time when Germany did indeed appear to stand on the brink of world conquest, to its utter defeat, and justified humiliation, as the Nazis suffered their well deserved Götterdämmerung. Some are sympathetic characters, some heroic, some vile, and all marked for ever by the Nazis.

That even those who continued to support Nazism for much of the period could occasionally show humanity is illustrated by the fact that the mayor, a convinced Nazi, also defended a number of Jewish people, and others who fell foul of the Gestapo. Nevertheless there were many who seemed unable to comprehend the real nature of Hitler, and who were either killed in the war, or called to account at the end.

What this book shows is that for many it was almost impossible to withhold at least apparent support for the regime without risking their own lives, while others did just that at often great cost, and proves that it would be wrong to damn all Germans for the crimes of their leaders.

What one really takes from this book is that, in a quote often attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but perhaps not actually originated by him, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”, was true in the Germany of the 20th Century, and is true now, when we can see stirrings of fascism in antisemites who shout in our own streets that “Hitler was right”. The fate of Oberstdorf is a warning to all.