A Village in the Third Reich E-Book

Julia Boyd

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 627

Beschreibung

___________ A Waterstones Paperback of the Year 2022 A New Statesman Book of the Year 2022 'Fascinating… You'll learn more about the psychological workings of Nazism by reading this superbly researched chronicle… than you will by reading a shelf of wider-canvas volumes on the rise of Nazism.'Daily Mail 'An utterly absorbing insight into the full spectrum of responses from ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.'The Times 'Boyd is an outstanding micro-historian.'iNews ___________ Hidden deep in the Bavarian mountains lies the picturesque village of Oberstdorf – a place where for hundreds of years people lived simple lives while history was made elsewhere. Yet even this remote idyll could not escape the brutal iron grip of the Nazi regime. From the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Travellers in the Third Reich comes A Village in the Third Reich: an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Germany under Hitler, shining a light on the lives of ordinary people. Drawing on personal archives, letters, interviews and memoirs, it lays bare their brutality and love; courage and weakness; action, apathy and grief; hope, pain, joy and despair. Within its pages we encounter people from all walks of life – foresters, priests, farmers and nuns; innkeepers, Nazi officials, veterans and party members; village councillors, mountaineers, socialists, slave labourers, schoolchildren, tourists and aristocrats. We meet the Jews who survived – and those who didn't; the Nazi mayor who tried to shield those persecuted by the regime; and a blind boy whose life was judged 'not worth living'. This is a tale of conflicting loyalties and desires, of shattered dreams – but one in which, ultimately, human resilience triumphs. These are the stories of ordinary lives at the crossroads of history. ___ 'Exceptional... Boyd's book reminds us that even the most brutal regimes cannot extinguish all semblance of human feeling'Mail on Sunday 'Masterly… [an] important and gripping book… [Boyd is] a leading historian of human responses in political extremis.'The Oldie 'Gripping… vividly depicted… [a] humane and richly detailed book' Spectator 'Vivid, moving stories leave us asking "What would I have done?"' Professor David Reynolds, author of Island Stories "An absorbing, thoroughly recommended read"Family Tree magazine 'Laying bare the tragedies, the compromises, the suffering and the disillusionment. Exemplary microhistory.' Roger Moorehouse, author of First to Fight 'Compelling and evocative'All About History 'The rise of Nazi Germany through the prism of one small village in Bavaria. […] Astonishing' Jane Garvey on Fortunately… with Fi and Jane 'incredibly engaging'History of War magazine 'Intensely detailed, exhaustively researched and rendered in almost cinematographic detail, Julia Boyd's A Village in the Third Reich is deeply evocative, redolent of those times and truly revelatory. I learned so much. This is a book I will need to return to again and again, to relearn, refresh and remember. A triumph.' Damien Lewis, author of The Flame of Resistance

Leseprobe

Praise for Sunday Times bestseller Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

‘A compelling historical narrative . . . both flatters and challenges our hindsight. [Boyd] lets her voices, skilfully orchestrated, speak for themselves, which they do with great eloquence.’

– Daily Telegraph

‘Fascinating . . . surreal scenes pepper Boyd’s deep trawl of travellers’ tales from the scores of visitors who were drawn to the “new Germany” in the 1930s.’

– Spectator

‘Contains many amazing anecdotes . . . It warns us that we, with our all-seeing hindsight, might ourselves have been fooled or beguiled or inclined to make excuses, had we been there at the time. I can thoroughly recommend it as a contribution to knowledge and an absorbing and stimulating book in itself.’

– Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday

‘Meticulously researched . . . Julia Boyd’s research has been exhaustive. She has visited archives all over the world and assembled a vast and entertaining cast of travellers . . . makes for thought-provoking reading.’

– Caroline Moorehead, Literary Review

‘A fascinating book.’

– Robert Elms, BBC Radio London

‘To a younger generation it seems incomprehensible that after the tragic Great War people and political leaders allowed themselves to march into the abyss again. Julia Boyd’s book, drawing on wide experience and forensic research, seeks to answer some of these questions.’

– Randolph Churchill

‘With an almost novelistic touch, [Boyd] presents a range of stories of human interest . . . The uncomfortable moral of Travellers in the Third Reich is that people see and hear only what they already want to see and hear.’

– David Pryce-Jones, Standpoint

‘Fascinating . . . This absorbing and beautifully organised book is full of small encounters that jolt the reader into a historical past that seems still very near.’

– Lucy Lethbridge, The Tablet

‘In the 1930s the most cultured and technologically advanced country in Europe tumbled into the abyss. In this deeply researched book Julia Boyd lets us view Germany’s astonishing fall through foreign eyes. Her vivid tapestry of human stories is a delightful, often moving read. It also offers sobering lessons for our own day when strong leaders are again all the rage.’

– Professor David Reynolds, author of The Long Shadow: The Great War and the 20th Century

‘Drawing on the unpublished experiences of outsiders inside the Third Reich, Julia Boyd provides dazzling new perspectives on the Germany that Hitler built. Her book is a tour de force of historical research.’

– Dr Piers Brendon, author of The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s

‘What was Nazi Germany really like in the run up to the Second World War? Julia Boyd’s painstakingly researched and deeply nuanced book shows how this troubled country appeared to travellers of the 1930s who did not have the benefit of hindsight. A truly fascinating read.’

– Keith Lowe, author of Savage Continent

‘Engrossing . . . skilfully woven together to create a three-dimensional picture of Germany under Hitler that has many resonances for today.’

– Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller

‘A revealing and original account. Some of Adolf Hitler’s fellow travellers, lulled by self-deception, gulled by propaganda, deluded themselves about Nazi Germany as they deceived others.’

– Sir John Tusa

‘Julia Boyd has conducted a vast range and volume of research . . . She spins a tapestry which is full of vivid detail . . . A glorious read for anyone with an interest in the history of the twentieth century.’

– Sir Christopher Mallaby, former ambassador to Germany and France

‘Unique, original and engagingly written. This account of visitors and tourists to Germany brings to life these difficult decades in a most refreshing way [and] should attract a wide circle of readers.’

– Dr Zara Steiner, author of The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919–1933

For my mother Joan Raynsford18 November 1920–18 November 2021

Contents

Maps

Oberstdorf

Allgäu

Bavaria

Germany

The Eastern Front

Introduction

1 Going Home

2 Political Chaos

3 Nazi Stirrings

4 Elections, Elections

5 Opening Pandora’s Box

6 Nazi versus Nazi

7 The New Era

8 Young, Bold and Blond

9 God and Hitler

10 Towards War

11 Blitzkrieg

12 Theodor Weissenberger, In Memoriam

13 Barbarossa

14 Turning Point

15 Mount Elbrus

16 Total War

17 Camps

18 To the Bitter End

19 The Jews

20 Collapse

21 Surrender

22 Aftermath

23 The Reckoning

Acknowledgements

The Villagers

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Maps

Introduction

On the evening of 5 March 1933, the inhabitants of the Bavarian village of Oberstdorf began making their way to the marketplace, eager to hear what the mayor had to say about the federal election held earlier that day. Mingling with the native residents of this pretty resort, with its wooden houses and taverns, were large numbers of holidaymakers from north Germany drawn to the village by the winter sports it had to offer. The surrounding snow-clad peaks, silhouetted against a sky brilliant with stars, provided a natural grandeur to the scene. Among the crowd there was a palpable sense of anticipation as everyone, warmly wrapped against the cold night air, waited for events to unfold. Many of those present no doubt chatted to their friends about the extraordinary sight they had witnessed the night before when, as a prelude to the election, numerous bonfires had been lit in the mountains. Most spectacular of all had been the huge swastika formed of flickering flares, set high up on the Himmelschrofen mountain.

It was not quite five weeks since 30 January, when Adolf Hitler had been sworn in as Germany’s new chancellor, but it was clear to everybody – even in this far-off Alpine village – that the political landscape had already changed radically. What Oberstdorfers could not have known that evening was that they had just voted in the last multi-party election to be held in the country until 1946.

Shortly after eight o’clock, the faint sound of beating drums grew louder as a unit of paramilitary storm troopers marched into the marketplace carrying flaming torches and shouting out party slogans. The villagers had long since become accustomed to the presence of these noisy brownshirts on their streets, even if they did not necessarily approve. But if the trappings of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, NSDAP or Nazi Party) were not to everyone’s taste, Hitler’s message and style of leadership had caught the imagination of enough of the electorate, including the visiting skiers, to result in Oberstdorf casting more votes for the Nazis on 5 March than for any other party.1

The marketplace where they had all gathered lay at the core of this devoutly Catholic village. Dominated by the church of St John the Baptist, its spire visible for miles around, it was also where Oberstdorfers came to remember their fallen soldiers at memorials to the Franco–Prussian War (1870–71) and to the First World War (1914–18), the latter housed in a small chapel next to the church. In the middle of the square stood two flagpoles, one flying the black-white-red flag of the old German empire, the other – a swastika. The crowd fell silent as a gun salute marked the official start of the rally. Then, an ‘outsider’, a relative newcomer to Oberstdorf, stepped on to the podium, causing surprise among the villagers who had been expecting their mayor to speak. For those not already in the know, it was soon apparent that this man was the village’s new National Socialist leader. His speech was short but his authoritative manner left little doubt in anyone’s mind that he intended to take control over much more than the local Nazi Party.

Later, as the crowd dispersed and they returned to the warmth and security of their homes, even those villagers who had voted for Hitler must have wondered what exactly the future held in store.

Hitler’s consolidation of power following the 5 March election was to have consequences that would change the world forever. The death and destruction, the misery, torment and horror endured by so many millions of people during the twelve years of the Third Reich were on such a vast scale that it is impossible to absorb fully the extent of global suffering. This book tells that story from the perspective of one village in southern Germany.

Oberstdorf lies in Swabia (part of Bavaria) in a region known as the Allgäu, long recognised for the beauty of its mountains and the toughness of its people. It is uniquely defined by its geographical position as the most southern village in Germany. Once there, the traveller has quite literally reached the end of the road since only footpaths lead south across the mountains. Thus, in contrast with its Alpine neighbours such as Bad Tölz, Garmisch-Partenkirchen or Bad Reichenhall, Oberstdorf never enjoyed the benefits of lying on a trade route; it did not, like Berchtesgaden, possess extensive salt mines, nor did it develop any specialised craft or industry, as did the famous violin-producing village of Mittenwald. Before tourism arrived at the end of the nineteenth century it survived chiefly on subsistence farming, cheese production and small deposits of iron ore.

The village has always cared deeply about its history and as a result possesses a particularly well-maintained archive. It contains a wealth of detail on almost every feature of village life under the Nazis – data that in the post-war longing to forget everything to do with the Third Reich might so easily have been ‘lost’ or abandoned. Other important sources include local newspapers, unpublished memoirs and interviews given by the villagers themselves. This book has also been enriched with diaries and letters from private collections and documents preserved in various national, state and church archives. Drawing on all these sources, it has been possible to create a remarkably intimate portrait of Oberstdorf during the momentous period between the end of the First World War in 1918 and the granting of full sovereign rights to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955.

Of course, Oberstdorf’s experience of the Third Reich was not replicated all over Germany; each town or village’s response was unique. But by closely following these people as they coped with the day-today challenges of life under the Nazis, there emerges a real sense of how ordinary Germans supported, adapted to and survived a regime that, after promising them so much, in the end delivered only anguish and devastation.

We encounter foresters, priests, farmers and nuns; innkeepers, Nazi officials, veterans and party members; village councillors, mountaineers, socialists, slave labourers, schoolchildren, Jews, entrepreneurs, tourists and aristocrats. We also meet a blind boy condemned to die in a gas chamber because he was living ‘a life unworthy of life’. Then, of course, there are the soldiers, many of them eager to fight for a dictatorship they had been brainwashed never to question, while others were opposed to the war from the start. All of life is here: brutality and love; courage and weakness; action, apathy and grief; hope, pain, joy and despair – in other words, the shades of grey that make up real life as we know it, rather than some stereotyped narrative of heroes and villains. And as we get to know the villagers better, it comes as no surprise to learn that their response to these cataclysmic events was driven as much by practical everyday concerns, the instinct to safeguard their families and personal loyalties and enmities, as by the great political and social issues of the time. Oberstdorf’s story also drives home the point that statistical numbers, however overwhelming, cannot lessen the impact of each and every individual tragedy.

This village saga begins at the end of the First World War, when Germans were trying to recover from a defeat so traumatic that the very foundations of their world had been shaken. From the wretchedness caused by the Treaty of Versailles through the madness of hyperinflation, Oberstdorf had nevertheless by the late 1920s been transformed into a flourishing holiday resort. But despite the constant influx of people from the north bringing with them new ideas and a fresh outlook on the world, the village’s rural roots and traditional values remained at the heart of its identity.

Focused on economic recovery, Oberstdorf initially ignored the noise generated by Hitler and his new party 100 miles away in Munich. When in 1927 a postman tried to establish a branch of the NSDAP in the village’s staunchly Catholic community, it was, as he later complained to Joseph Goebbels, an uphill struggle.2 But, in tune with so many of their fellow countrymen, the villagers were exasperated with the political chaos of the Weimar Republic and yearned for strong government. By 1930 it became clear that they had changed their minds about National Socialism when more of them voted for Hitler in the September federal election than for anyone else.

But when the reality of Nazi rule hit the village two and a half years later, it came as a shock. National Socialism, everyone now discovered, was not just a system of government but aimed to control every aspect of their lives and to reshape their centuries-old traditions in the Nazi image. So while the villagers stood firm in their loyalty to Hitler, they did not take kindly to their first Nazi mayor, who ruthlessly stripped them of all autonomy over their own affairs. Even those who actively supported National Socialism were forced to make unwelcome adjustments. At the same time, it became frighteningly clear that anyone who stepped out of line or criticised the regime risked ‘protective custody’ in the newly established camp for political prisoners at Dachau. As the months went by, some villagers found Nazi methods increasingly disturbing but others, dismissing the more unpleasant rumours as foreign propaganda, were to remain committed to the regime through thick and thin.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, the villagers’ initial anxiety largely faded, as Germany’s military successes appeared to underpin Hitler’s promise of a quick and total victory. But their morale plummeted in the months following the invasion of the Soviet Union, when, apart from depressing reversals on the battlefield, they also lived in daily dread of receiving a letter informing them that a loved one had been killed or wounded, or was missing. Through the unpublished diaries of a lieutenant and a sergeant who served alongside Oberstdorf’s soldiers in the 99th Regiment of the 1st Mountain Division, we can follow the young men as they fought in Poland, France, the Soviet Union and the Balkans right up to the desperate final months of retreat and defeat.

While its men were away fighting, Oberstdorf, despite its remote geographical position, was by no means isolated from the war. Not only did the villagers receive first-hand news of conditions – and atrocities – on the various battlefronts from their soldiers returning home on leave, but in addition Dachau sub-camps and foreign labour camps were located close by. These supplied much of the workforce for the various BMW and Messerschmitt manufactories that sprang up in and around the village in the later stages of the war. A Waffen-SS* training camp operated six miles south of the village, while a Nazi stronghold visited regularly by such leading figures as Heinrich Himmler lay only ten miles to the north. On top of all that, evacuees from bombed cities, and, later, refugees fleeing the Russians, more than doubled the village’s pre-war population.

There are numerous aspects of Oberstdorf’s Third Reich history that make it an absorbing study, but one is particularly surprising. After the first Nazi mayor had been dispatched, his successor turned out to be a man who was both a committed Nazi and a decent human being – a statement that would strike many people as a contradiction in terms. The evidence, however, is clear. Not only did this mayor (well known for his robust pro-Nazi speeches) treat people with respect and consideration, he also protected a number of Jews living in the village and supported other inhabitants who found themselves on the wrong side of the Nazi legal system.

We are so used to thinking of the Third Reich in terms of black and white that the idea of any high-ranking Nazi behaving honourably is hard to accept. But Oberstdorf’s ‘good’ Nazi mayor is not the village’s only anomaly. A surviving list of NSDAP members includes the names of men well known for their opposition or indifference to the regime but who in the end had joined the party for any number of reasons, especially the need to protect their jobs and families but also, sometimes, simply to make their lives a little easier. This is not to imply that there was any lack of dedicated Nazis in the village, many of whom remained passionately loyal to Hitler to the end. But a system that forced everyone to conform or risk imprisonment, torture or death makes it difficult to assess accurately why so many Germans – including Oberstdorfers – appear to have been complicit in the Reich’s crimes against humanity.

After it all finally came to an end in May 1945, the villagers learned to live with the occupying forces, picked themselves up and started again. For many of them, the issue of confronting the nation’s guilt and culpability in relation to Nazi atrocities was left on hold while they set about rebuilding their lives.

By putting one village under the microscope, this book aims to contribute in some small way to our understanding of why Germans responded to Hitler in the manner that they did, of how their attitudes to the regime evolved and, when all hope of a reinvigorated, powerful state under the Nazis had fallen apart and their country lay in ruins, of how they worked their way through to a new beginning. If Oberstdorf’s story has much to tell us, it also leaves many questions unanswered – questions that will forever remain part of the legacy of the Third Reich.

* The military branch of the SS.

1

Going Home

Wilhelm Steiner was lucky. He had survived the First World War. Given that he had been in the thick of the fighting from the moment he enlisted in February 1915, this was something of a miracle. He had seen action at Verdun, the Somme, Arras, Lys – in fact right up until the Armistice. When at last the guns fell silent at 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918, Wilhelm’s regiment was in Flanders not far from Antwerp. This placed him roughly 500 miles north of Oberstdorf – the picture-book village in the southernmost tip of Bavaria that was his home.

In later years, Wilhelm was to look back on the war with some nostalgia, remembering especially the intense bonding with his fellow soldiers. There were other reasons, too, why his war memories were not all bad. For a lad of twenty who had seen little of the world beyond his own village, soldiering had brought with it the excitement of travel, new people and new skills. During the First World War teams of horses were still used to pull heavy artillery and Wilhelm had been trained to ride the lead horse – a responsible task requiring not only courage and strength but also a deep understanding of the animals. Such positive recollections, however, were overwhelmed by images of utter devastation, of hated officers shot in the back by their own men, and of comrades hideously maimed or dying in agony.1

In December 1918, Wilhelm, now bearer of the Military Merit Cross with Swords and the Iron Cross (second class), was finally given leave to begin his long journey home. A photograph of Oberstdorf, taken about the time of Wilhelm’s return, shows a substantial village of several hundred houses standing in a wide, green valley set against the glorious backdrop of the Bavarian Alps. It is easy to imagine Wilhelm’s heart missing a beat when, for the first time in nearly four years, he was confronted by the grandeur of the snow-covered peaks he had known all his life. In summer, the meadows surrounding the village were full of cows, the air fragrant with wild flowers, but now, in the depths of winter, the snow lay heavy in the valley and on the forested mountain slopes. A couple of miles north of the village, Wilhelm would have caught his first glimpse of Oberstdorf’s church spire rising high above the cluster of village roofs. Then, after walking past all the familiar timber houses, pubs and shops with their grey or green painted window-boxes, he would have finally reached home – 117 Hintere obere Gasse (Upper Back Alley). Immediately opposite the Steiner house stood a smithy (one of nineteen in the village) where his father made a living forging nails.

We can only guess how Wilhelm felt when at last he stood before his own front door. Were his family expecting him, or was his sudden appearance a surprise? Did they even know that he was still alive? His father had been able to afford just one apprenticeship and that had gone to his other son Friedrich, ‘the good one’. But now Wilhelm – survivor of a supremely testing war – returned home knowing that he had more than redressed the balance.

Over the next weeks and months he would have learned how physical distance and natural beauty had not been enough to protect the village from the miseries of the war. As soon as it began, the army had commandeered all the horses – and much else. Even such basic essentials as nails and flour were committed to the war effort. Food became so scarce that the few elderly guests still living in the nearby Trettach Hotel would go foraging for stinging nettles along the riverbanks or walk deep into the forest in search of nuts. Pinecones were prised open for their meagre seeds. At mealtimes the old people huddled around the only table still standing in the dining room ‘like cattle in a storm’.2

In the early months of the war, the village women had felt satisfaction at the way they were coping, pleased that when their men returned they would find clean houses and healthy cattle. But by 1917, as the number of families receiving death notices increased, village morale sank to a new low. It was the grim duty of the mayor, Fritz Gschwender, to deliver to the families the dreaded piece of paper that would change their lives forever. His great-granddaughter has written movingly of one such visit:

My husband did not ‘fall’, the young woman responded angrily. ‘He never fell. He was a good mountaineer. He climbed the Trettach and even the Höfats. He was a fine, strong man. He was murdered. The crazy Prussian Kaiser forced him to invade another country. It was not the fault of the one who shot him, the one who only defended his country.’ Her children looked up to her. The youngest held on to her apron. She held on to it tightly with a small round fist.3

The lack of a proper Catholic burial with its comforting rituals only intensified the villagers’ grief. In this context, the funeral of Gschwender’s stepmother in February 1917 had special significance for the entire village:

She was eighty. Everyone was at the funeral. At last there was a body, a coffin and a grave where people could stand and listen to what the priest said. At last a funeral, an appreciation of a life. They cried and sobbed for the young lads, whose bodies lay somewhere far away, where no one had put a flower, or shed a tear; where neither family nor friend had been present to remind the world of how good, strong and loving they had been. Half frozen the people tore themselves away from the grave of the old Oberstdorf woman whose death had at last allowed them to mourn.4

Of the 604 village men who fought in the war, 114 were either killed or died later of their wounds. To each returning veteran, Oberstdorf gave a traditional welcome fit for a hero. The ceremony attended by Wilhelm took place on 28 January 1919. The village newspaper Oberstdorfer Gemeinde- und Fremdenblatt (OGF, Oberstdorf Village and Tourist News) outlined the programme:

The veterans’ welcome will proceed as follows: A ceremonial Mass attended by the veterans’ association will begin at 9 a.m. Following the Mass receptions will be held in the Trettach and Löwen Hotels . . . There will be an informal gathering in the same hotels that evening. The cost of the reception, a simple lunch with beer, will be covered by the communal purse. In line with the decision made on 26 November 1918, each former soldier will receive 50 Marks as a gift.5

Wilhelm was among the first soldiers to arrive back, but those who came later were not neglected. The newspaper welcomed each man by name and with this message: ‘To those who have returned after the long days of suffering, we would like to say a heartfelt “Welcome Home”. For all the hardship endured in battle and imprisonment, may they find compensation in the gratitude of their fellow citizens, and in a sunny future.’6

No detailed description of Wilhelm’s journey to Oberstdorf survives, but it is likely that he had entered Germany near Aachen and then travelled up the Rhine. We know he went to Alsace, from where, if on foot, it would have taken him several weeks to cover the 200-odd miles to Oberstdorf. Perhaps Wilhelm, still a strapping young man despite the privations of war, had journeyed home in step with his fellow veterans, thousands of whom were walking or limping their way back to their towns, villages and farms. In the zones occupied by the British and Americans, a few soldiers in threadbare grey uniforms could already be seen in the fields, helping to harvest the turnips that for much of the population continued to be their chief source of food.

If at any stage on his journey home Wilhelm had boarded a train, he would have found the experience deeply frustrating. Shortage of coal resulted in the grossly overcrowded trains crawling along at snail’s pace, often halting for hours in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing to eat, no sanitation, and any material covering the seats had long since been stripped away for clothing. Freezing temperatures, compounded by broken windows, only added to the passengers’ woes. Those who still had enough energy for conversation debated the popular conviction that Germany’s defeat had been caused not by any weakness on the part of its brave warriors but by civilian traitors in Berlin who had stabbed the Imperial Army in the back.

Anarchy and violence were rampant in many German cities during the immediate aftermath of the war. When on 11 November representatives of the two-day-old republic signed the Armistice, Germany’s new leaders were faced with national collapse on all fronts. On 9 November the Kaiser had left Germany for the Netherlands, never to return. Even before the war ended, revolution triggered by a naval mutiny in Kiel had spread rapidly across the country, prompting strikes, desertions and civil war. On the one side were the Spartacists (their name deriving from the rebel gladiator Spartacus), who soon formed themselves into the German Communist Party, and on the other the Freikorps – right-wing militias intent on destroying every trace of Bolshevism. Wilhelm was himself on the receiving end of this new and uncharacteristic lawlessness afflicting Germany when on his journey home his kitbag, containing all his worldly possessions, was stolen.

Even those not directly caught up in the strife faced a miserably uncertain future. They had lost faith in their leaders, many dreaded communism and, with the Allied wartime blockade still firmly in place, millions were on the verge of starvation.

Despite its own hardships, Oberstdorf must have seemed far away from the chaos engulfing the big cities. It had for centuries existed as a poor peasant community, counting as many cows among its inhabitants as humans. Indeed, the most important measure of an Oberstdorf farmer’s wealth was the number of cows he could feed in winter. An 1866 guidebook sums up the villagers’ simple lifestyle:

Most of them live off the produce of their small farms; even the craftsmen (of whom there are very few) have their own little piece of land. They are very hard-working and thoroughly domestic; their food is rustic and ample: cabbage, potatoes, beans, peas, rough homemade bread, milk, onions etc. are the main ingredients; meat is only on the table at important festivals such as Kirchweih [consecration of the church day]. The Allgäuer man is not averse to Gerstensaft [barley juice, beer] but knows when he has had enough.7

By the turn of the twentieth century the majority of villagers were still poor, but the coming of the railway in 1888, and then six years later the opening of a nearby textile factory, had heralded profound changes. In 1897 the marketplace was lit by electricity, while in support of the growing tourist trade, new villas and hotels began springing up to the south of the village where there was ample land for development. Many of these were built by outside entrepreneurs, a number of whom stayed on to marry local girls. Adding to this increasingly diverse social mix were members of the Wittelsbach (Bavarian) royal family and aristocracy who had discovered in the village’s immediate vicinity the perfect place to build their hunting lodges.

Despite all these new developments, Oberstdorf’s original 353 houses were a reminder that agriculture remained at the heart of village life since their owners, known as the ‘commoners’, possessed much of the surrounding land – the forests, pastures and byways – and controlled its usage. Through their own council, the commoners administered their mutual inheritance, as they had done for generations, for the good of the whole community. Fiercely independent, these yeoman farmers, workers and tradesmen were determined that no feudal lord was going to tell them what to do, or dictate who should inherit their land and historic rights.

Parallel to the essentially medieval structure of the commons council ran the more modern municipal council that looked after public safety, schools and the village’s self-generated electricity supply. Given Oberstdorf’s strong conservative and royalist sympathies, it is not surprising that only a few of its councillors elected in 1919 were Social Democrats. Nationally the response to the first Weimar Republic federal election (in which women were allowed to vote for the first time) was a moderate, centrist one. Like so many of their fellow countrymen, many of the traditional villagers not only blamed the aristocracy for leading Germany into the war, but had also developed a profound mistrust of the officer class and elites in general. In addition they were anti-French and anti-communist, but above all they hated the Prussians, deeply resenting the dominant role played by Protestant Prussia in Bismarck’s united Germany, which they believed had robbed them of their autonomy. Oberstdorf’s post-war councillors were, however, far from being rebels, believing that during this turbulent period it was their role to protect and sustain existing systems rather than overthrow them.

So, unlike Munich, the capital of Bavaria 100 miles to the northeast, Oberstdorf did not look to revolution to solve its problems. The villagers did not rejoice when King Ludwig III of Bavaria fled Munich a few days before the Armistice, bringing to an end 700 years of Wittelsbach rule. Nor did they regard the People’s State of Bavaria, created on 7/8 November 1918 by the Jewish journalist Kurt Eisner, with anything other than deep suspicion – nor indeed the Bavarian Soviet Republic formed by the Spartacists in April 1919, two months after Eisner’s assassination. In early May the Freikorps marched into Munich, killing the Spartacist leaders and hundreds of their followers. But Oberstdorf men must have been so anti-war or so politically moderate by this stage that only eleven joined the Freikorps.8

Apart from the fact that its young men were no longer being killed or mutilated, peace brought little immediate solace to Oberstdorf. The war years had been terrible, but the actual fighting had taken place a long way away. Now, paradoxically, the recent violence in Munich made the village feel physically more vulnerable than at any time during the war.

The mood across Germany became yet more desperate when on 28 June 1919 the Treaty of Versailles was signed. The shock and disbelief among ordinary Germans when the terms became known are hard to exaggerate. They believed they had been honourably defeated, and had put their trust in President Wilson to see that they were treated fairly. Most people were therefore quite unprepared for the humiliation the Treaty imposed on them. Their country was to lose all its colonies (the most significant were in Africa), its chief industrial areas were to be under foreign control for at least fifteen years and it would have to pay a vast sum in compensation. Its army and its navy were to be reduced to a fraction of their former size. In the east, the ‘Polish corridor’ was to be created, thus dividing the bulk of Germany from the province of East Prussia. Furthermore, Germany had to sign the ‘guilt clause’ accepting responsibility for starting the war. But perhaps most painful of all for such a proud people was the realisation that their country was now a global outcast.

In June 1919 forty-four-year-old Ludwig Hochfeichter, the son of a blacksmith, replaced Fritz Gschwender as mayor. He was a good choice. Unusually for an Oberstdorfer, he had been educated at the Gymnasium (secondary school) at Kempten, the largest town in the region, and after marrying into wealth and property had become a prosperous farmer. His humanity, cool judgement and sense of humour were exactly the qualities the village needed at a time of such high tension and national despair. Having only been mayor for three days when the Treaty of Versailles was signed, Hochfeichter faced formidable difficulties. In his inaugural speech, he jokingly thanked those who had not voted for him since they had clearly wished to spare him the sleepless nights that lay ahead.

The most urgent of Hochfeichter’s problems was to provide enough food for the village. Rations were not only as stringent as they had been during the war, but, due to Oberstdorf’s expanding population, had also to stretch further. Theoretically, each inhabitant received 62.5 grams of fat a week, one egg every two weeks, 200 grams of flour per day and one litre of petrol (for lighting) a month. But there was no guarantee that even these thin rations would be regularly supplied. Nor were the farmers much better off, since the slaughtering of animals without a special permit was strictly forbidden and all their produce had to be handed over to the government. After food, fuel was the most contentious problem – especially as winter approached, when temperatures at night could drop as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius.

There was, however, one growing source of income for the village – tourism. In a war-weary world, Oberstdorf appeared to outsiders a haven of beauty and peace so that, unsurprisingly, large numbers flocked there. Each one had to register, and records show that in 1919 over 9,000 people stayed in the village for a lengthy period, and over 3,000 for a short break – a great many visitors for a village with a population of only 4,000. Politicians, aristocrats, celebrities and of course Jews arrived from all over Germany. Some even chose to remain permanently.

But while the additional revenue was certainly welcome, this influx of ‘strangers’ brought with it major problems. Between November 1918 and July 1920, the number of people entitled to rations jumped from 2,852 to 4,290. As Hochfeichter remarked, feeding everyone was ‘a task rich in thorns’.9 Nevertheless, those with ready cash had ample opportunity to cheat the system, even though they knew that if caught they faced a hefty fine or imprisonment. The OGF, which had a circulation in the village of roughly 1,000, had plenty to say on the subject of Oberstdorf’s controversial visitors:

Some villagers welcome outsiders but others find them a provocation. Despite bringing gold – or rather paper money – not everything that ‘shines’ is genuine, let alone gold. Shady conduct and war profiteering go hand in hand with bad manners, gross ostentation and the callous forcing up of prices. All this we see on the streets and in the hotels of Oberstdorf. Worst of all, we see it in the daily battle for provisions.10

It was not just the big issues that the mayor was expected to resolve: ‘We hereby request Mayor Hochfeichter to impose a fine of 50 Marks on those brazen women wearing trousers seen walking around our beautiful Oberstdorf,’ posted one furious reader, adding, ‘the money should be donated to the relief fund for the village poor.’11

However much the villagers disapproved of the newcomers, the latter did at least introduce a note of long-lost gaiety into Oberstdorf. Every Wednesday, a large group of them dressed in their best evening clothes would go dancing at the Parkhotel Luitpold, which still retained something of its pre-war glamour. That is until the police suddenly appeared one night at 11 p.m. and ordered them all to go home. ‘Does anyone really think’, the OGF asked indignantly a few days later, ‘that this patronising behaviour – so damaging to a resort village – will drag the cart out of the rut or make our citizens any more content with the times in which we live?’12 Fortunately, with the introduction of the more acceptable ‘tea dance’, a solution to the problem of late-night carousing was quickly found. If, however, traditional dancing was cautiously welcomed, the foxtrot was universally condemned – a shameless American import that even the OGF could not condone.

The visitors, enjoying all that Oberstdorf had to offer, often appeared to flaunt their relative wealth in the faces of the hard-pressed locals. The many personal advertisements printed by the OGF in the early post-war years demonstrate the sombre reality of the villagers’ daily life. Although the sadness and dislocation caused by the war is poignantly captured in these brief notices, they also underline people’s eagerness to put the war behind them:

Widow sells underwear and shirts of fallen sons

Who can give goat’s milk to a seriously ill man?

Which generous family in Oberstdorf will take in free ofcharge, but in exchange for work such as sewing, piano lessons,looking after children, for several weeks two impoverishedaristocratic ladies; sisters, 36 and 40 years old, urgently in need ofrecuperation?

Which self-sacrificing woman will take care of a poor four months’old child for payment?

Who will give a needy woman daily a litre of decent broth andsmall portion of meat in exchange for a daily litre of milk?

There were entrepreneurs eager to exploit new opportunities: ‘old teeth and dentures, bones are bought, and hair of loved ones (living or dead) is made into watch chains’; and no village is without its gossip, slander or its reprobate young men:

The undersigned revokes the insulting statement she made about Josef Wechs in connection with the dispute over ‘only the scoundrels get help’.

Karl Richter [brewery and hotel owner] distances himself from the behaviour of his sons who are accused of gross misdemeanour.

A mother apologises for her underage daughter Hedwig, who spread around the untrue statement heard from the farmer’s son Melchior Besler in Oberstdorf Lower Market that Herr Johann Schmid gave rancid butter to the Saathoff Sanatorium. She and two others have paid 30 Marks to the relief fund.

With so much desperate need in the community, thieving was inevitable; but in a village where everyone knew everyone there was always someone watching:

On 23 June last year a black woollen cardigan was lost on the way to Loretto. This cardigan has been spotted on a woman who was in A. Hofmann’s bookstore last Thursday. The woman is asked to hand in the cardigan to the bookstore or she will otherwise be charged.

The thief who stole laundry off Herr Lutz’s washing line during the night is warned that he has been recognised by a neighbour.

In September 1919, in response to the worsening economic situation and the continuing threat of violence in the cities, the village councillors (in common with their counterparts across the region) gathered to discuss the possibility of raising a local militia. Considering the draconian terms of the Treaty of Versailles governing Germany’s demilitarisation, this was a highly sensitive issue and probably the reason why the meeting was not held at the town hall as usual but in the Hirsch tavern, which, with its low ceilings, wooden furniture, painted ornaments and antlers hanging on the walls, could hardly have been more typically Bavarian.

In the smoke-filled room, reeking of beer, a socialist textile worker was the first to address his colleagues. He started by saying how sad it was that so soon after the war civilians should have to consider taking up arms. But he went on to warn, ‘We don’t know what madness will strike next to shatter our peace – even in a backwater like Oberstdorf.’ General Count von Brand, one of the village’s new residents, originally from the north and a Protestant, was keen to have his say. Only a few months earlier he had himself fought in Munich with the Freikorps against the Spartacists and he gave the meeting a lurid account of the fate awaiting them should the village ever come under Bolshevist attack. But, as Hochfeichter was quick to observe, no one could actually be sure that the next threat would be from the communists, emphasising that it might just as well come from the Right. In the end, it was reluctantly agreed that a village militia was justified, but that it must never ever be used for political purposes.13

After making this momentous decision, the council was slow to implement it. Eventually notices were posted around the village asking for volunteers, but making it clear that the militia’s sole purpose was ‘to defend our valley from revolutionary elements’. By the time enough men came forward, General von Brand had taken command. His immediate task was to remind his men that their rifles were the property of the state and must not be used for poaching. Nor, he added, should the ‘immature elements’ that had recently come to his notice fire off their weapons in the air at weddings. Indeed, Oberstdorf’s militia was to prove a grave disappointment to the general. He lamented the men’s lack of soldierly qualities, particularly their ‘sloppy attitude and poor attendance’.14

If to some the general was little more than a caricature soldier, he nevertheless had a point. When, on 13 March 1920, the Kapp Putsch* in Berlin triggered yet another national wave of violence and political unrest, three-quarters of the militia failed to turn up for roll call even though it had been carefully timed not to interfere with Mass or milking. The final showdown came when the general returned from inspecting the militia in the nearby town of Kempten, where he had found a fine body of 300 men. Not only were they orderly and disciplined, reported the general, ‘but they don’t argue’. Why, he demanded, could Oberstdorfers not be more like them?15 It was unfortunate that he chose to voice these views in public. At the next parade only eight men bothered to turn up. One of them, a farmer (who also played the tuba in the brass band), created a scene – ‘shouting and making wild gesticulations’. It was the final straw. The general resigned.

In April 1920, Oberstdorf welcomed back the last of its veterans. It was, as noted by the OGF, a grand occasion: ‘In glorious sunshine and accompanied by the brass band, the Associations marched with their flags to the [Franco–Prussian] war memorial on the market square. Afterwards, festivities took place in the Löwen Hotel. Each veteran received 120 Marks donated by the town council and an anonymous donor. The war is finally over,’ proclaimed the OGF, adding, ‘We leave the illustrious veterans with a final wish: that in future, they may be happily surrounded by their loved ones and can pursue their working lives unhindered.’16

Some months later, since all threats of bloody revolution seemed to have melted away, the village militia was disbanded. Its last hurrah took place on another lovely sunny day. Again accompanied by the brass band, Oberstdorf’s finest marched through the village to the shooting range. Here they spent a merry afternoon competing for prizes and, as the official record puts it, ‘bearing witness to the beautiful spirit which unites all hearts’.17 For now, it seemed that Oberstdorf could at last look forward to a period of peace and prosperity.

* This was the failed attempt by the right-wing extremist and former member of the Reichstag Wolfgang Kapp to overthrow Friedrich Ebert’s democratic government in March 1920 with the help of the Freikorps.

2

Political Chaos

While, by 1920, Germany’s civil unrest appeared to be largely over, national politics remained as volatile as ever. In fact, as the new decade gathered pace, the Weimar Republic’s prospects looked grim. Hamstrung by the reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, the new government also had to cope with separatists in the Rhineland, a plebiscite in Upper Silesia, communist insurrection in Saxony, and a crippled economy.

Even in Oberstdorf, tucked away right at the bottom of Germany, there was no escape from politics. But it was the newcomers, many of them upper-class Protestants from the north, who were the driving force in bringing new concepts and a wider vision to the village. The more traditional, and mostly Catholic, villagers preferred to keep political discussion within the cosy confines of the Stammtisch (‘regular table’). And regular it certainly was. These clubs, of which a great many existed in the village, would meet every few days and discuss whatever was on the agenda in the same place, at the same time, around the same table, with each man sitting on the same chair. The Stammtisch was the traditional way for the men to socialise and as such fulfilled an important role in village life.

But no Oberstdorfer, however disillusioned with politics, could remain unaware that in Munich political passions were still running high – not least because of a thirty-one-year-old former corporal called Adolf Hitler. One effect of Munich’s socialist revolution led by Eisner in 1918 and the three post-war attempts to establish a Bavarian Soviet Republic had been to convince Hitler that a Jewish/Bolshevist conspiracy lay at the root of all Germany’s problems. So while Oberstdorf’s better-heeled inhabitants swirled around the hotel dance floors, Mayor Hochfeichter struggled to find food for his villagers and the farmers feed for their cattle, the teetotal Hitler was working the Munich beer halls with his hate-filled rhetoric targeted on the Treaty of Versailles, the Weimar government, Marxists and, above all, the Jews.

If the native villagers were less politically motivated than the newcomers, they nevertheless held firm convictions. Resolutely independent, theirs was a conservative community, although not especially anti-Semitic. Latent anti-Semitism had existed in Germany before the First World War, but it was the need for people to find a scapegoat for defeat, combined with the conviction that the Jews were in league with Russia’s communist revolutionaries, that led to its sharp escalation after the war. Oberstdorf, however, in the interests of its tourist trade, had a long record of accepting its Jewish visitors on exactly the same terms as it did any others. So when anti-Semitic posters and graffiti suddenly appeared on the village streets blaming Jewish profiteers for current hardships and proclaiming messages such as ‘Germany for the Germans! Down with Jewry’, the OGF reacted indignantly, condemning ‘these outsiders who have nothing better to do but damage other people’s property’.1 The article also made it clear that neither the police nor the town hall had ever received any complaints against the Jews.

The NSDAP was founded on 24 February 1920 in Munich. A few months later its virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Völkischer Beobachter (People’s Observer) was launched and by August already had the village and its Jewish visitors in its sights:

We have a report from Oberstdorf expressing outrage at the shameless conduct of its summer holidaymakers who are almost exclusively Jews. This filth feasts and carouses while the rest of the country is in desperate need and fearing for its future. Don’t these impudent Jews, these ridiculous Hebrews with crooked legs in short leather trousers, these foul-smelling women in dirndls,* understand how unspeakably disgusting their behaviour seems to all decent people? It is sad to see that the local authorities do nothing but just quietly look on. Yes, and there are even councillors who cannot thank the Jews enough, because they bring so much ‘culture’ to Oberstdorf and to our mountains. However, there are also increasing signs of resistance . . . Our mountain people are right not to let their beautiful country be spoiled by these Palestinian immigrants.2

Again the OGF responded robustly, pointing out that neither Mayor Hochfeichter nor Oberstdorf’s most senior civil servant, Georg Bisle, had supported a recent anti-Semitic petition, adding firmly, ‘Everyone has a right to their opinion but no one can deny Jews their right to holiday wherever they want.’3

It wasn’t only with regards to anti-Semitism that most Oberstdorfers were relatively moderate. A year after the village’s militia was dissolved the Bavarian government disbanded the whole network of civil defence militias in the region. In Munich, however, a number were soon to regroup back into the Freikorps. Indeed, many such paramilitary outfits emerged as a result of deep discontent among the veterans. Nearly one and a half million were disabled, and those fit to work faced widespread unemployment. Eager to take on the communists and socialists, thousands of angry former soldiers now joined these paramilitary organisations, which soon became rich breeding grounds for right-wing extremism.

In Oberstdorf, it was the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten (Steel Helmet League of Frontline Soldiers) that gained most prominence. Deeply conservative, anti-republic and anti-democratic, it denied membership to Jewish veterans, supported the ‘stab-in-the-back’ theory* and condemned the German signatories of the Treaty of Versailles as the ‘November criminals’. By the end of the decade the Stahlhelm had evolved into an extreme right-wing political body, eventually merging with the Sturmabteilung (SA, Storm Troopers), a paramilitary group set up by Hitler in 1921 to provide protection at Nazi rallies and attack political rivals. The most sinister of the paramilitary groups was the Schutzstaffel (SS, Protection Squads) which, having started as a small unit of volunteers whose job it was to guard Nazi meetings in Munich, grew into the powerful and brutal organisation headed by Heinrich Himmler. These groups, joined by other fascist tributaries, all contributed to Hitler’s rise to power. But during the early 1920s, the Stahlhelm in Oberstdorf was still composed chiefly of local dignitaries and the village’s more cosmopolitan residents from the north, thus forming a relatively unthreatening association, as this newspaper account of a meeting in Oberstdorf makes clear:

On Tuesday, the Stahlhelm gathered for an intimate evening at the Café Holder. Herr Major Wänninger [chairman of the Bavarian section] gave a moving speech on the objectives and principles of the Stahlhelm and was warmly applauded by the comrades, guests and members of the Veteran Association present. Following this, five Stahlhelm comrades were decorated with the Memorial Medal of the World War. The emotional occasion drew to a close in a spirit of true comradeship and togetherness.4

The Stahlhelm took itself very seriously, whereas the village’s own veterans’ association, of which Wilhelm Steiner was a member, did not, preferring to concentrate on the welfare of war widows and their families. In any case, as the quality of post-war life gradually improved, its members’ interest in it correspondingly waned. Steiner, although he was exactly the kind of veteran that the Stahlhelm would have liked to recruit, was having none of it. A true man of the mountains and always at odds with authority, he had no time for paramilitary patriotism. Indeed, he had every reason to be grateful to the Weimar government that after the war had made it possible for unqualified veterans to undertake an apprenticeship – in his case to a carpenter. For the likes of Wilhelm Steiner, it was more appealing to be out skiing, mountaineering or playing football than morbidly dwelling on the war, or following the fortunes of Hitler and his new political party, the NSDAP.

On 11 January 1923, 60,000 French and Belgian troops marched into the Ruhr – Germany’s industrial heartland – intent on extracting the coal that their countries had been promised in reparations but which Germany was failing to deliver. The occupation was to have profound economic consequences, felt as keenly in Oberstdorf, 400 miles to the south, as anywhere else in the country. Many Germans living in the Ruhr chose to defy the French with passive resistance, an action initially supported by the Weimar government. In retaliation, the French authorities expelled thousands of strikers and their families so that, as the London Spectator put it,

People of every social class . . . are wandering about, penniless, and dependent for their daily needs on dole or charity . . . What is their crime? Some of them have refused to work for the French, some of them are the dependants of those who have refused, and so their money, their houses, and their property have been seized, and they themselves have been expelled.5

Twenty-two of the evicted families were allocated to Oberstdorf. On 12 September 1923, the municipal council met to discuss how best to cope with this new crisis. Hochfeichter was in no doubt that the village must do everything possible for the families even though it had no available rooms. The hotel owners protested, anticipating that they would be expected to provide the refugees with free accommodation. Undaunted, the mayor appealed to the villagers’ better nature and was not disappointed. When the first three families (twenty-three people) arrived, they were housed in bed-and-breakfast Pensionen, supplied with bedding and each given thirty pounds of flour.

Passive resistance may have eased the nation’s humiliation, but because the government had to print money to pay the strikers, it also fuelled hyperinflation. Oberstdorf soon felt the consequences. Building works, including the new war memorial, were put on hold; electricity consumption dropped 40 per cent and the cost of a funeral soared. Protestants faced the prospect of celebrating Easter without Holy Communion because their church had no wine, while the compulsory beer (Bierzwang) which each veteran was required to buy at their association meetings to support the pub was suspended. That autumn two factory workers, Fridolin and Eugenie Thomma, noted that their simple wedding had, at 380 billion Marks, cost more than the current Shah of Persia’s three weddings put together. The council even considered closing the village reading room as the heating bill had by October risen to 14 billion Marks a day. And, although the commons council undertook to provide free wood, the cost of paying workers to chop it made their offer too expensive to accept.

For much of the hyperinflation period, the council paid its bills in a new currency – milk. The sexton’s wage, for instance, was raised from three to five litres, whereas the daily rate in the hospital was fixed at eleven litres. Electricity, generated by the village, was paid per kilowatt with either milk or seven bread rolls.

Hatred of the French reached a new intensity. Every few days the OGF’s successor, the Oberstdorfer Heimat- und Fremdenblatt (OHF, Oberstdorf Local and Tourist News), catalogued France’s latest so-called crimes, such as the ‘trillion Marks stolen from an office in Essen’ or the ‘700 billion from the Düsseldorf town hall’.6 With each new issue the list grew longer. That October the paper announced that it would be raising its subscription from a mere 450,000 Marks (with which it was possible to buy two litres of milk, a sixth of a pound of butter or one litre of beer), to 3 million.

It is hard to overestimate the social, political and psychological effects of inflation on ordinary Germans. Not only had their traditional virtues of industry, thrift and diligence been swept away, but they were also forced to witness profiteers and debtors making fortunes out of their wretchedness. It was not just their savings and income that suffered; their whole moral world had been turned on its head.

Relief finally came when the new chancellor, Gustav Stresemann, brought the Ruhr strike to an end in September 1923, thereby taking the first step in stabilising the Mark. Then, with his introduction of a new currency, the Rentenmark, solidly backed by land and infrastructure, the hyperinflation that had so devastated the country was finally brought under control. Soon one Rentenmark was worth a trillion of its predecessor. The OHF first mentioned the currency reform on 27 October 1923. Six weeks later, Wilhelm Steiner could once more go to the pub and buy a stein of beer for thirty-eight Pfennigs.

Germany’s troubles did not end with the introduction of the new currency, however. Throughout the autumn and winter of 1923–4, as reported by the OHF, still the villagers’ chief source of information, there were uprisings of one sort or another taking place all over the country:

Lörrach, Freiburg inflation riots (22 September)

Saxony ‘cleared’ of proletarian gangs (17 October)

Wiesbaden inflation riots and lootings (17 October)

Mannheim inflation riots, Thüringen red government (20 October)

Short term Rheinische Republik, Berlin inflation riots, casualties (27 October)

Red terror in Thüringen (10 November)

Fighting between Rheinischen Sonderbündlern (Rhenish separatists) and self-defence units 120 dead (28 November)

Looting and riots in Ruhr (1 December)

Separatists in Pfalz terror (16 January)

Seen in this context, it is easy to understand why, compared with the nightmare of hyperinflation that would scar their collective memory for generations, the villagers did not take any special interest in the OHF’s dramatic announcement on 10 November:

We have been informed of the following telegram: To the President and all administrative bodies. The constitutional government has been declared as deposed by a Ludendorff-Hitler putsch. The constitutional government continues to exist. All administrative bodies, civil servants, police and military have to deny obedience to the revolutionaries. Acting against this is high treason. The population has to be informed.7

That same day, the main regional newspaper, the Allgäuer Anzeigeblatt (AA),* splashed over its front page a detailed account of the extraordinary events that had taken place in Munich during the previous two days when Hitler, General Ludendorff, a number of leading Nazis (including Hermann Göring) and about 2,000 of their followers marched to the centre of the city intent on overthrowing the Bavarian government. The AA claimed that, although the putsch had started in Munich, Hitler’s real aim was to march on Berlin and topple the Weimar government – ‘just like Mussolini’s march on Rome’.8 In fact, the putsch came to a grinding halt when police confronted the Nazis, opened fire and killed fourteen party members and four policemen. Two days later Hitler, Ludendorff and eight others were arrested and charged with treason.

Although Hitler’s attempt at revolution had ended in failure, his subsequent trial attracted huge publicity, providing him with a perfect opportunity to present his views to the nation. From the start, it was clear that the judge’s sympathy lay with the men in the dock. As the OHF reported, ‘The accused, the public prosecutors and the defence lawyers are seen chatting cheerfully with one another . . . a sentence – or no sentence – may be expected soon.’9