food from small allotments or from home-reared pigs and chickens.5 According to the census of 1933, 32.7 per cent of the population lived in rural communities of less than 2,000 inhabitants. If we add to that the number living in small market towns of between 2,000 and 20,000, the share comes to 56.8 per cent. And what these statistics cannot convey is the sheer backwardness of much of German rural life even as late as the 1930s.
