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

by Julia Boyd

Small town Berlin. So featureless and like a provincial Paris. None of the charm of Vienna. Not one street except Unter den Linden.

As he wrote in his memoir, when asked at the border the purpose of his journey, he could have truthfully replied, ‘I’m looking for my homeland and I’ve come to find out if this is it.’18

‘I have come to the decision that Berlin is the least amusing place I have ever seen. It is the synonym for stupidity.

Soon the boy bars began to disappear. The more intelligent boys went to ground while ‘the silly ones fluttered around town exclaiming how sexy the storm troopers looked in their uniforms’.15