A Village in the Third Reich Quotes

“We understand very well that we do not have universal support in every town, including Oberstdorf. We take office today in the hope that at the end of this parliamentary term it will be possible to return Oberstdorf’s affairs to the men to whom it was previously entrusted. But during our four-year term of office, it is vital that we gain acceptance for the measures Adolf Hitler wants put in place.”
― Julia Boyd, A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism

“Exploring the Third Reich among the people I grew up with – not anonymous monsters – taught me how fragile civilisation is. It also taught me that humble individuals can – and do – create pockets of humanity in inhuman times and circumstances. Last, but very much not least, I understood how lucky I was to be born after the war.”
― Julia Boyd, A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism

“The problem immediately facing [the "Charitable Foundation for Cure and Institutional Care" in Berlin] staff was how to kill large groups of German adults swiftly without arousing public suspicion. The starvation method hitherto used for children was considered too slow and likely to attract too many questions.”
― Julia Boyd, A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism

“Once the means to kill children had been established, it was only a matter of months before the programme was extended to include adults living in asylums or other such institutions.”
― Julia Boyd, A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism

“It was in the spring of 1939 that Hitler finally set in motion a "racial hygiene" policy that he had wanted to pursue for many years, namely the systematic killing of those who were mentally or physically disabled. He made his intentions clear in an address to the Nuremberg Rally tenyears earlier when he had argued that if of the million or so children born each year in Germany 70,000 to 80,000 of the weakest were removed, the nation would be made correspondingly stronger.”
― Julia Boyd, A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism

“Between 20 January and 13 December 1940, the Nazis gassed 9,839 people at the Grafeneck "euthanasia" centre. Theodore Weissenberger was one of them. He was murdered because he was blind.”
― Julia Boyd, A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism

“The demands of war provided Hitler with just the excuse he was looking for to rid the regime not only of Jews, but also of Gypsies, socialists, the disabled and mentally ill, homosexuals, Poles, communists, or anyone else who did not fit the National Socialist ideal. The elimination of those deemed undesirable became an issue of prime importance.”
― Julia Boyd, A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism

“According to some estimates, by the early 1930s around a fifth of all Protestant clergy held Nazi sympathies while one in four was a party member. Many showed no hesitation in "worshipping" Hitler in their sermons and prayers. Indeed, a number of German Christians were so fanatically pro-Nazi that they called for Hitler's Mein Kampf to replace the Bible, since it was now "the people's most sacred text; their greatest, purest and truest moral code.”
― Julia Boyd, A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism

“The Nazis wasted no time in abolishing religions and religious organizations—Jehovah's Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists and the Salvation Army among them. Many in the leading ranks of the party would no doubt have liked to abolish the mainstream religions as well, but since Christian belief was so deeply entrenched in the country this was not a realistic option. The alternative was to remould the existing Churches in the National Socialist image to form one national Church and religion. Since much of the Nazis’ support had in the recent elections derived from the country’s 40 million Protestants, it was hardly surprising that many of them now flocked to the Nazified German Evangelical Church.”
― Julia Boyd, A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism