Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism: 1919–1945

For many foreign visitors, even after 1933, Germany was not “the Third Reich,” but rather a charming country with beautiful landscapes, women dressed in dirndls, and rustic gothic villages. To what extent could they see the horrors behind the tourist facade? British writer Boyd (A Dance with the Dragon: The Vanished World of Peking’s Foreign Colony) culls the impressions of nearly 200 short- and long-term travelers, almost all British and American, to examine this question. A few of them were well-known public or cultural figures, such as Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett; most were largely unknown tourists, academics, students, diplomats, businesspeople, and athletes. A significant number were apolitical; a few were taken in by Nazism and Hitler, such as David Lloyd George, the former British prime minister, who called Hitler “the George Washington of Germany.” Boyd uncovers surprising facts, such as that “Dachau had become something of a tourist destination”—visiting diplomats were told the camps were for re-educating “undesirables” and Communists through work, and sometimes shown guards dressed as prisoners—and notes the handful of visitors who worked to aid Jews, such as the opera-loving sisters Ida and Louise Cook. Boyd offers no overriding thesis; instead, her book is a mosaic of impressions. This fresh, surprising perspective on how Nazi Germany was seen at the time will appeal to anyone looking for a new angle on that historical moment. (Aug.)