"In Germany there are no private matter any more. If your sleep, that's your private matter, but the moment you wake up and come into contact with another person, you must remember that you are a soldier of Adolf Hitler..."—Robert Ley, Organization Leader of the Nazi Party, Munich, 1938. But how "private" was sleep in the Third Reich? In this extraordinary book, the dreams of those who lived under the Nazis become documentary evidence of the range of terror envisioned by Kafka or Orwell. From 1933 to 1939, as a journalist in Germany, Mrs. Beradt recorded the dreams of hundreds of Germans; in this book she presents those of political content. With her perceptive interpretations, the dreams show the remarkable degree of control possible in a totalitarian state—how even the supposedly safe confines of the individual's sleeping life can be invaded by and turned to the purpose of the regime. These dreams are appalling, almost excruciating in the intensity of their despair and frustration. Together they illuminate one of the twentieth century's most bitter and overwhelming problems: how did a whole nation subject itself to totalitarianism and acquiesce in murder? IN this sense, the message of the book is profoundly political: how the citizenry cannot escape a totalitarian government; how the individual unknowingly adjusts to it; and how terror can make an accomplice of anyone, even the innocent. Bruno Bettleheim, in his concluding essay, explores the meaning of the book and calls it "a shocking experience...To understand ourselves, and the possibility of Nazi terror, we must study the dreams it evoked so that we shall truly know 'the stuff we are made on.'"-Publisher.

“A dense and scholarly book about . . . the relationship between the Nazi party and the occult . . . reveals stranger-than-fiction truths on every page.”—Daily Telegraph The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire. “[Kurlander] shows how swiftly irrational ideas can take hold, even in an age before social media.”—The Washington Post “Deeply researched, convincingly authenticated, this extraordinary study of the magical and supernatural at the highest levels of Nazi Germany will astonish.”—The Spectator “A trustworthy [book] on an extraordinary subject.”—The Times “A fascinating look at a little-understood aspect of fascism.”—Kirkus Reviews “Kurlander provides a careful, clear-headed, and exhaustive examination of a subject so lurid that it has probably scared away some of the serious research it merits.”—National Review

'INSIDE THE THIRD REICH is not only the most significant personal German account to come out of the war but the most revealing document on the Hitler phenomenon yet written. It takes the reader inside Nazi Germany on four different levels: Hitler's inner circle, National Socialism as a whole, the area of wartime production and the inner struggle of Albert Speer. The author does not try to make excuses, even by implication, and is unrelenting toward himself and his associates... Speer's full-length portrait of Hitler has unnerving reality. The Fuhrer emerges as neither an incompetent nor a carpet-gnawing madman but as an evil genius of warped conceits endowed with an ineffable personal magic' NEW YORK TIMES

Chronicles the rise and eventual fall of Nazi Germany.

An intimate portrait of German life during World War II, shining a light on ordinary people living in a picturesque Bavarian village under Nazi rule, from a past winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. 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 international bestseller Travelers in the Third Reich comes A Village in the Third Reich, 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.