Overview

"'Even now', wrote Christopher Isherwood in his Berlin Diary of 1933, 'I can't altogether believe that any of this has really happened'. Three years later, W. E. B. DuBois described Germany as 'silent, nervous, suppressed; it speaks in whispers'. In contrast, a young John F. Kennedy, in the journal he kept on a German tour in 1937, wrote, 'The Germans really are too good-it makes people gang against them for protection'. Drawing on such published and unpublished accounts from writers and public figures visiting Germany, ""Travels in the Reich"" creates a chilling composite portrait of the reality of life under Hitler. Composed in the moment by writers such as Virginia Woolf, Isak Dinesen, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, William Shirer, Georges Simenon, and Albert Camus, the essays, letters, and articles gathered here offer fascinating insight into the range of responses to Nazi Germany. While some accounts betray a distressing naivete, overall what is striking is just how clearly many of the travelers understood the true situation-and the terrors to come. Through the eyes of these visitors, ""Travels in the Reich"" offers a new perspective on the quotidian - yet so often horrifying - details of life in Nazi Germany, in accounts as compelling as a good novel, but bearing all the weight of historical witness."

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9780226496290

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No single account of life inside Hitler's Germany paints a more vivid landscape than Travels in the Reich. From Samuel Beckett to Virginia Woolf, the three dozen writers collected in this volume take us on a journey that is as compelling as it is disturbing. An important addition to the history of World War II. -Rick Atkinson, author of The Day of Battle

Author Information

Oliver Lubrich is junior professor of rhetoric at the Institute of General and Comparative Literature at the Free University Berlin.

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