Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times

"This book is a carefully drawn account of how townspeople went about their lives during the Nazi era, reacting to and shaping events. Andrew Stuart Bergerson argues that ordinary Germans did in fact make Germany and Europe more fascist, more racist, and more modern during the 1930s, but they disguised their involvement behind a pre-existing veil of normalcy." "Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times considers the actual customs and experiences of friendship and neighborliness in a German town before, during, and after the Third Reich. By analyzing the customs of conviviality in interwar Hildesheim, and the culture of normalcy these customs invoked, Bergerson aims to help us better understand how ordinary Germans transformed "friends and neighbors" into "Jews" or "Aryans.""--BOOK JACKET.