Nazi Germany as a travel destination: A new book explores how Hitler duped tourists
Michael Dirda
Historian and biographer Julia Boyd opens her riveting “Travelers in the Third Reich” with this anecdote: “Imagine that it is the summer of 1936 and you are on honeymoon in Germany. The sun is shining, the people are friendly — life is good.” Suddenly, out of nowhere a “Jewish-looking” woman approaches. “Radiating anxiety, she clutches the hand of a limping teenage girl wearing a thick built-up shoe.” The woman has seen the GB sticker on your car and begs you to take her daughter to England. Lately, you have heard disturbing rumors about Germany’s Jews and even talk about euthanasia for the unfit — how do you react to the woman’s desperate plea? “Do you turn your back on her in horror and walk away? Do you sympathize but tell her there is really nothing you can do? Or do you take the child away to safety?”
Astonishingly, the real-life newlyweds didn’t make the excuses that you or I would probably have made. They drove off with the young Jewish girl in the back seat of their car and when they left Germany, so did she.
“Travelers in the Third Reich,” by Julia Boyd (Pegasus)
While there have been countless books written about