Paul L.,

"Much of this upheaval can be linked to the massive reparations requirements which the French insisted upon at Versaillles. This burden, without doubt, contributed to the rise of Nazism and hence the Second World War." - PL

Certainly, the histographies you paint are true. I have read Harvard Business Review from the period. Reparations were hurting Germany.

Yet, this is a macro history, of which, most Western educated people would be aware. In a complementary manner, what was interesting about Allen's micro bottom-up review; is the study demostrates how the NAZIs worked on localised fears and prejudices, as did Hanson.

Despite, the Great Depression,in Germany, there was a middle class with savings, whom were not wandering around in a Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, fashion. Herein, much of said middle class were in rural communities tethered to the Farmer of Framers themselves. These people were elitest, scared and gullible.

http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/133b/07Projects/Allen65AAlire073.htm

[I recognize the critiqie by the URL author., Andrew Alire. Yet, at the same time, see the general process working in a rural community.]

Thalburg is merely illustrative of the bigger picture. There were a many Thalburgs in Weimar Germany.

The actual book is an interesting read and more comprehensively addresses the sociologies I address within this thread.

My wife's family are coutry-folk, and, here; I see many similarities between the psyche of the contemporary Aussie farmer and community and the German town of Thalburg c. 1930s. When Hanson visited regional centres in NSW's Northern Table Lands, warning of the Asian invasion, more than half the adult population would attend. She would take her audience back to the 1950s as did the NAZIs its audiences back before WWI. Return-of or re-establishment, homogeneity, danger and avoidance were the cries of the Party.

Cheers.

- PaulL?

PaulL? Ginx?