Seeing Hitler's Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich. By Kristin Semmens. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2005. Pp. xiv+263. $74.95. ISBN 1-4039-3914-4.

Abstract

Between the two world wars, Germany was on the move. The slowdown of the Great Depression notwithstanding, more and more Germans took vacations and enjoyed weekend adventures, and when they traveled, they did so to destinations farther and farther away from home. Along the way, they filled up trains, hotels, and youth hostels. And it was very much Germany that Germans wanted to explore, following as they did quite explicit itineraries of the idealized nation. “Seeing Germany,” as Kristin Semmens puts it, was a way of possessing and occupying Germany. This was quite deliberately the case for the hundreds of thousands of visitors who took special trains to Stahlhelm marches, Reichsbanner demonstrations, and, later in the 1930s, the Nuremberg party rallies, for which more than 700 special trains were pressed into service in 1938. “Seeing Germany” was also at the heart of the new tourist practices the Nazis created: the camp experiences of the Hitler Youth and the rural outposts of the Reich Labor Service. Patriotism required an overnight stay.