Lisa Pine, who has written extensively on Nazi society, has carefully chosen for this edited volume contributions by scholars whose work offers a window onto the extent to which the Nazis’ “totalitarian aims and ambitions succeeded in permeating different areas of social and cultural life” (2). The essays examine how the Nazis tried to “coordinate” society and how antisemitism influenced policy, as well as the degree to which Germans conformed to or resisted Nazi aims. Taken as a whole, they reveal that, although the Nazis often introduced policies that were ideologically driven, policy enactment depended on its compatibility with rearmament and war aims and on its reception by the German populace. The essays focus on an array of daily concerns, including access to food, health, and religion and, in so doing, bring us closer to understanding how Germans experienced Nazi society and World War II. The strength of this volume lies not in the presentation of new research, but rather in its juxtaposition of work from a wide variety of areas, as well as in the deeper understanding it offers of the Nazi impact on German society.

One of the Nazis’ central goals was to create a racially based Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) that would eliminate class conflict and strengthen the German nation. Creating such a community required determining who was to belong and who was to be excluded, and the essays in this collection provide new insights into how these boundaries were drawn. As Joan Clinefelter argues in her contribution, art became a “visual manifestation of German identity” and Nazi-approved artists produced images glorifying so-called Aryan body types and denigrating “‘unfit’ outsiders” (187). Clothing too, was specifically designed to identify members of the Volksgemeinschaft, and German women and girls were encouraged to wear traditional dirndls and officially designed uniforms. Yet, when Magda Goebbels rejected the dirndl outright, calling for women to be “stylish, beautiful, and intelligent” (104), policymakers felt compelled to broaden the scope of acceptable female clothing, as Irene Guenther points out, while fashion magazines continued to be available until virtually the end of the war. Furthermore , Jews initially driven out of the fashion industry because they had been deemed racially “degenerate” later produced women's clothing in the ghettos to compensate for wartime shortages.

Nazi policymakers claimed that they wanted to raise the birth rate and improve the health of Germans belonging to the Volksgemeinschaft. Yet, as several essays in this collection reveal, financial exigencies, racial policy, the war, and the response of German citizens undermined these goals. Geoffrey Cocks argues, for example, that “one cannot speak of an improvement in health in Germany under National Socialism” (80), even though the Nazis claimed to be committed to improving the health of the German race and even ran campaigns to promote clean water, physical exercise, and preventative medicine. Because they drove the Jews out of the medical profession and cut health-related funding in order to rearm, mortality rates rose, especially for children. Health levels were also threatened by food shortages that caused near universal weight loss. An exception here, as Nancy Reagin shows, was the availability of luxury foods—for a price. Finally, Jonathan Lewy reveals that the Nazis accepted financial support from the tobacco industry throughout the Third Reich, even while condemning smoking because it threatened the health of the population. Improving the health of Germans and eliminating class differences in the Volksgemeinschaft were among the Nazis’ stated goals, then, but their related policies in this regard were subject to considerable modification when they conflicted with economic and war aims.

Gleichschaltung, or the process of bringing all German society in line with the National Socialist worldview, is another focus of many of the essays in this collection. In her study of tourism, Kirstin Semmens concludes that “Gleichschaltung was not superficial, subtle or gradual. It was relentless and thorough” (133). Jews were driven out of tourism—both as business owners and as tourists—as the Nazis reshaped the tourism industry around their “Strength through Joy” (Kraft durch Freude) vacation travel program, which met with widespread acceptance among the populace. The process of Gleichschaltung was more nuanced in the world of sports, which the Nazis viewed as “a vehicle for promoting a strong military and a united community reinforced by Nazi racialist ideas” (162), thus making it a priority to “coordinate” all sports organizations. Yet, as David Imhoff shows, whereas some working-class sports organizations were forcibly dissolved, others survived—even though they did not entirely conform to the Nazi worldview.

The three chapters on religion offer a study in contrasts. Christopher Probst's essay focuses on two prominent Protestant theologians—Theodor Pauls, a professor of religious studies, and Heidelberg pastor Hemann Maas—who used religious doctrine to stake out opposing positions on Nazism and antisemitism: whereas the former supported National Socialism and was consequently rewarded with promotions, the latter spoke out against the regime and was subsequently suspended from church work and sentenced to hard labor during the war. Kevin Spicer traces the relationship between Catholic authorities and the Nazis, which ranged from outright hostility to attempted cooperation under the Concordat, the agreement signed between the Holy See and the German government in July 1933. When cooperation later ended, Catholics turned inward and focused on preserving Catholic life rather than on questioning Nazi racial policy, which “could easily be overlooked or ignored” (255). In his study of the Nazi effort to dechristianize Christmas, Joe Perry argues that Protestants and Catholics were willing to adopt some dechristianized rituals, especially during the war, but did not wholly replace the traditional religious and family-centered holiday. In their exploration of the varied responses of the Christian Churches to National Socialism, these three essays emphasize how seldom either Catholics or Protestants followed the examples of Hermann Maas, Dietrich Boenhoffer, or Clemens von Galen, and thus failed to speak out against National Socialism or antisemitism. Of the meager amount that existed, most church resistance focused on protecting the private lives of Christians.

Life and Times in Nazi Germany brings to light the profound impact the formation of the Volksgemeinschaft, and in particular the policies of Gleichschaltung, had on German society. While some policies—like the so-called Aryanization of society—were relentlessly applied to all areas of life, others, like fashion, health, and sports, were modified or adapted to increase the level of popular compliance. The war ultimately forced everyone to undergo dramatic changes, but, as this volume shows, not all those changes coincided with Nazi intent. The broad selection of essays underscores the fact that, “despite its terror apparatus and vast propaganda machine,” the Nazi regime “did not succeed in persuading the German people into compliance with its ideology entirely” (16). This will be a crucial volume for students of Nazi Germany and twentieth-century German history more generally, as well as an important volume for a wider readership interested in understanding how thoroughly the Nazis penetrated German society.