The villagers of Oberammergau in southern Bavaria have performed a passion play every decade since the middle of the seventeenth century. Although other villages in the area perform similar plays, Oberammergau's skilful exploitation of the tourist trade has made its performances an international attraction, which continues to draw world-wide audiences. The tradition of Catholic devotional piety is deeply-rooted. But in the 1930s it was challenged by the rise of the Nazi party's racist and folkish ideology, attempting to displace such backward-looking relics of religious provincialism. Many villagers were captivated by the Nazis' anti-communist and antisemitic propaganda or seduced by the promises of improved economic conditions. Many were misled, especially after the signing of the Concordat with the Vatican in July 1933, into thinking that they could be both good Catholics and good Nazis. They successfully gained Hitler's support and attendance at the 1934 performances. But thereafter conflict increased between the villagers' long-held beliefs and the Nazis' totalitarian control measures. Waddy's thoroughly researched study of the subsequent dilemmas and confrontations steers a delicate line between praise for the villagers' devotion to their passion play and its values, and condemnation for the compromises that they made in response to Nazi pressures, including their failure to oppose Nazi crimes. She does not evaluate the play itself, with its undoubted anti-Jewish text, nor comment on the very amateur acting of the assembled peasantry. But her detailed reconstruction of village life, based on extensive use of local sources, provides an excellent picture of how the villagers, especially their leaders, were inoculated by their tradition against the worst excesses of the Third Reich. Oberammergau never became a Nazi stronghold, even though its officials had to operate in an increasingly hostile context of suspicion and denigration. The passion play was performed only once under Nazi auspices. But the tradition was strong enough for it to be revived in 1950, despite all the violence, hardships and disruptions of the 1940s. The Nazi episode was short-lived. Waddy's sympathetic account of the villagers' struggles to uphold their historic legacy against the onslaught of vindictive state power testifies to both the perseverance as well as to the shortcomings of this rural Catholic community in those turbulent times.