ABSTRACT
In Germany, however, after six peacetime years of Nazi rule, while recovery from the depression and the quest for autarky had perhaps brought benefit to some urban workers, it was inflicting severe pressure on rural society. By the 1930s, modern German society, in and around towns and cities, was both atomized and deeply divided, with the newer collective forms of industrial society dissolving under pressure of economic crisis. If agriculture continued to be structured largely on traditional, pre-modern lines in Wurttemberg during the interwar years, this was reflected in the maintenance of the village community as the most important basic unit of rural society. For many rural dwellers, the Nazi system in peacetime had brought unexpected and unwelcome change, with inroads into traditional loyalties and practices and the establishment of networks of control to try to enforce observance of new normative requirements.
