UKH

I rather enjoyed this. The daughter of a chap who cycle toured in Austria, Germany and Italy in 1937 has put his snaps online:

http://drmarionb.free.fr/1937CyclingTour/?fbclid=IwAR0WXdiZQF0HG5-cj28XfPIZ...

Great!

But no panniers, luggage strapped directly to the frame, swept back handlebars . . . 

I wonder if they knew it would be another 70 years before an American invented that style of bikepacking.

I enjoyed it too... What a trip.

Really enjoyed looking at those, thanks.  That must have been a huge adventure.

Caption: "Their one and only puncture"

And that's with a lot of gravel roads! 

Fascinating. I wonder what sense people had of what was shortly to come.

Yes, interesting question. It's still a year before the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia or Krystallnacht, and I guess a lot of people are still hoping that peace will prevail.

I recommend Julia Boyd's book Travellers in the Third Reich - it explores this very question (in 400+ pages). It focuses on how, mostly British, travellers to Germany experienced the rise of Nazism in the interwar era. It's based on first hand accounts, so letters, diaries, etc. of those we were there at various points during the interwar era. It's a long, but interesting, read.

She writes that by the end of 1936 it would be near-impossible for any Brit to be ignorant of the Nazi brutalities that were already commonplace, but that many continued to holiday there regardless.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

Frank Smyth’s book about his European holiday (might have been 1938) offers a little insight into this. Not sure how long after the event it was written mind...

Believe Larkin's father used to take the family to holiday there throughout the period. Don't think it was as out of the blue as 1914 but still no-one could've imagined the scale...

What I'd be perhaps even more intrigued by would be when people first started holidaying again post-war, what that was like. Heard stories from family (Dutch) about early 50s Rhine-Ruhr area and apparently it was like the back of the moon. They kept up billboards with murals of idyllic village scenes along the canals, but when you went behind it was all ruins. Tyrol would've been less hit of course, but the atmosphere can't have been normal