There are several books on the topic of allegedly apolitical Germans (remember being "apolitical" is a political choice, especially in the milieu of National Socialism) that are quite enlightening reads. Nicholas Stargardt's The German War: A Nation Under Arms is a recent survey of German society during wartime and is an excellent introduction to the topic. Peter Fritzsche's Life and Death in the Third Reich explores the often-incomplete intersection of ideology and daily life for Germans not directly under the target of state terror and repression. Michael Wildt approaches the issue of community and collusion in Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft and the Dynamics of Racial Exclusion in which collective violence drew in rank and file Germans into a type of National Socialist community based on violence, either through participation or sanctioning it via silence. Eric Kurlander's Living with Hitler: Liberal Democrats in the Third Reich explores the sometimes problematic relationship Germany's liberals had with a state they despised in private, but could not bring themselves to open resistance.

Finally, three primary sources are valuable windows into the zeitgeist of the period. A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944 is a collection of letters by a Wehrmacht soldier, Willy Peter Reese, who was not very warlike nor very National Socialist, but managed to get caught up in the racial violence and destruction that characterized the Eastern Front. Another collection of letters, those of Dr. Konrad Jarausch, have been translated and collected in Reluctant Accomplice: A Wehrmacht Soldier's Letters from the Eastern Front. This particular books is notable because, Jaurauch's son is one of the more notable historians of modern Germany and his editorial prologue describes hims trying to understand his father's legacy. Finally, the diaries of Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness are fascinating on a number of levels ranging from the linguistics of dictatorship to the experience of everyday life as the screws of the dictatorship tightened as the war situation deteriorated.