Shortlisted for the 2024 Wolfson History Prize

A Telegraph and Der Spiegel Book of the Year

Sueddeutsche Zeitung's Number One Most Important Political Book of 2023

Die Zeit, ZDF, Deutschlandfunk, taz Number One, Best Non-Fiction Books December 2023 and January 2024

A groundbreaking new history of the people at the center of Europe, from the Second World War to the present. In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, both morally and materially. The German people were condemned by history, responsible for a horrific genocide and a war of extermination. Yet in 2015, Germany appeared to many as the moral voice of Europe, welcoming nearly a million refugees. At the same time, it pursued a controversially strict fiscal discipline and made energy deals with a dictator. Many have wondered how Germany plunged into the darkness of the Nazis, but this book poses another vital question: how and how far have the Germans reinvented themselves since then?

Treadman narrates the dramatic story of the Germans from the middle of the Second World War, through the Cold War and the division into East and West, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the sought-after position of the united nation in the world. Their journey is marked by extraordinary moral struggles: remorse, shame, and limited reparations; wealth versus prosperity; tolerance versus racism; compassion and cooperation. Through a variety of voices - German soldiers and German Jews; environmentalists and coal miners; families and churches; volunteers, immigrants, and populists - Treadman captures a remarkable and astonishing portrait of 80 years of a conflicted people at the center of Europe.

Pages: 880, Dimensions: 13x13cm