In 1926 at the age of twenty a trainee dentist called Bruno Langbehn joined the Nazi party.
Growing up in a Germany that was impoverished and humiliated by the defeat of the First World
War and surrounded by a fiercely military environment Bruno was one of the first young men to
sign up. And as the party rose to power he was there every step of the way. Eventually his
loyalty was rewarded with a high-ranking position in Hitler's dreaded SS the elite security
service charged with sending Germany's 'racially impure' to the death camps. For fifty years
after the end of the Second World War his family kept this horrifying secret until his British
grandson Martin Davidson uncovered the truth. Drawing on an astonishing cache of personal
documents Davidson retraces Bruno's journey from disillusioned adolescent to SS Officer to
mysterious grandfather. In this extraordinary account he tries to understand how Langbehn and
millions of others like him were seduced by Hitler's regime and attempts to come to terms with
this devastating revelation.
