In 1945 Germany lay in ruins morally and materially. The German people stood condemned by
history responsible for a horrifying genocide and a war of extermination. But by 2015 Germany
looked to many to be the moral voice of Europe welcoming almost one million refugees. At the
same time it pursued a controversially rigid fiscal discipline and made energy deals with a
dictator. Many people have asked how Germany descended into the darkness of the Nazis but this
book asks another vital question: how and how far have the Germans since reinvented
themselves?Trentmann tells 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 reunited nation's search for a place in the world. Their journey is marked by
extraordinary moral struggles: guilt shame and limited amends wealth versus welfare
tolerance versus racism compassion and complicity. Through a range of voices - German soldiers
and German Jews environmentalists and coal miners families and churches volunteers migrants
and populists - Trentmann paints a remarkable and surprising portrait over 80 years of the
conflicted people at the centre of Europe.
