The shocking true story of the German monarchy's collaboration with the Nazis - already a
best-seller in Germany now in English for the first time **AWARDED THE GERMAN NON-FICTION
PRIZE 2022** 'Malinowksi's work is a near-masterpiece relating a story not synthesised in
this way before and about which any number of self-serving myths exist' - Simon Heffer The
Telegraph 'Stephan Malinowski's brilliant book strikes a balance between the forensic
analysis of individual behaviour and a new understanding of how the toxic political culture of
a defeated monarchy helped to disrupt democracy in Germany' - Christopher Clark The
disappearance of the Hohenzollern family from the history of Germany in November 1918 as the
Kaiser fled into Dutch exile is one of the most startling rapid instances of a once
all-powerful royal family becoming almost overnight irrelevant and marginal. Except this is not
exactly what happened. Stephan Malinowski's German bestseller is an extraordinary work of
recovery. It suited both the Weimar Republic and then the Third Reich to view the Hohenzollerns
with contempt and yet the royal family's hatred of the former and approval of the latter were
for millions of Germans a significant factor in their own view of their country and its
government. With forensic and often shocking detail Malinowski shows that far from being
ridiculous marginal figures the Hohenzollerns lay at the heart of Germany's ongoing nightmare.
Despite formally losing power the members of the royal family remained prominent
catastrophically allowing many other conservative Germans to stay distanced from the new
republic and to eventually betray conservative traditions and values. Battered from both left
and right the Republic collapsed in 1933 in part because conservative forces fearful of both
Communism and Fascism had abandoned their own principles just as much as the leading members
of former royal family had who were themselves beguiled by and fooled by Hitler. This is an
important and shocking book as well as a devastating picture of an inadequate and trivial
royal family painfully underequipped to fulfil its role.
