The shocking true story of the German monarchy's collaboration with the Nazis - already an
award-winning bestseller in Germany **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.
