Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022

“This is a story of redemption. It’s a story with a constant moral edge. There is nothing wrong with history taking a moral stance, but there are so many that you’ve got to take about this story. It’s a complicated story of two countries struggling out of the ruins of one, and their eventual reunification. It starts in Nazi Germany with the stories of individuals, illustrating the moral dilemmas of being part of a nation which is doing something utterly evil to some of its own people and to others too. Then there is the utter desolation, the devastation of 1945. Germany was a bit like an alcoholic, it had to reach utter baseness, utter defeat and destruction in order to recognize its problem. Then the next decades, as Trentmann lays them out, are interesting. They are a story of what happens when you, or most of you, have utterly rejected the ideology in which you’ve lived. You’ve painfully reconstructed something which the victors imposed, but which is very different in its embrace of democracy and its obstinate wish to tell truth.” Read more...

The Best History Books of 2024: The Wolfson History Prize

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