Description

A Telegraph and Der Spiegel Book of the Year
Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s Number One Most Important Political Book of 2023
Die Zeit, ZDF, Deutschlandfunk, taz Number One, Best Non-Fiction Books December 2023 and January 2024

A groundbreaking new history of the people at the centre of Europe, from the Second World War to today

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.

Publisher Review

'Masterly. Frank Trentmann's wide-ranging, deeply researched, nuanced evaluation of changing German mentalities and moral challenges since the Nazi era is a tour de force.' -- Ian Kershaw In this magisterial book, Frank Trentmann charts how the Germans responded to the moral responsibilities that they faced as perpetrators of a war of annihilation and of the mass murder of the European Jews. Discussing transformations in East and West Germany, Trentmann highlights the trade-offs between moral reorientation and economic reconstruction. Portrayed on a broad canvas, this is a history of post-war Germany for our crisis-ridden times. -- Benjamin Ziemann, author of Hitler's Personal Prisoner: The Life of Martin Niemoeller Frank Trentmann's rich and brilliant Out of the Darkness traces the moral and material history of Germany since the Second World War through the lives of its people. Wonderfully readable and compelling it introduces us to Christian peaceniks, 'red' militarists, frustrated feminists, unappreciated 'guest workers,' and a host of other unexpected and diverse Germans, illuminating the achievements and failures of the nation that emerged from the Third Reich. -- Suzanne L. Marchand, author of Porcelain: A History from the Heart of Europe and Down from Olympus Frank Trentmann's enthralling account of the Germans since 1942 is rooted in a brilliant insight: that the morality Germans invoked in their struggle to make sense of their place in history was never a transcendent standard, but a malleable and contingent substance whose nature was always contested. This fascinating and compelling moral history takes us to the centre of modern Germany's self-understanding, moving elegantly between politics, economics, culture and the private reflections of individuals. -- Christopher Clark