1945 was the most pivotal year in Germany's modern history. As World War II drew to a devastating and violent close, the German people were confronted simultaneously with making sense of the horrors just passed and finding the strength and hope to move forward and rebuild. Richard Bessel offers a pr[...]

The essays presented here aim to shed light on familiar topics - the role of political violence, the German view of Hitler, and also upon less well-known aspects of life in the Third Reich, such as village life, the treatment of "social outcasts", and the Germans' retrospective view.[...]