Out of the darkness The Germans, 1942-2022

In this searching chronicle of post-WWII Germany, University of London historian Trentmann (Empire of Things) portrays the past 80 years as a series of deep but not always consistent moral improvements. Though some Germans acknowledged culpability for the Holocaust, the country failed to compensate most victims and let many perpetrators off the hook. East Germans spent decades subject to a tyrannical communist surveillance state that implicated many of them in betrayal, while West German democracy was slow to extend rights to women, gay people, and the disabled. Post-unification, the country's prosperous economy underwrote foreign aid programs but also a heedless consumerism, while patchy social-welfare systems left some workers impoverished. In recent decades, Germany pioneered environmentalism and green politics but made slow progress in decarbonization, and brought in waves of migrants as guest workers but, by treating them as permanent aliens, spurred resurgent far-right xenophobia. Trentmann's sweeping narrative is grounded in vivid snapshots of moments when the nation's ethical heel-turns were brought into sharp relief, including public outrage over a former SS officer accused in the 1950s of wartime mass executions insisting he was just following orders, and an East German peace activist divorcing her husband in the 1980s when the opening of state archives revealed he had been reporting on her to the Stasi. The result is a penetrating and immersive look at a society attempting, if sometimes failing, to morally right itself. (Feb.)

A magisterial history of Germany over the last 80 years. A shambles in 1945, Germany now dominates the European Union. Nearly 800 pages on how this happened may seem excessive, but Trentmann, author of Empire of Things and Free Trade Nation, handles his material with aplomb. He emphasizes that the Nazis enjoyed broad support, even among poor German citizens, which withered during the disastrous years after 1942. Some Germans objected to the persecution of Jews within Germany, and many learned from family members serving abroad that the Nazis were committing atrocities. Although the horror of Nazi mass murder stunned the Allies after 1945, Germans were preoccupied with their own problems, including homelessness, starvation, and millions of German refugees expelled from former provinces and Eastern Europe. In the aftermath of World War II, many Germans rejected collective guilt for the war's destruction, and most were stunned when Konrad Adenauer (chancellor from 1949 to 1963) pushed through massive reparations to Israel and to Jewish refugees. This was effective for reestablishing Germany's global standing but it also got the country "off the hook of paying reparations for the war itself." In long, penetrating chapters, the author focuses more on people than politics, examining the economic miracle of the 1950s and '60s, how younger Germans began confronting their parents' hypocrisy, and the semidystopia of East Germany, whose collapse opened the way for the united nation's economic dominance. The explanation that this resulted from German thrift, organization, and hard work does not survive Trentmann's gimlet eye. In a thoughtful epilogue, the author summarizes the decades of "moral and material regeneration" that produced a resilient people who have fended off recent crises, but he refuses to predict the outcome of other situations, including the disturbing rise in jingoistic, racist, and anti-democratic movements. Fascinating insights on how a country of poets, philosophers, and scientists emerged from totalitarianism and genocide. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.