Out of the Darkness

The Germans, 1942-2022

De: Frank Trentmann

Narrado por: Patty Nieman

#1 Most Important Political Book of 2023, Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)

A Best Book of 2023, The Telegraph (Great Britain)

A gripping and nuanced history of the German people from World War II to the war in Ukraine, including revealing new primary source material on Germany's transformation

In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, morally and materially. Its citizens stood condemned by history, responsible for a horrifying genocide and war of extermination. But by the end of Angela Merkel’s tenure as chancellor in 2021, Germany looked like the moral voice of Europe, welcoming more than one million refugees, holding together the tenuous threads of the European Union, and making military restraint the center of its foreign policy. At the same time, Germany's rigid fiscal discipline and energy deals with Vladimir Putin have cast a shadow over the present. Innumerable scholars have asked how Germany could have degenerated from a nation of scientists, poets, and philosophers into one responsible for genocide. This book raises another vital question: How did a nation whose past has been marked by mass murder, a people who cheered Adolf Hitler, reinvent themselves, and how much?

Trentmann tells this dramatic story of the German people from the middle of World War II through the Cold War and the division into East and West to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the struggle to find a place in the world today. This journey is marked by a series of extraordinary moral conflicts: admissions of guilt and shame vying with immediate economic concerns; restitution for some but not others; tolerance versus racism; compassion versus complicity. Through a range of voices—German soldiers and German Jews; displaced persons in limbo; East German women and shopkeepers angry about energy shortages; opponents and supporters of nuclear power; volunteers helping migrants and refugees, and right-wing populists attacking them—Trentmann paints a remarkable and surprising portrait spanning eighty years of the conflicted people at the center of Europe, showing how the Germans became who they are today.

*Includes a downloadable PDF of a key visual aid referred to in the book

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2024 Frank Trentmann (P)2024 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Never dull...the moral remaking of Germany is a complicated tale...[and] a tale that Mr. Trentmann is well placed to tell... [a] vast, engrossing history."—Ian Brunskill, The Wall Street Journal

"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

“Give[s] a deep insight into how Germany and its people grappled with questions of guilt and identity....navigates complex issues like self-pity, denazification, immigration, reunification and military intervention with refreshing clarity. This book couldn’t be more timely.”—BBC History Magazine, Katja Hoyer

A very long book

The author has great faith in futuristic predictions. Believing all the doomsday predictions about climate change that are challenged by other scientists. I can’t believe that I stuck with this book. I’m going to Germany this summer and I hoped for some insights. I was disappointed.