Aftermath

Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich

De: Harald Jähner, Shaun Whiteside - translator

Narrado por: Sam Peter Jackson

Brought to you by Penguin.

***SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2021***

Germany, 1945: a country in ruins. Cities have been reduced to rubble and more than half of the population are where they do not belong or do not want to be. How can a functioning society ever emerge from this chaos?

In bombed-out Berlin, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, journalist and member of the Nazi resistance, warms herself by a makeshift stove and records in her diary how a frenzy of expectation and industriousness grips the city. The Americans send Hans Habe, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and US army soldier, to the frontline of psychological warfare - tasked with establishing a newspaper empire capable of remoulding the minds of the Germans. The philosopher Hannah Arendt returns to the country she fled to find a population gripped by a manic loquaciousness, but faces a deafening wall of silence at the mention of the Holocaust.

Aftermath is a nuanced panorama of a nation undergoing monumental change. 1945 to 1955 was a raw, wild decade poised between two eras that proved decisive for Germany's future - and one starkly different to how most of us imagine it today. Featuring black and white photographs and posters from post-war Germany - some beautiful, some revelatory, some shocking - Aftermath evokes an immersive portrait of a society corrupted, demoralised and freed - all at the same time.

'Magisterial, fascinating, humane - a brilliant book of the greatest importance and achievement' PHILIPPE SANDS

'Absolutely extraordinary. Every page stops you dead with insight and revelation' JAMES HAWES

'For those who want to understand the Germans, Aftermath is essential reading. Anyone with even the slightest interest in history and the human condition should read this book' JULIA BOYD

© Harald Jähner 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Reseñas de la Crítica

Exemplary [and] important... This is the kind of book few writers possess the clarity of vision to write

A masterpiece

Magnificent... There are great lessons in the nature of humanity to be learnt here (Rupert Christiansen)

Jähner is masterly in telling the tragic, despicable, comedic and uplifting stories of those who were there as he takes his readers on a fascinating tour through rubble-strewn postwar Germany

Thought-provoking... Jähner's unflinching account is a reminder that historical truths are rarely simple and always nuanced

Magisterial, fascinating, humane - a brilliant book of the greatest importance and achievement

I thought I knew the essential story of Germany's immediate post-war years. This book brilliantly adds to, indeed changes, my understanding. One of the best historians and authors of contemporary Germany, Jähner paints an absorbing, human and surprising picture

This panoramic journey through Germany in the ruins of the Third Reich is unforgettably thought-provoking [and] intensely moving

A reminder that the German experience will always stand apart

An extraordinary book of breathtaking scholarship. Jähner shines a light on a dark and almost forgotten period of German history to find it pulsating with life