National solidarity?

Rates a study of how German people understood, and reacted to, their leaders’ actions in the Second World War

NIGEL JONES The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945 by Nicholas Stargardt In his study of Germany in the final year of Hitler’s war, The End (Penguin, 2011), Sir Ian Kershaw devotes much space to speculating as to why the vast majority of the German people continued to back the terrorist regime that had failed them so disastrously un- til the bitter end. In Nicholas Stargardt’s massive, searching and eye-opening investigation of the wider German population’s attitudes to their rulers and their crimes during the war, the University of Oxford historian attempts to find an answer to this conundrum.

Using an enormous array of sources, including letters sent home by soldiers from the front, trial testimonies, secret diaries and the unvarnished views of more intelligent and self-aware Nazi ministers such as Josef Goebbels and Albert Speer, Stargardt has embroidered a vast tapestry portrait of Germany on its high road to hell.