Germans After the War: How West Germany Managed to Overcome Nazism

How did it happen that a supposedly civilized nation, in just 30 years, unleashed two world wars and ended up in Nazi barbarism? Will Germans be able to fix themselves, become free, and will their neighbors be safe—or are they forever doomed to march along their “special path,” choose dictators, and start conflicts?

These were the questions Europeans and Americans asked in the mid-1940s. Many considered Hitler’s rise to power and Germany’s external aggression inevitable, explaining them as something rooted in the very nature of Germans—their national character. But the Federal Republic of Germany, built on the ruins of the Third Reich, became a calm democratic state—safe for its own citizens and for its neighbors as well. What stood behind that transformation? How did an entire nation change?

Historian Nikolai Vlasov answers these questions. His book is primarily about ordinary people and tells the story of events that influenced the living conditions of West Germans and ultimately allowed Germany to abandon the ideas of dictatorship and national superiority.