This memoir begins in 1914 when the family summer holiday is cut short by the outbreak of war, and ends with Hitler's assumption of power in 1933. It is a portrait of the author and his own generation in Germany, those born between 1900 and 1910, and explains through his own experiences and those of his friends how that generation found Hitler irresistible. The book was written in 1939 but never published. The manuscript was found in 1999, hidden in a chest of drawers, by the author's son, after his father had died. An unforgettable memoir of life in Germany during the rise of the Nazis, a mesmerising study of the way a generation of Germans surrendered to Hitler' Robert McCrum, Observer 'This is a short, stabbing, brilliant book' Max Hastings, Sunday Telegraph.