MAIN IDEA:

The main idea of this book is not just to provide a very detailed history of Germany from 1942 to 2022 but to concentrate on the moral and psychological remaking of Germany from a nation of Nazis into a nation of seemingly docile environmentalists barely capable of defending themselves from such aggressors as Putin’s Russia. There was a huge moral change in German attitudes toward themselves and their place in the world. In the author’s words:” It is my ambition to unpack and explain its complexity,”

MY TAKE ON IT:

In my view, the author’s approach to history as a morality tale is somewhat interesting but not very relevant to explaining what happened and why. The bottom line is that people are basically looking for two things: to have a good life and feel good about themselves. The difference between Germany in the 1930s and Germany in the 2020s comes from the change in understanding of the world, themselves, and human evolution. This understanding moved from the notion of races fighting for survival and prosperity that could be achieved only at the expense of others and, therefore, requires conquest and subjugating these others to the notion of the world of equals, both genetically and culturally, in which prosperity is achieved via accommodation with others and constant search for win-win settlement. In the framework of the former notion, feeling good about oneself comes from racial superiority over others and being a reliable part of the hierarchically structured nation of supermen. In contrast, in the framework of the latter notion, it comes from the ability to accept others with their habits and cultures as equal and comply with whatever requirements produced by the elite of experts who know better how everybody must live.  

The interesting part of this narrative is that it demonstrates that, as with any other paradigms, these notions do not change in the minds and hearts of the same individuals. It takes the change of generations when the new generation is raised with the new notion after the old notion proves its ineffectiveness. In Germany’s case, as a result of defeat at war, the old ideology was severely suppressed. In other words, the old Nazis of 1920 died out in the 1990s, still remaining Nazis, but quietly so, while being unable to raise a new generation of Nazis. It is also interesting how it worked differently in semi-capitalist West Germany and communist East Germany.

Finally, we are watching how the second notion of equality of everything and everybody, with the expert elite deciding everything for everybody, comes to ideological and material bankruptcy, similar to the bankruptcy of the old notion of racial superiority/inferiority. Hopefully, something new and more adequate to the needs of human nature will come out of this ongoing cataclysm.