Broken Lives: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the 20th Century Hardcover – June 12, 2018

In depth reading and selecting from personal memoirs Jarausch has fashioned an often interesting but monotonous document based on so many personal documents. So much more needs to be heard from ordinary Germans regarding their lives during the Nazi period and beyond. The title Broken Lives directs the reader to some cracks and fissures but the tectonic shifts that created the horrors of the war and the Holocaust seem flattened by the seemingly endless small details of the memoirs. A sad and exhausting read without much illumination.

This work did not disappoint. The author analysis will help you understand why Nazism was accepted and what was its legacy. There was no legacy. Germany today is perhaps the most liberal democracy today. A nation devoted to maintaining not only human rights but a society hoping to redefine the aspects from European Enlightenment thinking.

I was expecting stories of individual families and how they coped with everything that happened in Germany from about 1930 to 1970, but got a summary of all information that the author could obtain from many familiees.

Great Read!

Great book.

It very dry and textbook like and doesn't feel like it's talking about people's lives, in the way that I'd hoped. It's facts, and mentions, but not stories. I prefer a book called "My Opposition" that is only one couple's story, which I expected to be less compelling than this book of 6 dozen people. But one family's story told well, is way more enlightening and engaging to me than this book. To hear the specifics of how tiny slights could get you in trouble and the immense peer pressure really helps to explain what the common German was thinking or NOT thinking, doing or NOT doing. IT's not a bad purchase, but you'll have to buy something else to go along with it if you're really trying to understand the German bystander syndrome.

I purchased this book based on good reviews. I was not disappointed, the book really does go into detail about just how Germans lived through the tumultuous century. Great testament to Konrad, who has researched this material well. A good read for anyone looking to purchase this book.