The Second World War was a German war like no other. The Nazi regime, having started the conflict, turned it into the most horrific war in European history. Yet we still do not know what Germans thought they were fighting for and how they experienced the war. This book looks at how the German people experienced the Second World War.

As early as 1941, Allied victory in World War II seemed all but assured. How and why, then, did the Germans prolong the barbaric conflict for three and a half more years?

In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of primary source materials-personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence-to answer this question. He offers an unprecedented portrait of wartime Germany, bringing the hopes and expectations of the German people-from infantrymen and tank commanders on the Eastern front to civilians on the home front-to vivid...