Why were the United States and its Western Allies so lenient after the most atrocious war of all times? Out of Hitler's Shadow answers this question, and considers why the Allies concluded that imposing unrealistic financial conditions on a defeated country would do more harm than good. The destruction left by Nazi Germany was horrendous. The occupied countries had been ravaged and plundered, millions of people murdered, cities laid in ashes. There was every reason to make the defeated Germans pay for 'Hitler's debt' as The New York Times called the gigantic damage inflicted. But whereas the...