Presented by Penguin.

Among the last main stories on the 3rd Reich that remains to be largely untold is that of the extraordinary influx of suicides, carried out not only by much of the Nazi management, but by thousands of ordinary Germans, in the Second World War’s shutting period. A few of these were provoked by terror when confronted with advancing Soviet troops or by personal guilt, but many could not be described in such relatively straightforward terms.

Florian Huber’s remarkable book, a about Guarantee Me You’ll Shoot Yourself: The Downfall of Normal Germans, 1945 bestseller in Germany, confronts this horrible phenomenon. Various other countries have experienced defeat, but not responded just as. What drove whole families, who in many cases had currently withstood years of deprivation, aerial bombing and fatalities in battle, to do this?

Within a brilliantly written, thoughtful and original work, Huber sees the complete project of the 3rd Reich like a sequence of almost overwhelming emotions and scenes for most Germans. He represents some of the key events which designed the period from your First World Battle to the end of the next, showing how the sheer strength, glamour and ferocity of Hitler’s regime swept along large numbers. For over twelve years a relentless and horrible drama formed German life and its sudden end was, for thousands of people, basically impossible to soak up.