A historian seeks to answer “What created Hitler’s Germany?” by examining personal stories and first-hand accounts of post-World War I German families.

Germany’s defeat in the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles that followed were national disasters, with far-reaching consequences not just for the country but for the world itself.

Weaving the stories of three German families from the beginning of Germany’s territorial aspirations of the First World War to the shattered dream of a thousand-year Reich in the Second World War, Tim Heath’s rich narrative explores a multitude of rare and untapped resources to explore the darkest recesses of German social and military history.

Creating Hitler’s Germany presents a nation’s journey not only through everyday life and war, but through its own conscience, pain, and inevitable search for some form of absolution from its past. It is real, painful, and incredibly human—an essential history to further understand the mind-set of Germany during the most tumultuous years of the nation’s history.