Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction'I was gripped... [Schwarz] writes from a new generational perspective... I was moved by this book' Max Hastings, Sunday TimesDuring the war, Géraldine Schwarz's grandparents were neither heroes nor villains - they just followed the current. Afterwards they wanted to forget, to bury it all under the wreckage of the Third Reich.But decades later, delving through family papers, Géraldine discovers that her grandfather Karl profited from the forced 'Aryanisation' of Jewish businesses - and so she is compelled to investigate her ancestors' past. How guilty were they?Combining generations of family stories with the history of Europe's post-war reckoning, Géraldine asks: how did Germans transform their collective guilt into democratic responsibility? And, given rising populism in Europe today, how can we ensure we learn from history?