<p><b><i>THE TIMES</i> TOP 10 BESTSELLER<br />SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION<br />SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE</b><br /><b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE</b><br /><br /><b>A Book of the Year</b><br /><b><i>The Times </i>* <i>Sunday Times</i> * <i>Telegraph </i>* <i>New Statesman</i> * <i>Financial Times</i> * <i>Irish Independent </i>* <i>Daily Mail</i></b><br /><br /><b>'A masterpiece'</b> <i>SPECTATOR</i><br /><br /><b>'Exemplary [and] important... This is the kind of book few writers possess the clarity of vision to write'</b> MAX HASTINGS,<i> SUNDAY TIMES</i><br /><br /><b>'Magnificent... There are great lessons in the nature of humanity to be learnt here' </b><i>TELEGRAPH</i><br /><br /><br />Germany, 1945: a country in ruins. Cities have been reduced to rubble and more than half of the population are where they do not belong or do not want to be. How can a functioning society ever emerge from this chaos?<br /><br />In bombed-out Berlin, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, journalist and member of the Nazi resistance, warms herself by a makeshift stove and records in her diary how a frenzy of expectation and industriousness grips the city. The Americans send Hans Habe, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and US army soldier, to the frontline of psychological warfare - tasked with establishing a newspaper empire capable of remoulding the minds of the Germans. The philosopher Hannah Arendt returns to the country she fled to find a population gripped by a manic loquaciousness, but faces a deafening wall of silence at the mention of the Holocaust.<br /><br /><i>Aftermath </i>is a nuanced panorama of a nation undergoing monumental change. 1945 to 1955 was a raw, wild decade poised between two eras that proved decisive for Germany's future - and one starkly different to how most of us imagine it today. Featuring black and white photographs and posters from post-war Germany - some beautiful, some revelatory, some shocking - <i>Aftermath </i>evokes an immersive portrait of a society corrupted, demoralised and freed - all at the same time.</p&gt;