Uwe Timm was born in Germany in 1940. Just three years later his brother, Karl-Heinz, who was sixteen years his senior and a sapper in the elite SS Death’s Head Division, was killed. His notebook was returned to the family, and the last entry read: ‘I close my diary here because I don’t see any point in recording the cruel things that sometimes happen.’ When Timm decided to write this astonishing memoir, he feared the possibility that his brother’s unit had taken part in the shooting of civilians and Jews. Yet he wanted to piece together his brother’s experience, and also that of his nation, which once considered the qualities of an SS man so exemplary. As Timm unleashes his memories of this devastating time, he also pinpoints the questions that his parents’ generation seemed unable to face, and offers new insights into the impact of the war on ordinary Germans.