In 1933 Germany became a dictatorship under the Great War veteran Adolf Hitler. He pulled the country out of depression and set it to work, reducing unemployment by undertaking extensive public works and building the first autoroutes in the world. He then resumed conscription and rearmament. All opposition had been eliminated and all power centred in that one man, whose boasted promise was a German Empire that would last ‘a Thousand Years’.

The author was born in 1935. Ten years later millions had died, much of the continent lay in ruins, his country was shamed and the ‘thousand years’ came to a fiery end.

Others experienced worse, but for a ten-year-old with explosions all about him and with the world seeming to be burning the war made a vivid impression. His Westphalian village consisted largely of traditional farms and homesteads built of wattle and daub–often still shared by livestock. Most of the male population had been called up to fight Hitler’s wars and foreigners made up much of the workforce. General Patton’s Third Army lit up the village with phosphor grenades from several mountains away. The world seemed to be coming to an end.