For decades, the Holocaust has rightly occupied a central place in our understanding of history. Yet there is a less explored facet of World War II—the personal experiences of the soldiers who fought on the German side. The Cursed Generation fills this gap, offering a nuanced perspective that challenges sweeping generalizations.
Germany’s culture of remembrance struggles to separate Nazis from Wehrmacht soldiers, silencing many conversations about the latter’s experiences. This fear of misjudgment has long affected the entire culture of remembrance in the country.

In German schools, military history or the everyday lives of people during the war are rarely discussed. As a result, few Germans today can imagine what it was like to be shot down in a fighter plane and drift alone in the Mediterranean. They do not know how their fathers and grandfathers endured the torturous heat of Africa or the unbearable cold and hunger in the cauldron of Stalingrad. Can we continue to make sweeping condemnations when we learn of the suffering inflicted on German soldiers by Bloody Sunday in Bromberg, the Rhine meadow camps, or the carnage of D-Day and the Battle of All Souls?
This book aims to correct the one-dimensional portrayal of German soldiers as emotionless villains. Through exclusive interviews with 13 eyewitnesses who served on various fronts, the soldiers recount their struggles, brutal battles, and moments of camaraderie and hope. They speak candidly about their childhoods in the Third Reich, what they knew and didn’t know about the Holocaust, and their encounters with Allied soldiers. Many never told their stories out of fear and shame, but now, at the end of their lives, they want to set the record straight.

The Cursed Generation is a valuable addition to the historical record, providing a better understanding of the experiences of German soldiers in World War II without minimizing the crimes of the Nazi regime.

For more than five years, German historian Christian Hardinghaus professionally interviewed more than 100 contemporary witnesses to World War II with the utmost historical accuracy, without embellishment or moralizing.
The book was first published in 2020 and is one of the bestselling contemporary witness books on the German market. With this English edition, the stories will reach the whole world. This was the wish of the eyewitnesses, almost all of whom have since passed away. In this new edition, we invite you to listen to their voices.

Let us learn from them, understand them, and remember them—not to condemn, but to understand the full range of human experience during the most brutal war in history.