The First World War shattered a generation of Europeans. Killing took place on a monumental scale, as whole societies gave their all for their countries. German men who spent their young adulthood in the murderous trenches of the Great War, only to be crushed under the weight of a hostile world, would be senior officers in Hitler’s Wehrmacht, while their sons prepared for a rematch as young soldiers, sailors, and airmen. The harrowing experience of the First World War forged the men who fought the Second World War, so our story starts with that experience.

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