The Versailles Treaty which brought peace after the Great War (1914-18) was viewed by Adolf Hitler as humiliating and unjust, leading to his determination to make Germany great again and the Reich judenfrie (rid of the Jews). When he becomes Führer in 1934, his policies affect the families of two German brothers in evermore contrasting ways. Klaus the younger, is married to a Jew and their children a boy and a girl, are therefore Jewish. His brother Wolfgang?s wife like him, is an Aryan and to Hitler and the Nazis, their two blond blue-eyed sons are archetypal German boys to be nurtured by the Hitler Youth to become enthusiastic and loyal Nazis. Meanwhile the Jews and Klaus? family suffer increasing persecution, with the threat of imprisonment in concentration camps and extermination at the hands of the S.S. The two branches of the family become separated by Hitler?s anti-Semitism and the Uncles, Aunts and the four cousins suffer contrasting fates as the events of WW2 unfold. Much research by author Dick Parsons has enabled him to portray this terrible period in European history through the lives of this family of two brothers.
