The untold history of the British occupation of Germany, told through the eyes of the people who were there. In the spring of 1945, a British civilian and military force arrived in northwestern Germany, the former industrial heartland of a defeated nation. They were tasked with building democracy from the ruins of Hitler’s Reich, and ‘winning the peace’ by eradicating Nazism from German hearts and minds.

Using a battery of source materials – from newspaper reports to feature films, and from declassified Foreign Office documents to interviews with veterans – Daniel Cowling presents a vivid narrative of the four years of the British occupation. He explores the day-to-day experiences of the Britons who worked for the Control Commission for Germany between 1945 and 1949 and who soon found themselves on the front line of the Cold War, as irreconcilable tensions divided Europe between East and West.