The end of World War II brought confusion, deprivation, despair, and oc cupation to Nazi Germany. In an insignificant East German farming village, the days that led up to Hitler’s demise were grueling for ten-year-old Fritz and his family. His grandfather—as head of the town’s Nazi Party Farmer’s Asso ciation—and Oma refused to flee as the Russians drew near. His mother, sis ter, and the hired hand, Lech, expected the Russians would bring liberation. No one expected what really transpired. Schröder’s brutal honesty about postwar plunder, imprisonment, death, and despair is a perspective seldom found in children’s books. lmp