When Margarete Dos moved with her family to Berlin on the eve of World War II, she and her younger brother were blindly ushered into a generation of Hitler Youth. Like countless citizens under Hitler's regime, Margarete struggled to understand what was happening to her country. Later, as a nurse for the German Red Cross, she treated countless young soldiers-recruited in the eleventh hour to fight a losing battle-they would die before her eyes as Allied bombs racked her beloved city. Yet, her deep humanity, intelligence, and passion for life-which sparkles in every sentence of her memoir-carried Margarete through to war's end. But just when she thought the worst was over, and she and her mother were on a train headed to Sweden, they were suddenly rerouted deep into Russia...This powerful account draws back the curtain on a piece of history that has been largely overlooked-the nightmare that millions of German civilians suffered, simply because they were German. That Margarete survived to tell her tale so vividly and courageously is a gift to us all.