On 8th May 1945 Britain, people in the UK and many other countries were rejoicing. Germany had surrendered, and World War Two was over, at least in Europe.

Yet it was not a day of celebration for everyone – for the vanquished Germans, it marked the end of bombings and of Nazi rule. But it was also a time of deprivation and chaos, fear and soul-searching. Millions of ethnic Germans had fled their homes to escape the approaching Red Army.

Lore Wolfson, whose own father grew up under Nazi rule, unearths the stories of ordinary Germans who lived through that extraordinary time. Among them Siegbert Stümpke, a 12-year-old schoolboy who was used as a runner by the German Wehrmacht in the final days of the war; Lore Ehrich, a young mother from East Prussia (now Poland), who had to flee with two small children across a frozen lagoon; Hans Rosenthal, who was Jewish and survived the Holocaust hidden in a Berlin allotment colony; and Melita Maschmann, a Nazi youth leader who took years to acknowledge her share of the responsibility for the crimes committed by the National Socialists.

Extracts from Melita Maschmann’s autobiography, Account Rendered, with kind permission of Plunkett Lake Press