This novel depicts life in Nazi Germany using an upper middle class family to provide an inside view of the Hitler regime and of the muddle and madness that led up to it. Deighton tells his story through the lives of two brothers who have shared the bloody horrors of trench life in the First World War, the terrifying yet awesome aspects of a Zeppelin flight to bomb London and then after the Armistice the streetfights in peacetime Berlin. He describes the decade of permissiveness and hyperinflation during which more and more Germans turn to Hitler and his Nazi Party as the only hope for a nation in turmoil. "Winter" then becomes a terrifying and convincing picture of Berlin under the Nazis. At the centre of of events is Paul Winter, for some he is loathsome, for others he is the extreme example of a victim of circumstances - the archetypal 20th century German.