The new book by the famous historian Konstantin Zalessky is a kind of “history in the faces” of the German state, starting from 1870 with the unification of Germany into the Second Reich and ending with 1945 with the fall of the Third Reich. If the military leaders of Nazi Germany are more or less known to a wide range of readers, then representatives of the military elite of the Second Reich, the Weimar Republic and the period of the First World War are practically unknown to us. This book fills this gap. It is equipped with unique illustrative material. Many biographies are published in Russian for the first time.