Attempts to outline a theory linking defining experiences of "ordinary Germans" who came of age in the first half of the 20th century and their children who came of age in the second half. Distinctions are drawn between Nazism's founding fathers born at the close of the 19th century whose attitudes were largely shaped by the Treaty of Versailles; those born between 1901 and 1914, the "generation of perpetrators"; those born between 1915 and 1925 who supplied much of the staffing of the concentration camps; and subsequent generations. The generation born around 1968 felt vicitmised by their parents' silence and determined to learn for themselves the dark truths of the Nazi era.