Erik is initially a firm supporter of the Nazi regime and serves in the German Army as a medical orderly in the invasions of France and Russia. She becomes a Social Democrat Berlin City Councillor, involved in confronting the Soviets during the 1948 Blockade of Berlin.Įrik von Ulrich - Carla's older brother, he is much more narrow-minded and less liberal than his sister and parents.

She also adopts the girl Rebecca whom she saved. Becoming pregnant, she decides to have the child, cherish and raise him with her husband, Werner Franck and her mother. During the Battle of Berlin Carla witnesses a fourteen-year-old Jewish girl named Rebecca about to be raped by five Red Army soldiers, and in an appalling act of self-sacrifice offers herself to be raped instead. After her father is murdered by the Gestapo for protesting Action T4, she helps her friends- who are German Resistance members- transmit vital battle plans to the Soviet Union. She was rejected for a medical scholarship due to the anti-female policies in Nazi Germany, but takes a job as a nurse in Berlin. The families, spread across four countries, are related to each other, though they themselves aren't often aware of it.Ĭarla von Ulrich - the daughter of Reichstag member Walter von Ulrich and magazine editor Lady Maud Fitzherbert - English aristocrat who had fallen in love with the German nobleman Walter just before WWI and followed her heart against all odds. The novel covers a wide range of world events during the period, including the rise of Nazism, the ascent of Franco in Spain, the short-lived growth of British fascism, Action T4, the Battle of Moscow, the Blitz, the Normandy landings, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the development of the American atom bomb and the Soviet one, the Battle of Berlin and many more. The major characters are often children of the characters who were seen in Fall of Giants. The story follows characters from Germany, Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, who become linked by events leading to World War II, and continues through the war and its immediate aftermath. The story starts in 1933, with the Nazi seizure of power, includes World War II, and concludes in 1949 in the early stages of the Cold War. The novel follows the second generation of those families, born to the main characters of the first novel, Fall of Giants, and is followed by a further generation of those families in the third and final book in the series, Edge of Eternity. Revolving about a family saga that covers the interrelated experiences of American, Russian, German and British families during the 20th century.

It is the second book in the Century Trilogy.

Winter of the World is a historical novel written by the Welsh-born author Ken Follett, published in 2012.

Ken follett century trilogy book 2