The Germanic tribes conquered and settled in the land of the Western Roman Empire between AD 400 and 600. They spread over Europe and North Africa, absorbing military, political and social customs from the Romans into their own cultures. Malcolm Todd traces the development of the Goths, Vandals, Suebi, Franks, Alamanni, Burgundians Lombards and other tribes from late pre-history to the period of migration, and views their conquest of the Western Empire not as an abrupt transition but as part of a continuum. The author makes use of archaeological and literary sources to trace the ethnogenesis and early history of the Germanic people. This subject has been neglected by historians or, in the case of the Nazis, wilfully distorted.