Review by Choice Review
Having explored nearly every influential military officer, weapon, tactic, and act of courage during WW II, only recently are historians turning to the internal collapse of the enemy. This excellent volume by the late German postwar author and archivist Kempowski is an outstanding effort (in addition to Stephen G. Fritz's Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich, 2004). Readers are mesmerized by a slow-motion train wreck through the unvarnished letters and diary entries of participants between April 20 and May 8, 1945. Kempowski has culled entries encompassing bewildered newly liberated concentration camp inmates, defiant and boastful predictions of Nazi success, deep anxiety about the approaching Red Army, SS threats against "defeatists," lists of suicides, occasional relief at good treatment by the new occupiers, belated realizations by former die-hard Nazis of the benefits of democracy, and heart-breaking letters between separated lovers. Interspersed are statements by the major players: Churchill, Roosevelt, Mussolini, Goebbels, and Hitler. Kempowski's "collective diary" to rescue "the voices of the dead"--a striking, often depressing, insight into the slow collapse of the Third Reich from the inside--is destined to be a classic that will provide fertile ground for generations of future scholars. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. --Arnold Paul Krammer, Texas A&M University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The aptly named Swansong 1945 is a collection of diary entries covering 4 particular days in the final 18 days of WWII, beginning with April 20, Hitler's birthday, through the German surrender. This is the final volume of Kempowski's multivolume project of chronicling brief segments of the war by way of autobiographical sources. Of the many voices captured in Swansong, there are farmers, soldiers, actors, writers, doctors, POWs, Third Reich officials, U.S. lieutenants, the Axis and Allies leaders themselves, and displaced refugees from virtually every country in Europe, relocating, listening to the radio, staying alive, or wishing to die. Although it's certainly a treasure that such a collection is being published in the U.S., readers might have difficulty navigating the text. Most of the people quoted are not introduced (whether they be farmers or princesses). Though German or European readers might be more familiar with national icons like Thea Sternheim, whose diary recounting the war found popularity in Germany; prominent philosopher Ernst Junger; the Jewish-German publisher Alfred Kantorowicz; composer Richard Strauss the reader will likely be fluttering from book to a reputable encyclopedia it is an experience reminiscent of reading Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos. It's also difficult to adjust to the constant skipping between entries (most are not more than a few paragraphs). Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of the entries offer powerful glimpses into otherwise lost history (a packed church service for officers at Dachau, a doctor unpacking train cars of horrifically injured people, a soldier afraid to oppose Hitler's final rallying cry), all a testament to the absolute wreckage in the wake of the war. The collection is a kaleidoscope of voices, revealing struggle of all kinds, but probably most rewarding for readers with advanced knowledge of the war.--Grant, Sarah Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Kempowski (1929-2007), a German novelist and historian, presents a riveting history of the final days of WWII from a predominantly German perspective. Formally, the work is a collage of personal experiences extracted primarily from diaries (of which 10 volumes exist, this being the fourth and the first in English translation), and it's organized by date: four days in late April and May 1945. Hundreds of short diary excerpts relate a variety of experiences on each date, and Kempowski's careful selection and sequencing convey the horror, misery, irony, and intensity of living through the last month of war in Germany. The work is noteworthy not just for its unique first-person perspective, but also for its breadth and depth: Hitler's last moments in his bunker, Stalin's daughter celebrating victory, the rape of German women by Russian soldiers and others, and the brutal conditions in the concentration camps. A general knowledge of European geography and the history of the fall of Germany in 1945 is assumed. Kempowski evenhandedly presents the Germans as both perpetrators and victims in this essential volume on the ravages of WWII. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Historians usually spend more time analyzing the origins, course, and consequences of war, rather than scrutinizing the moment when a conflict ends. German novelist Kempowski (d. 2007), who survived the chaotic last days of World War II himself, collates a variety of sources covering the period from Hitler's last birthday (April 20, 1945) through the final surrender (May 9, 1945) in order to document how people experienced the end of the conflagration. Kempowski gives voice not only to the powerful, such as Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, but people as diverse as a German refugee from Courland seeking to escape the advancing Red Army and the exhausted Allied soldiers who discovered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. While many of the sources are contemporaneous and as such provide unfiltered images of the war's end, others are postwar reflections. The latter are still important, but there is no editorial context explaining the types of material used. In addition, the casual reader may have trouble following some of the threads, for example Heinrich Himmler's efforts to conclude a separate peace. VERDICT Despite some reservations, these stories are often compelling and the book is recommended for public and academic libraries.-Frederic Krome, Univ. of Cincinnati Clermont Coll. (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
From the absurd to the sublime, and everywhere heartbreaking: a collage of voices from the tail end of the world's conflagration.In 2005, German novelist Kempowski (1929-2007) published this cross section of voices, ordinary and otherwise, commenting on the end of World War II in German as part of a series of compositions largely exploring German guilt for the war. Over 20 years, he collected an astonishing array of autobiographies, letters, diaries and other documents to create a raw, tremendously moving set of reactions to the momentous events of April through May 1945: the lugubrious birthday celebrations of Adolf Hitler on April 20, the Allied liberation, VE-Day, and the very different takes by the international participants on the final signing of Germany's capitulation at Karlshorst, Berlin, on May 8. In the preface, Kempowski notes that he composed this wealth of voices like an imagined Tower of Babel, revealing a similarly teetering longing by frail and inadequate humans for some kind of recognition of or consolation for their experience and suffering. Among dozens of other situations, the author examines German soldiers lying wounded in American hospitals; Joseph Goebbels, the "diabolical seducer," continuing his vituperative radio address, declaring that "Chaos will be tamed!"; the scores of Berliners vulnerable to the retribution of marauding Russians; the prisoners in concentration camps, hanging by the barest thread; Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, persistent in his maddeningly correct accounts until the very last signing ceremony; and Hitler's own final maniacal insistence that the blame of the war lay squarely with the Jews. Kempowki juxtaposes the voices of the poignantly unknown with the famousfrom Thomas Mann eagerly following the movements of the Allied armies into Germany from his home in Los Angeles to Edmund Wilson in London wondering what the "roast duck" on the menu really was (probably crow). A riveting portrait of what Kurt Weill called the "total breakdown of all human dignity," revealed through the bric-a-brac of war-shattered lives. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
