Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This vivid account by historian Ullrich (Hitler: Downfall) renders the death throes of the Third Reich in riveting detail. Beginning with Hitler's suicide on Apr. 30, 1945, and the appointment of Adm. Karl Dönitz as his successor, Ullrich describes Nazi leaders' desperate, delusional attempts to "driv a wedge" between the Soviet Union and its Western Allies by negotiating separate peace agreements. Political and military collapse is intertwined with grim vignettes of a country in chaos, as suicides rates surged and starving Berliners ate horse meat to survive. Drawing on diaries, military records, and memoirs, Ullrich describes how Hitler's underlings suddenly became "autonomously thinking and acting people again," and details future East German leader Walter Ulbricht's arrival from Moscow and future West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer's appointment as mayor of Cologne. Meanwhile, horror stories emerging from the concentration camps reinforced the sensation that, in the words of one political prisoner, "the thick curtain drawn across in the past twelve years had finally come down, openly revealing all the terrible things that had gone on behind it." This immersive and often disturbing chronicle brilliantly evokes a surreal moment in history that gave "the impression of apocalypse on the one hand and of a new beginning on the other." Illus. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
German journalist and historian Ullrich (Hitler: A Biography) examines the chaotic week between Adolf Hitler's death on April 30, 1945, and Nazi Germany's Second World War surrender on May 7--8. Ullrich relates that after April 30, admiral Karl Dönitz, Hitler's successor as head of state, fought on for several days, to enable German soldiers and civilians to escape the invading Soviet army and instead surrender to the Western Allied powers (Britain, France, and the United States). Ullrich provides a sweeping view of Germany's collapse: he documents the regime's last-minute power struggles, sexual violence and plundering inflicted by the Soviet army, death marches and massacres of prisoners of war and forced laborers by diehard Nazis, and brutal sieges and battles. Most intriguingly, he recounts the formation of postwar German leadership. Even as the Nazi regime was disintegrating, liberal democratic parties were reemerging in West Germany under the leadership of Konrad Adenauer and Kurt Schumacher. Simultaneously, the Soviet occupation of Berlin permitted the triumphant return of exiled German Communists like Walter Ulbricht. Less magisterial than Ullrich's two-volume Hitler biography, this slimmer work is still expertly researched and written. VERDICT Ullrich offers little new information or critical insights, but his book delivers to historians of all stripes a lean and perceptive survey of the last week of the Third Reich.--Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The author of an excellent two-volume biography of Hitler chronicles the demise of the Nazi regime. The week between Hitler's suicide, on April 30, and Germany's unconditional surrender, on May 7 and 8, 1945, is often referred to as Germany's "zero hour." As German historian Ullrich writes, that short period represented a "profound caesura" between the end of Nazi rule and the beginning of whatever would come next. "Amid the exhaustion and bitterness," he writes, "and despite the general lack of self-blame concerning the past, many Germans felt reinvigorated, almost euphoric, and ready to start over." The author delivers a richly textured day-by-day account of that week in Germany and in parts of German-occupied Europe. On the morning of May 1, fighting continued in Berlin. A day later, Germany's Army Group C surrendered in Italy. Throughout the book, Ullrich strains to encompass not just the political and military currents, but quotidian details, as well--e.g., that starving Berlin residents carved up dead horses on the street. The author excels in those smaller, more tightly focused moments, where his storytelling abilities are on full display. He relied on diaries, memoirs, and letters, among other sources, to inform his account, which is deeply researched without feeling weighed down. However, Ullrich's descriptions of various political or military meetings sometimes feel onerous, as he lists the name and rank of every person present. These details might be crucial to a wider historical reckoning, but nonscholars may get bogged down. Ullrich can be uneven in his coverage, too, as when he describes the end of the war in the Netherlands but not in, say, England or France. Though his latest book is by no means comprehensive, it's still a vital and often vibrant account of eight days when people all across Europe were suspended in confusion and chaos. Strongly written and deeply researched, Ullrich's account only suffers from an occasional surfeit of detail. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
