1944-45, The End: Hitler's Germany

Being captive in slave and concentration camps, we were puzzled why the Germans starved us at the same time when our strength could have been utilized for the benefit of the German economy. Sine we had no access to a newspaper or radio we had no idea what was going on in the world. But, in fall 1944, in Klettendorf (forced labor camp) we were digging trenches. Local civilians, in deep pall of gloom, were also digging anti-tank ditches. This made us realize that Germans were losing the war. Otherwise there wouldn't be a need to put up barriers against incoming tanks, in Germany's heartland. We were hoping then that the war was coming to an end, and thus end our suffering. Since liberation, I have always been wondering why the Nazi Guards didn't murder us, the 600 inmates, before fleeing our camp Waldenburg. In THE END I found many answers and clarifications for which I am grateful to Ian Kershaw, the author. Revealing letters from ordinary German soldiers indicate a range of attitudes among them. It reminds me from reading in The Third Reich at War:" Frau Hoffman's husband was sentenced to death, because in a letter to his wife he had written that "Germany would never win the war." He was executed for a political offense, undermining popular moral."

I was liberated on May 9, 1945 by the Russian Army; they announced:"We are giving you three days of absolute freedom to kill Germans. We have full empathy for your suffering, because we have lost 22 million of our people, and tens of thousands of our villages were wiped out." Kershaw echoes the same sentiment by quoting the Soviet propaganda; `Take merciless revenge on the fascist child murderers, pay them back for the blood and tears of Soviet mothers and children. Kill; there is nothing which the Germans aren't guilty of (p.112).' Our Russian liberators broke down and wept glancing at our emaciated bodies. I remember tears rolling down the faces of many brave Russian soldiers while staring at us - dejected skeletons - the results of Hitler's" Final Solution" scheme. The Russians were bursting with an overpowering revulsion. Our camp was one of many ignominious places that the Russian army had liberated. Some of our liberators were indeed vengeful. Many Germans expressed shock and annoyance at the opprobrium the Russian caused. It was sickening to me to witness their thirst for revenge; seemingly unquenchable. I had been in thrall to Hitler for 68 months; losing 123 members of my extensive family, witnessing the Nazis beating, torturing, shooting innocent people, as reflected in my autobiography From a Name to a Number. I did not go out to kill or rape. It is just not ingrained in me. I remembered my father's slogan" hate hatred, shun violence!" I was definitely not vengeful! I was grateful that the Germans did not succeed, during the Holocaust, in debasing my inherited values. The Nazis damaged my constitution but could not break it.

The author of a superb biography of Hitler, which is mandatory reading for anyone interested in WW II, Ian Kershaw has produced another remarkable book.
He sets out to determine what made the German military keep fighting and what caused the civilian population to endure so many horrors without any challenges to the Nazi leadership when certainly the military leadership and most common people as well must have known that Germany was doomed and that the war was irretrievably lost.
The book consists of nine chapters with abundant footnotes: inconveniently they are relegated to the end of the book (but that's just the publisher being unduly thrifty and not the author's fault). Yet the notes are laid out clearly and their contents is very much worth the tedious exercise of constantly jumping from text to foot" note.
The nine chapters cover the Western and Eastern fronts - two very different situations and two very different attitude to the advancing enemy - the various shocks received by the system from July 1944 onwards, the terror apparatus prevailing in Germany, the abominable treatment meted out to concentration camp inmates in the last months of the war, with dead marches, random killings and the like, but also the suffering of the German populations trying to escape the Red Army.
What kept them fighting and obeying when everything was lost ? Ian Kershaw's analysis is subtle and perceptive: he takes into account the minority of fully faithful Nazis, the oppressive system in which anyone questioning the leadership was doing so at the risk of his own life, traditional military discipline, the fear of retaliation for the crimes against humanity committed in the war against the Soviet Union, the military leadership's commitment to honor and loyalty to one's oath, and several other factors.
The book really leaves the reader with a much clearer understanding of this astonishing episode and it is to be highly recommended.

Ian Kershaw's book The End is good, but repetitious. He explores the reasons the Germans chose to fight on from the time of the attempted assignation of Hitler from July 1944 to May 1945. I agree with his premises - the Nazi regime was repressive and increasingly terroristic toward its own people, many Germans literally had blood on their hands and feared for the consequences of their war. There was the hope that the US & British would break the alliance and fight the Russians that held some together. Good questions are raised - why did the German generals keep on obeying orders that were ludicrous?

The objection I have with The End has nothing to do with the author's conclusions, which are well supported with letters from soldiers, diaries of key players, statements of the generals. The source material cited in the bibliography is almost entirely from German sources. At 500 pages or so, it's too long. His ideas could have been better summed up in 350-400 pages.

The best section of the book addresses how the Germans felt after the war - their country was divided, bombed into ruins, millions lay dead, Europe had been destroyed by the war Hitler started. But the Germans felt they were the victims - they believed in the ideological fight against communism, they cheered as Hitler's conquests grew. As Krenshaw states, "the Germans were perfectly ok making bombs as long as those bombs were dropping on someone else".

If this book had been shorter, more concise, it would be much better, especially for a reader new to the subject. It's a good overview of the many different factors that kept the Germans fighting for so long, when it was so clear, even to them, that they could not win.

In the book The End, WWII historian and eminence grise Ian Kershaw posits the question, why did the Germans of the Third Reich keep fighting when it was abundantly clear they were losing the war? The answer is in 592 pages of historial narrative (its neatly summed up on the last page, so don't sneak a peek if you don't want a spoiler)

Ian Kershaw is of course a monumental figure of WWII scholarship, famous for his Hitler biographies Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris and Hitler: 1936-1945: Nemesis. In this book one gets the sense that, like a jazz master, he's just riffing on some old melodies that he wants to explore.

Perhaps reviewers complain that its not up to par with his other works; regardless, it's a high-quality product from a historian at the top of his game. He knows his material cold, he's in command of a compelling and powerful narrative style, and his insights are sound.

Is is essential Kershaw, a desert-island historical work? Probably not. But its very, very good, and it makes good reading.

Ian Kershaw has written a marvelous, interesting and fact filled account
of the last and final days of Hitler's regime on Nazi Germany during the
years of 1944-45.

Ian goes into detail about how Hitler and his henchmen - Namely
Speer, Donitz, Bormann, Himmler and other top ranking Nazi's
prolonged the war in Germany, costing millions of lives in
not only the military population (Soldiers, Volksturm, Wehrmacht,
SS, etc) of Germany but also on the Allied side, Soviet Side and
Civilian population as well.

The book goes into detail of not only Hitler's final days but his
regime as well, the suffering of the civilian population and the terror
they had to go through along with thousands of German soldiers being tried
in mock courts and often sentenced to death simply for deserting the German
army or saving their lives. Germany wanted soldiers to either win or die
and not surrender. With Germany losing the war, Hitler felt they did not
deserve a leader like him; that Germany had failed him and blamed them
even though German Generals and Hitler himself often made numerous
mistakes and blunders military wise often blaming everyone but
themselves.

The book also deals with The Holocaust in some chapters and also covers
several battles that were fought amidst a losing Third Reich. This book
is good for History buffs and people who want to learn more of Hitler's
last days as well as how Nazi Germany was able to prolong the war until
even after Hitler's death in May 1945.

A must read.

By July 1944 Allied forces had landed in Normandy, the Red Army was driving the Wehrmacht back through Poland, an attempt to assassinate Hitler came within a whisper of success. But fighting continued until May 1945, by when the total of German dead had been doubled . The country was destroyed.

Ian Kershaw asks how and why “the end” took so long.

He follows the inexorable process, month by month, chapter by chapter. First a brief summary of military events is set out. He then outlines the response made by the Nazi regime. Changes in strategy and tactics, movements of generals, divisions and armies to different sectors of the fronts – all such are outlined . But the leadership also had to secure the continuing compliance of soldier and citizen – to fight on as the position got worse – and worse and worse. This is the focus of his analysis.

A conclusion ties together the different strands of the argument. Ian Kershaw sets out clearly his own conclusions – those of a pre-eminent historian of the subject. Historians will find much to debate and discuss.

Clearly many factors contributed to the survival/prolonged death of the Third Reich. Some were of less significance than others. I will not offer a complete summary here, a couple of sentences will suffice.

For example, it has been suggested that the demand by the Allies for unconditional surrender, in removing the possibility of any negotiations, foreclosed on peace feelers. The author doubts this actually made much difference. Fear of Bolshevism was another matter. The German army had every reason to expect retribution for their own actions in Soviet territories - a powerful reason to fight at all costs.

The decisive factor in the author’s opinion was Hitler. Political power was so structured in the Reich that no credible challenge could be made to his leadership. And for him it was victory or death – no repeat of 1918 and he was prepared to take Germany with him. With his death alone came the end.

He does not stress so much the role of Albert Speer – organizational genius allied to unscrupulous, inhuman use of slave labour. Yet he states – in passing – that but for Speer the war could have been over in 1943.

This is not a book for the reader who is unfamiliar with the broad narrative. It is concerned more with the how and the why than the what. The military process is described only in summary and succinct fashion. It is written for those with an interest in and knowledge of the subject. For the interested layperson and historian it is stimulating and thought-provoking.

There is a certain irony however. We live in an age now when wars never seem to end – so what lessons The End offers for today’s politicians I am not sure.

The premise of The End is a question rarely asked: Why did the German people continue to support/endure the Nazi regime even after the war was clearly lost? Kershaw's basic answer was they had little choice in most cases particularly after the failure of the July 1944 attempt on Hitler's life. This remarkably researched book provides a unique insight into the terror inflicted on Germans during the last ten month's of World War II in Europe. While a significant percentage of Germans supported the Nazi's while the war was going well, by late 1944, most had turned against the Party and its leadership. Even Hitler was no longer held in high regard by many. Unfortunately, the system of control and terror existing in Germany permitted no dissension and the repression and murder promulgated against conquered peoples and racial "enemies" was turned against Germans.

The End is not a war history in the traditional sense...there are few descriptions of battles...military actions are only a background to an analysis of increasing disintegration of a society and the reaction of those in positions of power. This is a book well worth reading for any serious student of World War II, Nazism and the final agony of a nation that had descended into Medieval barbarism. It is not a book for the casual reader as detailed knowledge of the locations and actions of the European war is required. The several maps included in the text are in need of improvement as most place names mentioned are omitted necessitating reference to other sources.

I have just finished this book. Ian Kershaw is admittedly a favorite author of mine, and his two volume biography of Hitler stands as the definitive resource involving this subject. "The End" is exhaustive but repetitive. It is not so much a history of the end of the war as it is a psychological assessment of the German people and the Nazi Government, as the stress of these events takes hold. I would have preferred a more evolved history concerning the protagonists of the German Government. His descriptions of the Concentration Camp Prisoner forced marches, the draconian regulatory behavior of the government toward the German people, and the behavior of the German military establishment were all interesting, but left the reader wanting more detail and greater in depth analysis. However, the bulk of the text was merely repetitive and tends to leave the reader frustrated. Still, a worthy and enjoyable read by an expert author.

Ian Kershaw sought the answer to the question why key players (military, political leaders) in a modern state like Nazi Germany did not seek a negotiated peace to save its people from certain misery and death in the dying days of the Third Reich. The book more or less answers that by the end of the 400 page book, though it was apparent 100 pages in what the conclusion would be. My only critique of the book was that Mr. Kershaw stretched out the story a bit to reinforce his point that it was Hitler's hold, above all, on his subjects and the way Nazi power was structured, which contributed to what amounted to be a mutual suicide pact of the entire German people.

Mr. Kershaw does make some very cogent points in that many Nazi leaders in the post-war revisions sought to portray their actions during the war as 'non-political.' Primary among those who sought to rehabilitate their historical judgment were Albert Speer and Karl Donitz. Kershaw provides ample documentary evidence they were every bit the enthusiastic backer of Hitler and his hardline policy of total war until after Hitler's end in the Fuhrerbunker.

Much time is also spent analyzing the July 20th plot and the effect it has on solidifying total support for Hitler until the very end. German leaders' fear of another 'Stab in the back' legend prevented them from violating their personal oath to Hitler. In some ways, the way things turned out is perhaps for the best since there is no scapegoating anyone else besides Hitler for what happened to the German people and allowed them to fully reject his legacy and proceed to their current democratic path.

Kershaw's book explores a neglected issue that ultimately tells us a lot about why the Third Reich was so successful in consolidating and wielding power: why did the military, state, and citizenry continue to follow the regime after it was obvious that the struggle was completely hopeless?

The answer is twofold. First, terror was insitutionalized and certain: even the most tepid dissent or defeatism would be rooted out and punished severely. Second, and most disturbing, the vast majority of the army and citizenry either avidly supported the regime or were somehow complicit with it. This complicity included knowledge of the regime's war crimes, slave labor, and disposition of the Jews. The regime and Hitler were wildly popular until 1941 -- and the people looked away from its obvious failings and criminality. The people knew they had made their bargain with the devil and were now reaping the whirlwind -- there was a sense of having no choice but to fight on.

Kershaw is blistering in his criticism of the professional military. Stauffenberg's assassination attempt was tepid and enlisted the support of only a few -- the vast majority were persuaded by their oath as military men (and perhaps by their complicity with Hitler's war crimes) not to turn on the head of state. And once the assassination failed, the checks on the military and the need to prove devotion ended any effort at dissent, much less a coup.

Kershaw is also effective in demonstrating the absolute moral bankruptcy of the Nazi party. The party bosses were "little Hitlers" in their domain and strutted their power arbitrarily. They justified this on their macho "superman" status as the fittest elements of the fittest race. But when the going got tough, they did nothing to look after their citizens or organize an evacuation. They ran for their lives and let the people fend for themselves. The hatred and contempt for the party by the end of war was palpable -- but the terror wielded by the regime and the people's complicity with Hitler still kept them in check.

Kershaw is critical of the German willingness to embrace "victim" status in the 1944-45 period. True, their citizens were slaughtered by the Anglo-American air war and were raped and killed on a massive scale by the Red Army (and to a lesser extent by the French, surprisingly enough). True, the evil regime after feeding on and crushing Jews, East Europe, and the Russians, turned its evil on its own people. By the end of the war, the average German was just another victim under the regime's jackboot. But, Kershaw asks, wasn't this last "victim" responsible for creating the monster in the first place? Can they truly embrace victim status if they were complicit in the regime's previous criminality?

This is a compelling and disturbing book.

Hundreds of books have written about the last days of the third Reich but none as detailed as this one. One of the important aspects of the book is it answers the questions on how the Nazis kept murdering people even though all was lost. I cannot recommend this book high enough.

This book reads like a dissertation for a doctorate. Dry, and pretentious its one of longest reads. It truly could have been amazing because of sources used but by making it over complicated the author comes across as a know it all. If you read my reviews you will see this is a rare occurrence, usually filled with good things. This took me weeks, I can read 500 to 1000 pages in a few days, not the case with this one.

I had mixed feelings about "The End." First, the positive: The book was excellently researched and cited. The book was well written and indeed very readable. The photos of Nazi and military leaders and destroyed German cities enriched the text. Kershaw identified several factors that contributed to the "Defiance and Destruction Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945": (!) support of Hitler was falling, and the NSDAP was widely hated, but there was no alternative to carrying on; (2) terror played a big role in suppressing revolt; (3) most soldiers fought on, even with enthusiasm; (4) as things deteriorated, people took out their frustrations on scapegoats; (5) the Nazis got greatly extended power over society; and (6) the savagery of the war in the East (e.g, the horrors created by the Red Army in the East Prussian town of Nemmersdorf [that soon became known all over Germany after the German Army had briefly retaken the town]. Of course, most of this has been said before, but Kershaw adds a lot more precision in detail, and indeed a sense of drama--readers can picture themselves right there.

Now, the negative: Toward the end of the book, I got the impression that the author was becoming too trendy and was beating a lot of dead horses. Throughout the book there were way too many value judgments and ad hominems--for example, "brutal" and "most fanatical" (p. 103); "lapdog loyalty" (p. 205); "monstrous ego" (p. 293); "cowering" (p. 320); "desperado actions" (p. 392); and "utterly warped" (p. 395). History should be purely objective--readers are capable of making their own value judgments.

As a unifying and integrating theme, HOPE in spite of adversity, played a major role in the developing of the fsctors discussed above. And indeed the emergence of hope receives considerable justification in German history. Consider: (1) the search for identity as Germans stemming from the time of Martin Luther [see my review of "Here I Stand"] and the Reformation; (2) the havoc of the Thirty Years War (1630-1648), fought mainly on German soil; (3) the rise of Prussia as a major European power and unification of states as the German Empire; (4) the defeat of Germany in WW1, attributed to treachery and a "stab in the back;" (5) the folly of the Treaty of Versailles; (6) the 1924 Inflation; and (7)the Great Depression, out of which Hitler pulled Germany through militarization and the construction of Autobahnen and other projects. Note that items 4 through 7 were within the memories of millions of Germans. It is scarcely surprising that Adolf Hitler emerged as Savior and Hero, and that the his many well-known successes led to the image of the charismatic Fuehrer ("charismatic" is often used by Kershaw).

Finally, one might argue that the Wirtschaftstwunder and the unification of West and East Germany marks a final justification of HOPE. However, I don't think so, and now Germany is not alone. The USA and the rest of the world are now caught up in the decay that marks the ecological insult to Mother Earth!

Because I enjoy the scholarly approach of Ian Kershaw and because both Antony Beevor and Andrew Roberts recommended "The End", I spent more than the cover price to buy the paperback four years after the title hit the bookshops. And although I enjoyed the quick read along with well-documented notes and excellent black and white photos, I believe Kershaw (or his editing team of Simon Winder and Laura Stickney) merely rewarmed much of what Ian has written before to fill an inch-thick paperback. On top of that, some of the content appears to repeat itself throughout the book and that's not what I expect in Kershaw's work.

By the time I finished five pages of the preface, four pages of Dramatis Personae and 14 pages of the Introduction, I had the gist of Kershaw's thesis. I read those pages while in the bookshop, thumbed back and forth to the Notes, then 15 pages of the Conclusion. I bought the book, thinking the 369 pages in the middle would offer some narrative explanation about why the German nation appeared to blindly follow madman Hitler to the near destruction of the nation.

The book comes up short in this regard.

The middle page of "The End" do explain why Germany kept fighting to the death. Moreover, Kershaw explains the psyche of the average German citizen in the mid-1940s. Those survivors met my father while he served in occupied Germany and Kershaw's account tracks with stories my father would tell us years later. The big difference is that my father told the story of the German people by sharing the perspectives of various people he knew. We learned what Germans were thinking by hearing how a wood carver, a soldier, a nurse, a priest and a war widow behaved as good citizens of the Reich. These little vignettes gave me colourful anecdotes that complemented my study of military history while in the Air Force Academy. I wish Ian Kershaw might have followed the same narrative format, perhaps telling Germany's demise through the commentary, actions or diary notes of Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Albert Speer.

I'm following Ian Kershaw on the store, hoping to see that he plans such a narrative work as a future publication.

 The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945

"Accurate scholarship can/Unearth the whole offence/ From Luther until now/That has driven a culture mad,/ Find what occured at Linz,/ What huge imago made/ A psychopathic god." - W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"

That unearthing, in a nutshell, is what Ian Kershaw's well-documented piece of scholarship does for the final year of Nazi Germany. Why did Nazi Germany, faced with certain defeat and overwhelming odds, continue its fight on to a suicidal end, taking with it hundreds of thousands of German civilians and soldiers, as well as already-persecuted concentration camp inmates and enslaved foreign workers? Kershaw pursues his answer through relentless examination of primary sources from archival material, probing the actions and writings of the top Nazi quadumvirate of Himmler, Goebbels, Speer, and Bormann... as well as the next echelon of Nazi leadership, the Gauleiter in charge of individual regions in the Third Reich.

This is compelling writing. As a reader knowing the general ending of Hitler's brutal regime, I found myself nervously anticipating the page number at which the madness would finally cease. But Kershaw makes you wait. Wait through his examination of countless examples of the slaughter of German citizens at the hands of "flying court- martials" (hastily constructed mobile execution units that scoured the German countryside digging up the slightest evidence of resistance to the regime's final madness); past his recounting of the brutally conducted evacuations in which cowardly Gauleiter put their own safety above that of civilians for whom they were responsible; past his detailing of such demented plans as those of Himmler, who proposed that German families use every means of transport--including baby carriages--to move military supplies to the rapidly decaying battle fronts of the Wehrmacht.

It is hard to create suspense in non-fiction writing, especially that which is written about well-known historical events, yet Kershaw does so throughout this book. Often quoting verbatim from German documents, he does all that a historian can do to honor his chosen subject. Kershaw's analysis of facts and his answering of his big question "Why?" is through and convincing, and multi-layered. His final chapter, "Anatomy of Self-Destruction" posits the "extreme rarity of a country being able and prepared to fight on in war to the point of total destruction." His resounding account of WHY Germany did so then follows and points to many causes: the fatal charisma of Hitler, himself the "psychopathic god"; to the military's legacy of not repeating another "1918" for Germany; to the fragmentation and bitter rivalries among his top quadumvirate, which prevented any kind of unified opposition to Hitler himself; to Germans' manic fear of Bolshevism and the Asiatic threat from the East.

This book does its job. But one reservation remains. Kershaw has done a thorough job of answering his key question, as to why such self-destruction continued for an already largely defeated country. Yet what about the corollary to that? What about countries that DID decide to resign themselves to a sensible cessation of hopeless warfare? As a historian, Kershaw would have done himself well to provide examples of where that more rational course of action prevailed. Perhaps in his introduction or in his conclusion, the reader could have been provided with historical examples of defeated nations doing that more sensible thing. If he calls Germany's pursuit of total destruction a "rarity" in history (p.386), then what were the mechanisms and where were those times when defeated nations did decide to stop. At four hundred pages of narrative text, Kershaw's book still had some room to consider that corollary.

My fifth star would go to another book or another written account that would satisfy that curiosity.

Nevertheless, this is a model of superior history writing, and the 132 pages of supporting materials at the book's end still await my eager perusal. Its astonishing variety and scrupulous completeness look like a book in itself.

What begins as a fairly interesting hypothesis of why the Nazi state continued to function well beyond any reasonable chance of victory, steadily descends into a repetitious monologue. Essentially, the entire book could have been compressed into the author's last chapter. His observations on the rationale for continued German resistence are interesting, but suffer from far too many restatements of points already imparted.

By the summer of 1944, it was increasingly clear that Nazi Germany was losing the war: it was pushed back on all sides, the Western Allies having landed at Normandy and working their way through France, and the Red Army bulldozing its way from the East. Mussolini had been deposed, and the Allies were making headway in Italy, working north. Yet, Germany kept fighting as if it could win the war. Ian Kershaw wanted to understand why that was--especially as the war became more and more costly for Germany as the 1944 dragged on into 1945, and it became increasingly clear that the country was headed for outright destruction.

The answer, of course, was Hitler, and the homicidal regime he led, but it was more than just that. As Kershaw starts his book, The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945, the Stauffenberg bomb plot in July 1944 has just failed: Hitler escaped with minor injuries and hearing loss--and a further vengeance for his enemies, real and perceived. Popular support for Hitler had been waning for two years, but the attack on him gave him a bounce in the polls; Germans were shocked that their military would try to assassinate their leader. Hitler took the opportunity to purge any in the military who seemed less than full supporters, and the generals raced to prove their own loyalty in the face of Nazi Party doubts.

What Kershaw wonders again and again is this: why did no one in Germany not try to put an end to the war? It was clearly a lost cause; Germany was losing hundreds of thousands of troops monthly, it was being bombed into obliteration, and yet kept fighting. The surface answer is that the regime reigned in Germany with brutal control: toward the end of the war, anyone suspected of "defeatism," let alone dissent, was subject to swift and immediate punishment--often death. The population went along out of fear. But it was more than that: the people had, for the most part, cheered on the Nazis as Germany crushed other countries in Europe, and willfully ignored the homicidal brutality issued against its own citizens who the Nazis proclaimed as enemies--Jews in particular, but not just them. And a certain percentage still supported the regime, atrocities and all.

Kershaw pays the military special scrutiny. He again and again shows that post-war proclamations by generals that they were "just doing their duty" and were apolitical was often a lie; they were ardent followers of Hitler, and knew what they were doing. They knew the war was a lost cause, and kept it going as best they could, leading to millions of deaths in the final throes of regime. Hitler had no future; we wanted to fight to the last man. His generals--and troops--complied.

It is a horrifying tale, of course. As Kershaw points out, the entire conflagration that Germany unleashed on the world cost some 40 million people's lives. What happened in the last 10 months of the war was symptomatic of the entire war: brutal, illogical, and seemingly inevitable. Until Hitler was dead, the war--and the destruction--would continue. It was only with the Red Army encircling Berlin that Hitler killed himself (while the propaganda machine said he died fighting the Soviets, the final in a long line of lies), and only then the madness could be stopped.

Kershaw's tale is shocking and tragic; this is what humans are capable of, in the end. It should serve as a cautionary tale, too. Cries of "never again" ring hollow; Kershaw shows how easy it was for Germany--educated, sophisticated, technologically advanced--to sink to the basest, most brutal, level. This is history as it is meant to be written: clear, cogent, personal, thoughtful, definitive. Highly recommended.

As some of the other reviewers have mentioned this book was written from a very academic viewpoint, more of a detailed study than an enthralling read. The author is clearly well-versed on the subject matter but there is some perhaps unavoidable repetition and at times the reading is dry. Much of the book is devoted to the political machinery of the collapsing Reich. Kershaw seems even-handed without letting the Nazi leadership or their willing followers off the hook. There is little here of the military aspects of the collapse. If, like me, your taste runs more toward highly readable history with more individual human interest stories I would also recommend Max Hasting's "Armageddon" or Cornelius Ryan's "The Last Battle".

This book is highly recommended to those who want to know about details of the total collapse of Hitler's Nazi regime from 1944-45. When Hilter's armies were defeated after the defeat at Stalingrad, it started a massive unrelenting drive toward a Soviet victory over Nazi forces, which ended with occupation of Berlin and most of Germany in May, 1945 and marked the end of the war in Europe.

Even the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hilter on July 20, 1944 did nothing to lessen Hilter's iron grip over the German nation and its military and industrial capacity to wage war until capitulation in May, 1945. Allied bombing by British and American aircraft steadily destroyed Germany's industrial base and much of the transportation infrastructure essential to support Nazi armies last ditch efforts to stop the American and British armies attacking from France, and Russian armies attacking in the east from Russia, Hungary, and Poland.

In the very end, there was total chaos, as German refugees fleeing from the east were joined by death marches of Russian and Jewish prisoners from extermination camps in Poland being returned to Germany for liquidation. When these massive waves of refugee wanderers reached Germany, food was scarce to all, and was not provided to the prisoners in the death marches. Disease and death were rampant in those Nazi concentration camps in Germany that were still operating until being liberated by Allied armies, and many thousands of prisoners died of the advanced effects of starvation, even after being liberated, and the best efforts of Allied armies to nurse them back from the brink of death.

The Nazi regime attempted to exterminate all Jews in Europe, along with gypsies, homosexuals, and communists. They were ultimately unsuccessful, and over the years that followed 1945, Muslims from Turkey and the Middle East replaced Jews as the largest non-German ethnic group, and gypsies, homosexuals, and communists flourished.

Hitler led the German nation to total defeat in a total war that he initiated. May all who read this outstanding book never let Germany relapse into a totalitarian regime.

Kershaw's strength is describing the coterie of power players around Hitler, and how they interact in the last few months. However, the book doesn't do a good job of describing the day-to-day lives of civilians inside the Reich and their circumstances changing month by month. More diary entries and true detail (what food was available? what was the radio saying?") are needed. I wish I could have rated it more highly, but after finishing, I felt there were a great deal of missed opportunities with this volume.

Kershaw has produced some of THE greatest books on the Nazi regime, yet this was profoundly disappointing. I feel he is now one of the many writers rather ghoulishly and cynically returning to the Nazis as he knows books about them sell, rather than because he has something to add to our view of the vile system.

Anyone who studies World War II is familiar with the name of Dr. Ian Kershaw. Kershaw is an acclaimed academic expert on Nazi Germany who has the talent to write for a popular general audience. He is the renowned author of the two volume biography of Adolf Hitler that is the finest book on the subject in this generation.
The End concerns the defiance and destruction of Hitler's Germany in the blackest days of European history in the 20th century. The book begins on July 20, 1944 the day when the Officer's assassination plot against the Fuhrer was foiled. Hilter lived to punish his enemies through gruesome executions. Germany continued to fight on against the encroaching allies approaching from the West (the Americans and British troops and others who broke out from the D-Day beaches in June, 1944 to spearhead a massive attack on the Reich and the Soviets attacking from the East). Germany would soon lose a two front war unheralded in world history for its bloody combat. Retribution came home in spades to destroy the evil of Hitler and his cruel dictatorship.
During this final phase of the Nazi experiment the Reich was being led by four cruel and ambitious paladins of Hitler:
a. Heinrich Himmler-the odious head of the SS and the concentration camps supported Hitler until he knew the end was near. Himmler then tried to exchange Jewish prisoners for a personal role in the postwar world. He took cyanide to avoid punishment by the Nuremburg Tribunal on War Crimes.
b. Martin Bormann-this evil man headed the Nazi party. He guarded access to Hitler. He died in the streets of Berlin by taking poison shortly after the Russians entered the city.
c. Joseph Goebbels-Mephistopheles to Hitler's Faust the little leader of the Propaganda Office was Hitler's closest ally. He, his wife Magda and their six children all died of poison hours after Hitler and Eva Braun had committed suicide in the bunker of the Reich Chancellory.
d. Albert Speer was in charge of armanents forcing the millions of slave laborers and foreign workers in Germany to keep the nation fighting its losing battle against the Allied powers. He spent years in Spandau prison before being released.
Kershaw poses the question as to why Germany did not surrender earlier saving millions of her people to death when the war was already decided. Among the reasons he gives
a. The German nation was ruled by a regime of terror. Death would be the penalty for all who might rebel, speak or write anything against the Nazis.
b. The mindset of Nazi officials and military leaders was to go down with the Fuhrer since they were themselves guilty of heinous crimes against humanity in the murder of the Jews and other captive people.
c. The charisma and power of Hitler remained potent to the end. Though Hitler had lost much of his popularity he was still the iron man of Germany whom one would cross only at the peril of losing one's life. Hitler remained throughout the war as Commander in Chief of the Army. Obedient and loyal Germans who have been brainwashed by the regime remained faithful to the Fuhrer and the government in Berlin.
d. A majority of the Gauleiter's supported Nazism until the surrender in May 1945
e.. Hopes for a miracle weapon(s) continued to the end. German hopes for victory in the West faded after the abortive Ardennes Campaign of December, 1944.
f. Support for the National Socialist regime remain strong among the German generals up until the end.
g..A fear of rape, murder and conquest kept Germans fighting to the final buttle in the inferno fighting against the Soviet hordes on the Eastern Front.
Ian Kershaw is my favorite author on the Nazi movement and the war in Europe during World War II. This book is an excellent treatment of the endgame of the worst war ever waged. Excellent history!

Kershaw, probably the most knowledgeable author alive on this topic has written an accessible and thoughtful analysis of the complete implosion of the Third Reich and the conditions that led to this. This is an outstanding and gripping book on the last year of Nazi Germany. Brings alive the immense suffering and bloodshed occuring in this period. A must for anybody with a serious interest in WW2.

Some of Mr Kershaw's earlier books have dealt with Hitler and his Nazi regime; after much new research he expands on that universe with his latest work.
Using the last ten months of the war as a backdrop, the author studies and explains the ideological, psychological, political and social circumstances that makes Hitler and his stooges drive the country to annihilation, sacrificing its people in order to stay in power for as long as possible. Its irrational but with the scale of vengeance being extracted by Stalin and secondarily by FDR's terms of unconditional surrender, its also an act of desperation, an attempt to prolong the inevitable defeat. A second defeat that will surpass the humiliating one of 1918. Hitler uses the invention of his super weapons among other reasons as his excuse for not surrendering but these weapons would be few in numbers and have little effect on the outcome even if Hitler could have delayed his defeat for months. Once evidence of the concentration camps became public, there would be no reprieve for the Nazis and they knew it. Besides Hitler, Boorman, Jodl, Goebbels, Speers highlight this book. The author does a good job of profiling these men.

The book describes the repressive, sadistic nature of Nazism providing one of the reasons why most Germans though by now having lost faith in Hitler never tried to rebell. It goes beyond fear. The Germans had more than a decade of propaganda from Hitler and Goebbels and believed in German superiority. As long as the war continued there was a chance to win; surrendering meant that dream would evaporate. Besides the discussion of these four henchmen, the daily lives of the German people also play an important role in this story, having to endure the tribulations of war as well as their leaders' fanaticism. Examples of those tribulations are throughout the book. The discussion is extended to cover why the Wehrmacht continued to buckle under Hitler's rule, rejecting a coup de tat or why his appointees, for the most part, stayed loyal.

While there are glimpses of battle action like towns or sectors falling to the Allies, the coverage is brief and secondary and is a means of showing the state of Hitler's shrinking, deteriorating domain as the Allies close in from the east and west. As the military situation worsens you see Hitler lose his grip on reality, firing key Generals like Hausser, ordering impossible feats to be accomplished and allowing the dissension of Party members to take control of their own principalities and committing their own atrocities.

There are nine maps that are useful but unremarkable. There is a nice photo gallery of key German personalities that are discussed in the book as well as a few photos that show the desperation and destruction of Germany. This book is highly annotated and has an impressive reading list if further study is desired.

As usual Mr Kershaw's writing style is engaging and informative in describing the intricacies of this environment and for anybody, especially new students, interested in all the ramifications of the collapse of Germany in 1945 this book will be beneficial. Though some of this material can be read in other books, more experienced students will also appreciate the arguments and positions that are presented and the logical manner in which this story is developed. You might want to supplement this book with Sean McAteer's "500 Days" which covers more of the operational aspects of this period.

This book covers the last 10 months in Germany before the end of WW II and seeks to answer why Germany kept fighting on to the bitter end, even when they knew the war was lost and continuation just increased the deaths and destruction. As such, the information could have been given in 100 pages instead of 400 pages; thus, the book is too long and repetitious.

I'm thankful this was a library loan. Kershaw seems to more or less repeat the same points ad nauseum in this overwritten, tedious tome about the last 10 months of Nazi Germany. 400 pages of text, which could easily have been reduced by 100 pages, and copious end notes, that actually were informative and useful. I can't say the same for the actual text of the book.
If you are relatively well read on the Second World War, I doubt that any new revelations will jump out at you in this book.
The author's point that by extending the war until May, 1945, the Nazi hierarchy caused huge numbers of unnecessary casualties is undoubtedly true, but this is not exactly a revelation. The same reasons were repeated over and over again, in one form or another, and it just grew very tedious to me.

This book is not for the causal reader. The book is packed with interesting tidbits of the disconnect between the leaders of Nazi Germany and reality, but seems to repeat itself as you read. Could have been cut if half in my opinion.

Extremely lazy prose, with the passive "were" appearing often twice in a sentence and dominating most paragraphs. A phoned in job by an apparently once renowned writer on the war. Too bad. It's a good topic but I don't think I can finish it to find out if he makes good on the rather arrogant promises at the start of the book. I have a feeling not.

THE STORY HE TELLS WAS 100 PAGES TO LONG, KERSHAW, REPEATS HIMSELF OVER AND OVER AGAIN,AND AT TIMES GIVES TWO VERSIONS FOR THE SAME QUESTIONS.
I THINK HE MISSED THE BALL ON THIS BOOK, HE DID NOT STICK TO THE THE REAL QUESTION AS WHY THE FIGHTING WENT ON AND ON, JUST GAVE A LOT OF DIFFERENT ANSWERS TO THE SAME QUESTION, AS I STATED ABOVE