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Book Description
From the preeminent Hitler biographer, a fascinating and original exploration of how the Third Reich was willing and able to fight to the bitter end of World War II.
Countless books have been written about why Nazi Germany lost World War II, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the equally vital question of how and why it was able to hold out as long as it did. The Third Reich did not surrender until Germany had been left in ruins and almost completely occupied. Even in the near-apocalyptic final months, when the war was plainly lost, the Nazis refused to sue for peace. Historically, this is extremely rare.
Drawing on original testimony from ordinary Germans and arch-Nazis alike, award-winning historian Ian Kershaw explores this fascinating question in a gripping and focused narrative that begins with the failed bomb plot in July 1944 and ends with the German capitulation in May 1945. Hitler, desperate to avoid a repeat of the "disgraceful" German surrender in 1918, was of course critical to the Third Reich's fanatical determination, but his power was sustained only because those below him were unable, or unwilling, to challenge it. Even as the military situation grew increasingly hopeless, Wehrmacht generals fought on, their orders largely obeyed, and the regime continued its ruthless persecution of Jews, prisoners, and foreign workers. Beneath the hail of allied bombing, German society maintained some semblance of normalcy in the very last months of the war. The Berlin Philharmonic even performed on April 12, 1945, less than three weeks before Hitler's suicide.
As Kershaw shows, the structure of Hitler's "charismatic rule" created a powerful negative bond between him and the Nazi leadership- they had no future without him, and so their fates were inextricably tied. Terror also helped the Third Reich maintain its grip on power as the regime began to wage war not only on its ideologically defined enemies but also on the German people themselves. Yet even as each month brought fresh horrors for civilians, popular support for the regime remained linked to a patriotic support of Germany and a terrible fear of the enemy closing in.
Based on prodigious new research, Kershaw's The End is a harrowing yet enthralling portrait of the Third Reich in its last desperate gasps.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Premise...For a Paper or Article,
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This review is from: The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945 (Hardcover)
Kershaw's latest perplexed me. He lays out his objective of explaining why the Nazi state did not capitulate or was over thrown. As history has shown their are few examples of such destructive collective behavior. To me the value of the book were in the Introduction and the Conclusion as they were the two chapters that dealt with Kershaw's thesis. The rest of the book was a fairly standard history of the last 12 months of the Second World War in Europe.Structural and cultural aspects of German society and Nazi rule contributed to both military and civilian dedication to the doomed cause. Hitler's charisma and track record accorded a warped loyalty but terror played a huge role in the police state. And as the war continued, the Soviet threat was also terrifying and provided another reason to hold out. It is incredible how bureaucracy refused to shut down so that the mail, arms manufacture, propaganda films, and parades continued which must have given citizens a surreal sense of comfort even though the reality of the situation was undeniable and unavoidable. Lastly, the Allies unwavering "Unconditional Surrender" strategy hemmed Nazi leadership in and conjured up memories of World War One most Germans did not want to repeat. An interesting premise but it could have been an article or paper, it did not warrant a book given the meat of the thesis is constrained to two chapters.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Horror without end,
By
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This review is from: The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945 (Hardcover)
In July 1945, the western Allies breached the German front in Normandy; the Wehrmacht was retreating faster than the Allied could advance. The Red Army had launched a decisive offensive in the East and demolished an entire German army group. For Nazi Germany, the writing was on the wall: the war was lost. But the war was not over: the thousand years Reich still had 300 days to go and to inflict more suffering to the German people. Millions more would die. One after another, German cities would be turned into rubble. This book tries to understand why, faced with the certainty of defeat, the German people kept fighting until the bitter end.Part of the answer is that the German people were terrorized by the Nazis. After the failed plot on Hitler's life, the Nazis declared total war and reorganized for it. The regime settled scores against its perceived enemies with ever increasing brutality: political opponents in concentration camps were murdered; the few surviving Jews died in death marches. But the violence also targeted ordinary German who just wanted to survive. More than 20,000 German soldiers, often stragglers in a retreating army, were executed for "cowardice". Thousands of civilians were sentenced to death by "people's courts" for inciting soldiers to stop fighting. But Nazi terror is only part of the answer. For Hitler, if the German people did not win the war, they deserved to disappear. But the Nazis could not have kept the fight and exerted extreme violence on the German people without the complicity of the Wehrmacht. Not all the German generals were Nazi fanatics and none of them wanted the German people to disappear. They were professionals and they could draw the obvious conclusion that continued fighting would only bring death and destruction to the German people. But most of the generals chose to fail the men who served under them and the German people rather than their Fuhrer. Why they made that choice will remain a mystery. I did not find in this book a complete answer to this question. Maybe because there is none. The author of this book, Ian Kershaw, is perhaps the best active historian of Nazi Germany. For this book, the author had to rely on reports and statistics from the Gestapo and from Allied interrogations of German POW's which both are biased and do not tell what people really thought. He also makes use personal diaries, such as the diary of General Reinhardt, one of the many tough soldiers who was dismissed by Hitler for trying not to waste too many lives. These testimonies do not explain but they tell infinitely more about the individual dilemmas and the human dimension of this tragedy than all the reports and statistics.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tthe End,
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This review is from: The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945 (Hardcover)
An extremely well written and researched tome. It was fascinating to read how the basics of German common and military life were tenaciously held onto until the bitter end. Required reading for anyone that has pondered why the Germans never surrendered before total destruction befell them. The inclusion of a definitive map covering the area of interest would have made it easier for the reader to follow the war's progress. There was also a considerable overuse of the phrasing "all is lost but in spite of everything, etc. etc.". Overall, I found the book to be captivating and enlightening.
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