First published 2020
Volker Ullrich reconstructs the final week of the Third Reich through a day-by-day chronicle. Hitler has died, yet the war continues in a strange suspended state where everything appears frozen while chaos erupts everywhere. The Dönitz government retreats to Flensburg as Allied forces advance relentlessly across German territory. Berlin falls. Army Group C surrenders in Italy. Authorities arrest rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. Suicide epidemics sweep through the population while mass rapes occur throughout the occupied zones. Death marches continue alongside wild expulsions of civilians. Nazi leaders disappear into hiding as concentration camps open their gates to liberators. Ullrich captures this liminal moment that writer Erich Kästner described in his May 7, 1945 diary entry as existing in the gap between what no longer exists and what has not yet begun. The author transforms this compressed timeframe into a journey through a collapsing civilization filled with violence, terror, desperation, and emerging hope.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, world-war-ii, military-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-fiction, political-thriller
Setting: Berlin, Flensburg, Italy
Period: May 1945
317 pages · Hardcover · C.H. Beck Verlag
Content warnings: death, violence, war