The End – Ian Kershaw
By the summer of 1944, Germany’s defeat in the Second World War was all but certain. The Allies had landed in Normandy, the Soviet army was advancing rapidly from the east, and German cities were being devastated by bombing. Yet Germany fought on for nearly another year, until its total destruction and unconditional surrender in May 1945, at a staggering cost in lives. Why? In The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-1945, the eminent historian Ian Kershaw, author of a celebrated biography of Hitler, examines this question.
Kershaw explores the period from the failed attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944 to the final collapse of the regime. He shows that the answer cannot be explained by any single factor. Fear of Soviet revenge, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender and loyalty to the nation all played a role, but Kershaw places particular emphasis on the structures of Nazi rule.
He argues that Hitler’s charismatic authority, though fading in popular support, remained intact among the regime’s leadership, and that power was increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few powerful figures, including Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Albert Speer, who each in their own way helped keep the war going. Military leaders continued to follow orders, and the regime turned its terror inward against its own population, executing deserters and those seen as defeatists.
Drawing on extensive research, including letters, diaries and official records, Kershaw combines the perspectives of leaders and ordinary Germans, soldiers and civilians.
Authoritative and gripping, The End is a major work of history. It contains descriptions of violence, atrocities and wartime suffering.
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