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Title details for Eight Days in May by Volker Ullrich - Available

Eight Days in May

The Final Collapse of the Third Reich

by Volker Ullrich
Jefferson Chase
Audiobook
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The bestselling author of Hitler: Ascent and Hitler: Downfall reconstructs the chaotic, otherworldly last days of Nazi Germany.
On April 30, 1945, in a bunker deep beneath the Old Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler and his newly wedded wife, Eva Braun, killed themselves. But Nazi Germany lived on, however briefly. The subsequent eight days were among the most turbulent in history, witnessing not only the final battles of World War II and the collapse of the Wehrmacht, but the near-total disintegration of the once-mighty Third Reich.
In a taut, propulsive narrative, eminent historian Volker Ullrich depicts the final days of the Nazi empire through the eyes of Germans, both famous and ordinary, who experienced them. He takes us inside the phantomlike regime of Hitler's chosen successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, while capturing the drama of a society in its death throes—from mass suicides to fanatics calling for one last stand. Integrating an astonishing variety of new primary sources, Ullrich offers an indispensable account of the costs of mass delusion.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 7, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781666152999
      • File size: 275822 KB
      • Duration: 09:34:37

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      John McLain's tough reportorial voice makes him an effective narrator for this history of the last eight days of the Nazi regime, which ranges from the suicide of Hitler to the final surrender of troops. Like a vintage newscaster, McLain advances from one theater to the next in a series of dramatic vignettes, his voice steady as the memorable scenes unfold. Many are terrible and stark in detail, and while the voice is firm, the underlying emotion is plain. Ullrich, a leading German historian of Hitler and the Nazi era, highlights the effects of defeat on the general population, a event in history many times depicted, but rarely with such breadth and vividness. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 19, 2021
      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.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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