Last Days of the Reich - James Lucas

This is James Lucas’ masterly account of the last, terrible days of the Second World War, as the German nation crumbled into chaos on every front. He tells not just of the military collapse of Nazi Germany, but also of the unremitting horror and suffering for the defeated in the weeks that followed the end of hostilities. Seventy million people were left bewildered and terrified by defeat, their leaders dead or incarcerated, as the victors tried to cope with an impossible legacy of death, atrocity and destruction.

Here is how it was in Hitler’s bunker, quiet and peaceful below, while the last days of fighting raged above. Here are accounts of collapse and surrender from the Eastern Front, the Baltic Sector, Hamburg, all the last-ditch outposts of the Nazi empire. This is an extraordinary story of ruin, retribution, sometimes extreme courage, sometimes suicide. Yet from it all, as James Lucas points out, there rose a powerful and democratic nation.