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    The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945
    The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945
    The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945
    Audiobook18 hours

    The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945

    Written by Ian Kershaw

    Narrated by Sean Pratt

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateSep 20, 2011
    ISBN9781596599734
    The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945
    Author

    Ian Kershaw

    Ian Kershaw is a highly acclaimed historian and professor of modern history at the University of Sheffield. He is well known for his writings on Nazi Germany, especially his definitive two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris and Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis. He lives in Manchester, GB.

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    Reviews for The End

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    178 ratings16 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Fantastic. No one know the Reich better then Kershaw. This is the best book I have read about the fall.
    • 3/5
      John Mauldin publishes an excellent newsletter and runs financial conferences that include the biggest names.The book explores at greater length what they have to say and is a good "state of the art" of the debt crisis as of the 2011 publication date. It feels as if it was prepared in a hurry but it still leaves the reader in no doubt about the gravity of the debt overhang and he interestingly completes a country by country analysis highlighting similarities and differences.The authors conclude with a short section on how people can protect themselves, which ultimately isn't very helpful since they say that excess debt could be resolved by inflation or deflation, each requiring quite opposite actions.However, I feel that the book falls down for the lack of a detailed exploration of the legislative sources of the crisis and an evaluation of how the problem can be fixed at a structural level. Nomi Prins' book, "It Takes A Pillage" for example, handles this aspect in a masterful way, showing the pivotal importance of the Glass Steagall Act.Also the authors don't truly explore the U.S. "Endgame" in a deeper historical sociological context. For example, the possibility of tariff protection is quickly rejected in a couple of paragraphs despite being a traditional way to promote local production and reduce a deficit. The Donald Trump variant recently gained some traction viz. 50% tariff on imports from China = production of higher priced toys in the US = greater US employment + lower deficit + children with half as many toys (does it matter?). They don't consider that the European debt crisis could be a jump off point for the U.S.E. United States of Europe that Monnet originally envisaged, considering that a shared currency needs central fiscal control i.e. central government. They don't look at the multicultural nature of American society and the tendency of this sort of non-society to fly apart under severe economic stress e.g. pre WWI Vienna.The section on likely government "financial oppression" such as coercion of the public to purchase government bonds is interesting but I feel that they needed to explore more fully their statement on P146, "But then standards got loose, greed kicked in, and Wall Street began to game the system."
    • 3/5
      Was kind of slow, but got better as the book progressed. A lot of first person accounts was the thing that held my interest.
    • 5/5
      Well written and researched. Very well developed and researched excellent
    • 3/5
      A solid book of the history of the final year of World War II Europe with the focus completely on the German power structure. I learned a lot from the read, but really felt as though this book could have been written at half the length. It very much seemed that the story would repeat itself every chapter where the Germans suffered losses, some people wanted to give in, Hitler and the Nazi powers would not allow it, they killed all who opposed them, then they would again suffer losses. It was much too detailed for a popular history, but I am certainly better off for having read the book.
    • 5/5
      A tour de force. Clear explanation of current economic environs and outlook for years ahead.
    • 4/5
      Germany was fighting on two fronts and out numbered by men and arsenals. Why did they keep fighting to complete destruction. Kershaw examines the mentality that kept the fighting going beyond all reason.
    • 5/5
      Ian Kershaw's book aims to answer just one question: why did the Germans continue to fight even after the second world war was clearly lost? He reviews a number of explanations given, ranging from the reasonable to the ludicrous, and settles on an interpretation of how the Nazi state had been established and how it was still running in 1944-5 that prevented popular rebellion or a military coup, even when almost no one believed the war could still be won. Hitler's dreaded a 1918-style end to the war, with soldiers' mutinies and workers' strikes. He and his regime managed to make these impossible. A beautifully-written, well-researched investigation into a historical nightmare.
    • 5/5
      A man cuts some telephone lines he thinks connect the military bases one to another. He's seen by two members of the Hitler Jugend who report his actions. He's summarily arrested by the local police. The regional commander is summoned and a summary trial is conducted and the man executed. This scenario occurs just four hours from the town being overrun by the Allies in Germany. The question Kershaw asks and answers is why did local bureaucracies and systems continue to function so well as apocalypse was often just minutes away. Why continue to resist at a cost of inevitable total destruction. In early 1945, German soldiers were dying at a rate of 350,000 *per month.* It was a scale of killing that even dwarfed the First World War. British and American bombers were leveling cities and killing thousands of civilians, yet the populace and it's representative structure continued to resist and function. I was confused in the beginning by what seemed to be contradictory points, i.e., that many in the general staff and lower ranks were very supportive of Hitler to the end while at the same time he cites numerous examples of terror shown to any kind of disloyalty or wavering on the part of civilians or military, especially after the Stauffenberg assassination attempt (an astonishing 20,000 German soldiers were shot as opposed to 40 British which would indicate to me a substantial level of defeatism or discord among the lower ranks). Special squads were created to enforce loyalty and the number of executions soared. At the same time he examines numerous letters and diaries showing support for Hitler among those soldiers and the civilian bureaucracy continued to function at a high level. I might argue that finding support for a position in the myriad number of papers left by the highly literate German people might be found regardless of the overall view.Contradictions abound and just as I was one view was proposed, Kershaw presented evidence to the contrary. What’s much clearer is the entanglement of motivations of many different people for many different reasons. Partly, it was that Himmler brought his administration of terror from the East back to the Reich. Another was the personal loyalty of from those mignons at the top, Himmler, Bormann, Goebbels, et al, who derived their power from Hitler so it was natural they would remain fanatically loyal to the end. The extreme brutality of the Russian soldiers on the eastern front led to the desire to hasten westward where the Americans and British were perceived to be more amiable.The slaughter at the end of the war is simply unimaginable and Kershaw doesn’t spare the reader. Hundreds of thousands died in the last few months of the war. Twice as much tonnage of bombs were dropped by the Allies in the first four months of 1945 than in all of 1943. Millions were left homeless and fled the approach of the Soviet Army eager to apply much of the same fearsome slaughter the Germans had inflicted on the Slavic people on their march east. Fifty percent of the German soldiers who died in the war were killed in the last ten months. A few deserted, most continued to fight. The machinery of the state continued and defeatists were murdered by Nazi death squads.The failure of the Germans to give up when clearly all was lost may lie in the culture Hitler had created. The oft cited reason of allied demands for unconditional surrender Kershaw dispenses with, if not entirely convincingly. The German people had been so used to dictatorial and fanatic leadership that they were unable to do anything but follow orders and were suitably cowed and ripe for the leadership of anyone. Put broadly, the simplest reason may be that people simply “went along to get along.”It’s a fascinating study. My only quibble is that I think the book might have been strengthened by a comparison with events in Japan, which, one might argue, were similar.
    • 4/5
      I read Kershaw's two-volume biography of Hitler in 2001 and his Fateful Choices on 23 Oct 2007. So I was eager to read this book. It is largely based on German material and records, and sets out in rather turgid detail all that went on in Germany from July 20, 1944 till into May 1945. Military events are set out only to show what the Nazis were reacting to during that time. The dominance of Hitler was pretty total as far as running things in Germany was concerned. This does not make for pleasant reading--only when we get to the very end of the book is the account lifted to exciting and rewarding reading. The total depravity of the Nazis before that time is painful to read about. But finally, as we come to the final chapters of the book the gloom lifts and the book becomes a good reading experience. The book spends little time on the course of what happened after the surrender in May 1945. One thinks of all those brainwashed Germans and wonders if before they died how many came to regret their adherence to the evil that was Hitler and his ideology.
    • 4/5
      From the cover:

      "What made Germany keep fighting to the death, even when it was clear it would lose the Second World War?"

      In his magnificent, awe-inspiring book 'The End', Ian Kershaw sets out to examine and try and explain, or at least come up with some possible reasons for, the above. He examines every aspect of German life in what would turn out to be the last two years of the war (and I do feel it is important to remember while reading this, that until very late on, they of course didn't know that it would end in May 1945. They knew they couldn't win (as things stood) but they didn't know when they would be deemed to have lost. So one cannot think 'why are they doing/thinking that, when there are only two months to go?', for instance). He combs the bureaucracy, the aristocracy, the Army, the Navy (what is left of) the Airforce, the ordinary people, the Nazi Party, the personality cult of Hitler, the power struggles and in-fighting of his heirs apparent and much, much more. Quite apart from anything else, this is an incredible summation of research, one surely without equal even in whole histories of the Second World War.

      Exhaustive surely isn't the word for it. Definitive, most likely. I can't see how anyone could in the future possibly consider going over this ground again and finding anything more to say. This has dotted the i's, crosses the t's. Full stop.

      Whilst Kershaw does draw some conclusions to try and answer the question why, what I do really like is the feeling that I was actually on the journey, the search for the reasons, alongside him. He states his purpose and lays down his methods at the start of the book really well, then the investigation of the facts begins. All through, I felt that I was beginning to understand the strands of reasoning, as Kershaw also came across them. I agree with him (I can't disagree with him, not being in the remotest sense German) and his conclusions, but I also came forward with a couple of my own. Ones that were the product of his research and his fantastic book, but which weren't actually exactly stated by him. But I get the idea that that would be fine with him. But then another thing I feel sure he is saying, is that there is no simple, single, glib answer to the question. It's all of them in many different ways on many different levels.

      One point I would make here is, it would help if this wasn't the first, or only book on the Second World War you have ever read. You do need some background going into this as it does - as he states - deal with a very specific period and in a very concentrated sphere of the war. I felt too, that I need to read some more on the end of the First World War for Germany, the role of Prussia in the German psyche of the time and definitely the agreement of 1918, as the latter could explain much of the psychological background of Germany that might give additional understanding.

      If I do have a quibble or a criticism, it is that some passages aren't easy to read. Not due to the subject matter, difficult though that is on occasions, but more due to the awkwardness of the sentence construction and punctuation. Maybe once more through by his editor might not have gone amiss.

      Otherwise, essential - and i mean essential - reading for anyone wanting a broader understanding of the Second World War.
    • 3/5
      If ever there was a case in which an editor abdicated his/her responsibility this is it. This is a small monograph that has been inflated to a major book. The question is certainly provocative: why did the state, the military, and the civilian population of Germany continue fighting and dying so long after the outcome of the war became obvious? Kershaw provides a comprehensive set of answers--and then repeats it and repeats it and repeats it yet again. There are passages worth reading, but many are worth skipping since they just illuminate a point already made. I must have skipped 100 pages and missed nothing. Worth reading for that initial analysis, as well as for military strategies. Hitler emerges as a strategic idiot who commanded the loyalty of core followers for their entire lives--no matter how catastrophic his errors. Also interesting: the internal jockeying for power between Bormann, Himmler, Goebbels and Speer.
    • 5/5
      An exceptionally well-written, extensively researched account of the many reasons why Germany continued to fight in the face of an utterly hopeless military situation in the final months of World War II, and the horrific destruction and suffering the population suffered as a result of this futile resistance.
    • 3/5
      Detailed overview of the last months of WWII, in which the author seeks to identify the motives and the culprits for the senseless destruction that went on for much longer than necessary. Sometimes repetitive and unstructured, this book often lacks the clarity and inexorable logic of Richard Evan's three books on WWII, but provides a thorough insight into this often overlooked final period of the war.
    • 4/5
      A superb book on how the Nazis continued the war, the slaughter and destruction, after it was clear to everyone that it was lost. It covers the period of July 1944 (the unsuccessful attempt to kill Hitler) until May 1945.
    • 4/5
      The book does a good job of explaining how Germany managed to keep fighting the last ten months from the Bomb Plot to final surrender, a period where they lost more than half their total casualties [civilian and military] and saw their entire nation overrun. I take off one star because a secondary thesis of the book [studying mentalities] leads to the same generalizations being repeated over and over in successive chapters].