The End

By Ian Kershaw,

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

Book description

Named Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, TLS, Spectator, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mail and Scotland on Sunday, Ian Kershaw's The End is a searing account of the final months of Nazi Germany, laying bare the fear and fanaticism that drove a nation to destruction.

In almost every major…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked The End as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Ian Kershaw is among the world’s foremost scholars of Nazi Germany and of twentieth-century Europe, and I had read his two-volume biography of Adolph Hitler.

Still, I must admit I was a bit skeptical in approaching this book, which explains why Germans continued to fight when it was clear that the war was lost. Given everything we know about the insanity of the Nazi regime, the answer to this question seemed self-evident. Boy, was I wrong!

Kershaw masterfully elucidates the multiplicity of perspectives, as well as the ideological, institutional, and even personal factors, that contributed to the German people’s descent…

Ian Kershaw is, to my mind, the best historian of Nazi Germany, and his biography of Adolf Hitler will long remain the go-to study of the man. 

So when I saw a book by him, I automatically picked it up and glanced through it. It was riveting. The End explores the unraveling of life and government in 1945 as the Third Reich imploded. 

There are detailed explanations of Nazi decision-making that lay out the twisted logic that had ordinary Germans being slaughtered by the thousands by the Nazis even within hours of the final collapse of the regime. Just as…

Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past

By Gabrielle Robinson,

Book cover of Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past

Gabrielle Robinson Author Of Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Retired english professor

Gabrielle's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

Gabrielle found her grandfather’s diaries after her mother’s death, only to discover that he had been a Nazi. Born in Berlin in 1942, she and her mother fled the city in 1945, but Api, the one surviving male member of her family, stayed behind to work as a doctor in a city 90% destroyed.

Gabrielle retraces Api’s steps in the Berlin of the 21st century, torn between her love for the man who gave her the happiest years of her childhood and trying to come to terms with his Nazi membership, German guilt, and political responsibility.

Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past

By Gabrielle Robinson,

What is this book about?

"This is not a book I will forget any time soon."
Story Circle Book Reviews

Moving and provocative, Api's Berlin Diaries offers a personal perspective on the fall of Berlin 1945 and the far-reaching aftershocks of the Third Reich.

After her mother's death, Robinson was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather's war diaries-only to discover that he had been a Nazi.

The award-winning memoir shows Api, a doctor in Berlin, desperately trying to help the wounded in cellars without water or light. He himself was reduced to anxiety and despair, the daily diary his main refuge. As Robinson retraces Api's…


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