Eight Days in May

For those who have an interest in the aftermath of WW2 and want to understand the repurcussions on America and world as it exists today, this is a seminal book. I highly recommend it.

Bought for the week's history. Backgrounds interesting bonus.

There is nothing new in either fact or insight in this book, which falls short of the high standard of Ulrich's biography of Hitler. The title is misleading (equally so in the German original). The book is not a detailed, minute by minute account of the last week of the Third Reich as you'd expect but, rather, a framework for random discourses around Germany's and the Germans' experience of defeat. Harald Jähner's recent book, Aftermath, is a much more detailed and absorbing account which cannot be recommended too highly.

Interesting and informative. The material about the eight days between Hitler’s suicide and the formal German surrender was largely new to me. But only about half the book is actually about that. The author uses events and personalities from that short period to digress into stories about the war, the early history of Nazism, and what happened to some of the protagonists and observers afterwards. And most of that is much more familiar. Still, worth reading.

Although well reviewed well in the Financial Times this is not necessarily a good guide. The look covered the basics and was harrowing in some parts like the forced women's marches (a reminder of the brilliant book years ago Women beyond the Wire about the Japanese treatment of women prisoners in the Far East). But overall was a pretty basic and pedestrian account of the end of the War in Germany (nothing like Beevor on the fall of Berlin). It jumped around a lot in its narrative and lacked decent photographs; also the German translation had certain problems. The political background from the Allies point of view was barely covered, this was very much a German and limited perspective. Overall rather disappointing.

Easy to read and spells out the horror suffered by the military and civilians especially women. The refugee crisis of people moving from East to West to escape the perceived vengeance of the Russians was particularly appalling as was the state of occupants liberated from concentration camps. Of special interest was the German hierarchy attempts to secure a beneficial end to hostilities.

Quite an interesting book. Well written and easy to read. The prologue deals with events in Hitlers bunker leading up to his suicide, and the book itself is what happened int he following eight days. Riveting account of the final days of the Reich.