The Last Days Of The Reich

The Collapse Of Nazi Germany, May 1945
New Edition

This is a book about the old Europe, the old and awful order as it sank into the terminal wreckage of war. Not just about the military collapse of Nazi Germany, but also about 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. There 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 Lucas points out, there rose a powerful and democratic nation.