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EIGHT DAYS IN MAY

THE FINAL COLLAPSE OF THE THIRD REICH

Strongly written and deeply researched, Ullrich’s account only suffers from an occasional surfeit of detail.

The author of an excellent two-volume biography of Hitler chronicles the demise of the Nazi regime.

The week between Hitler’s suicide, on April 30, and Germany’s unconditional surrender, on May 7 and 8, 1945, is often referred to as Germany’s “zero hour.” As German historian Ullrich writes, that short period represented a “profound caesura” between the end of Nazi rule and the beginning of whatever would come next. “Amid the exhaustion and bitterness,” he writes, “and despite the general lack of self-blame concerning the past, many Germans felt reinvigorated, almost euphoric, and ready to start over.” The author delivers a richly textured day-by-day account of that week in Germany and in parts of German-occupied Europe. On the morning of May 1, fighting continued in Berlin. A day later, Germany’s Army Group C surrendered in Italy. Throughout the book, Ullrich strains to encompass not just the political and military currents, but quotidian details, as well—e.g., that starving Berlin residents carved up dead horses on the street. The author excels in those smaller, more tightly focused moments, where his storytelling abilities are on full display. He relied on diaries, memoirs, and letters, among other sources, to inform his account, which is deeply researched without feeling weighed down. However, Ullrich’s descriptions of various political or military meetings sometimes feel onerous, as he lists the name and rank of every person present. These details might be crucial to a wider historical reckoning, but nonscholars may get bogged down. Ullrich can be uneven in his coverage, too, as when he describes the end of the war in the Netherlands but not in, say, England or France. Though his latest book is by no means comprehensive, it’s still a vital and often vibrant account of eight days when people all across Europe were suspended in confusion and chaos.

Strongly written and deeply researched, Ullrich’s account only suffers from an occasional surfeit of detail.

Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-63149-827-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Liveright/Norton

Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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BRAVE MEN

The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.

Pub Date: April 26, 2001

ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2

Page Count: 513

Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001

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