Download The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945 AudioBook Free
From your preeminent Hitler biographer, a remarkable and original exploration of the way the Third Reich was inclined and able to struggle to the bitter end of World Conflict II. Countless catalogs have been written about why Nazi Germany lost World Conflict II, yet incredibly little attention has been paid to the equally vital question of how and just why it could hold out so long as it did. THE 3RD Reich did not surrender until Germany had been left in ruins and was almost completely occupied. Even in the near-apocalyptic last weeks, when the conflict was plainly lost, the Nazis refused to sue for peacefulness. Historically, this is incredibly rare. Drawing on original testimony from standard Germans and arch-Nazis similarly, award-winning historian Ian Kershaw explores this exciting question in a gripping and concentrated narrative that starts with the failed bomb story in July 1944 and ends with the German capitulation in-may 1945. Hitler, needy to avoid a do it again of the "disgraceful" German surrender in 1918, was of course critical to the 3rd Reich's fanatical willpower, but his ability was sustained only because those below him were unable, or unwilling, to challenge it. Even while the military services situation grew increasingly hopeless, Wehrmacht generals fought on, their purchases largely obeyed, and the regime extended its ruthless persecution of Jews, prisoners, and overseas workers. Even under the hail of allied bombing, German society managed some semblance of normalcy in the last weeks of the conflict. The Berlin Philharmonic even performed on Apr 12, 1945, significantly less than three weeks before Hitler's suicide. As Kershaw shows, the structure of Hitler's "charismatic rule" created a powerful negative relationship between him and the Nazi authority - they had no future without him, therefore their fates were inextricably attached. Terror also helped the 3rd Reich maintain its grip on ability as the regime began to salary conflict not only on its ideologically defined foes but also on the German people themselves. Yet even while each month helped bring fresh horrors for civilians, popular support for the regime remained linked to a patriotic support of Germany and a terrible concern with the enemy closing in. Based on prodigious new research, Kershaw's The End is a harrowing yet enthralling family portrait of the 3rd Reich in its last desperate gasps.
