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  • Published: 28 June 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141014210
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 592
  • RRP: $32.99

The End

Hitler's Germany, 1944-45




The latest bestseller from Britain's greatest historian of Nazi Germany, now in paperback

SUNDAY TIMES, TLS, SPECTATOR, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, DAILY MAIL and SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY BOOKS OF THE YEAR

In almost every major war there comes a point where defeat looms for one side and its rulers cut a deal with the victors, if only in an attempt to save their own skins. In Hitler's Germany, nothing of this kind happened: in the end the regime had to be stamped out town by town with an almost unprecedented level of brutality. Just what made Germany keep on fighting?

Kershaw's gripping, revelatory book recounts these final months, from the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944 to the German surrender in May 1945.

Ian Kershaw is the author of Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris; Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis; Making Friends with Hitler; and Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-4. Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis received the Wolfson History Prize and the Bruno Kreisky Prize in Austria for Political Book of the Year, and was joint winner of the inaugural British Academy Book Prize. Until his retirement in 2008, Ian Kershaw was Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield. For services to history he was given the German award of the Federal Cross of Merit in 1994. He was knighted in 2002 and awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2004. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and was the winner of the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding 2012.

  • Published: 28 June 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141014210
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 592
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Ian Kershaw

Ian Kershaw is Professor of Modern history at the University of Sheffield. For services to history he was given the German award of the Federal Cross of Merit in 1994. he was knighted in 2002 and awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2004.
He was historical advisor to three BBC series: The Nazis: A Warning From History, War of the Century and Auschwitz.
His most recent books are Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and 1936-1945: Nemesis, which received the Wolfson Literary Award for History and the Bruno Kreisky Prize in Austria for the Political Book of the Year, and was joint winner of the inaugural British Academy Book Prize; Making Friends with hitler: Lord Londonberry and Britain's Road to War, which won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography in 2005; and, most recently, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941.

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Praise for The End

A remarkable feat of historical scholarship and intelligent analysis

Jonathan Sumption, Spectator

Gripping yet scholarly ... the best attempt by far to answer the complex question of why Nazi Germany carried on fighting to total self-destruction. Kershaw, the author of the best biography of Hitler, is the finest sort of academic, for he combines impeccable scholarship with an admirable clarity of thought and prose

Antony Beevor, Telegraph

Masterly ... Kershaw's gripping and boldly intelligent work of scholarship ... will surely become the standard popularly accessible account of the Nazi system's terrible final phase

Financial Times

Brilliant ... nuanced and sophisticated ... undoubtedly a masterpiece

Mail on Sunday

Well-written, penetrating ... and ground-breaking

Andrew Roberts, Evening Standard

No one is better qualified to tell this grim story than Kershaw ... A master of both the vast scholarly literature on Nazism and the extraordinary range of its published and unpublished record, Kershaw combines vivid accounts of particular human experiences with wise reflections on big interpretive and moral issues ... No one has written a better account of the human dimensions of Nazi Germany's end

New York Times Book Review

Sober, judicious, clearly written and superbly well researched - a definitive history of the last months of the Third Reich

Richard Bessel, History Today

Magisterial ... distinguished

Daily Mail, Book of the Week

Kershaw is a sure-footed guide through the Hades of the final dark months of the war in Europe ... his is a thoughtful and thought-provoking account, which admirably combines analysis, historiography and commentary within a very readable narrative

Independent on Sunday

A compelling account of the bloody and deluded last days of the Third Reich ... this is far from being of mere academic interest ... The greatest strength of Kershaw's narrative is that he gives us much more than the view from the top ... Interwoven are insights into German life and death at all levels of society

The Times

[Kershaw] understands as well as any man alive the complex power structure that existed in Nazi Germany ... Gripping ... arguably the most convincing portrait of Germany's Götterdämmerung we have seen so far

Wall Street Journal

Britain's most feted and prolific historian of the Third Reich

Sunday Times

[Kershaw] is among the foremost western scholars of Nazi Germany. Although this book pursues a narrative of events between June 1944 and May 1945, its real business is to explore the psychology of the German people

Max Hastings, Sunday Times

An insightful study of how the Führer held his grip over the German people for so long

Telegraph

Comprehensive ... it generates real power

Observer