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To The Bitter End
When on July 20, 1944, a bomb—boldly placed inside the Wolf's Lair (Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia) by the German Anti-Nazi Resistance—exploded without killing the Führer, the subsequent coup d'état against the Third Reich collapsed. Most of the conspirators were summarily shot or condemned in show trials and sadistically hanged. The conspiracy involved a wide circle of former politicians, diplomats, and government officials as well as senior military men. The Resistance had started as early as 1933 and involved several planned putsches and assassination attempts. Hans B. Gisevius knew or met the major figures—including Beck, Canaris, Oster, Goerdeler, and von Stauffenberg—and barely escaped after the coup's failure. One of the few survivors of the German Anti-Nazi Resistance, Gisevius traces its history, from the 1933 Reichstag fire to Germany's defeat in 1945, in a book as riveting as it is exceptional.
668 pages, Paperback
Published August 22, 1998
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About the author
Hans Bernd Gisevius
18 books3 followersHans Bernd Gisevius was a German diplomat and intelligence officer during World War II. A strong (but covert) opponent of the Nazi regime, he served as a liaison in Zürich between Allen Dulles, station chief for the American OSS and the German Resistance forces in Germany
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 11, 2008
I FINALLY TRACKED YOU DOWN, YOU BASTARD. Some people might remember early on in my goodreads life when I was trying to figure out the name of this book; I found it while pulling my books out of storage.
The reason I remembered it in the first place is that it's memorable, constituting a sort of underground history of the Nazi movement from the point of view of Gisevius, a member of the German State Department who worked actively against the Nazis from the inside. These pages include a history of abortive attempts at rebellion from within Germany, an invaluable sketch of the characters involved in the incineration of the Reichstag, and of course, a detailed description of the attempt on Hitler's life.
Gisevius might appear tricky, but when I first read this, I was utterly convinced that he deserved to sleep well at night. I should probably reread it - he is an excellent storyteller, and this is a worthwhile book for anyone interested in the period.
The reason I remembered it in the first place is that it's memorable, constituting a sort of underground history of the Nazi movement from the point of view of Gisevius, a member of the German State Department who worked actively against the Nazis from the inside. These pages include a history of abortive attempts at rebellion from within Germany, an invaluable sketch of the characters involved in the incineration of the Reichstag, and of course, a detailed description of the attempt on Hitler's life.
Gisevius might appear tricky, but when I first read this, I was utterly convinced that he deserved to sleep well at night. I should probably reread it - he is an excellent storyteller, and this is a worthwhile book for anyone interested in the period.
February 16, 2021
I strongly recommend reading the Epilogue first for a political and personal setting in which to place the efforts in this book ... to end the Nazi regime, and to kill Hitler ... by powerful Germans ... The first 1/2 .. Toward the Catastrophe .. will be of interest to history buffs. I, however, cannot remember most names so actually engaged beginning with the chapter entitled ..Too Late ... And read it all in honor of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who lost his life in this effort.
May 20, 2023
A good account of the events, with interesting anecdotes.
February 12, 2009
Amazon 2008-12-12. How did I miss an important Hitler book!?? Thankfully, I've got Conrad watching my back...
Pretty good, and in parts exceptional; both the beginning and end were sorely in need of trimming, though. Gisevius's translation is exquisite, and his rich wordhorde of odd, midcentury amerikadeutsche solecisms is particularly savory -- selection made me laugh out loud, warmly, more than once. Gisevius makes some excellent points (although Primo Levi did better in Survival in Auschwitz) about the difficulties of rising up from within against a totalitarian state, but what's likely the most valuable aspect is a faithful currying of dicta, diction and dementia of National Socialism as a workaday culture; lines I'd chuckled over and dismissed in the crasser works of dystopianism (and even a few of Mr. Eric Blair's himself) here fall all about. It calls to mind the huge laughing cockroaches of Osip Mandelstam's Epigram for Stalin (better translation here), or Perrault's wench of a younger sister in "Diamonds and Toads".
I got really, really sick of pretty much all the characters by book's end, though.
Pretty good, and in parts exceptional; both the beginning and end were sorely in need of trimming, though. Gisevius's translation is exquisite, and his rich wordhorde of odd, midcentury amerikadeutsche solecisms is particularly savory -- selection made me laugh out loud, warmly, more than once. Gisevius makes some excellent points (although Primo Levi did better in Survival in Auschwitz) about the difficulties of rising up from within against a totalitarian state, but what's likely the most valuable aspect is a faithful currying of dicta, diction and dementia of National Socialism as a workaday culture; lines I'd chuckled over and dismissed in the crasser works of dystopianism (and even a few of Mr. Eric Blair's himself) here fall all about. It calls to mind the huge laughing cockroaches of Osip Mandelstam's Epigram for Stalin (better translation here), or Perrault's wench of a younger sister in "Diamonds and Toads".
I got really, really sick of pretty much all the characters by book's end, though.
November 10, 2014
While very long the details are almost in given in real time. However a very compelling insiders story to Germany during WWII
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews