Acht Tage im Mai: Die letzte Woche des Dritten Reiches

by Volker Ullrich

Die letzte Woche des Dritten Reiches hat begonnen. Hitler ist tot, aber der Krieg noch nicht zu Ende. Alles scheint zum Stillstand zu kommen, und doch ist alles in atemloser Bewegung. Volker Ullrich schildert Tag für Tag diese "zeitlose Zeit" und entführt den Leser in eine zusammenbrechende Welt voller Dramatik und Hoffnung, Gewalt und Angst. Sein Buch ist eine Zeitreise in den Untergang.
Während die Regierung Dönitz nach Flensburg ausweicht, rücken die alliierten Streitkräfte unaufhaltsam weiter vor. Berlin kapituliert, in Italien die Heeresgruppe C. Raketenforscher Wernher von Braun wird festgenommen. Es kommt zu einer Selbstmordepidemie und zu Massenvergewaltigungen. Letzte Todesmärsche, wilde Vertreibungen, abtauchende Nazi-Bonzen, befreite Konzentrationslager - all das gehört zu jener "Lücke zwischen dem Nichtmehr und dem Nochnicht", die Erich Kästner am 7. Mai 1945 in seinem Tagebuch vermerkt.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Germany, War, European History, Military History

317 pages, Hardcover

First published February 17, 2020

About the author

Volker Ullrich was born in Celle. He studied history, literature, philosophy and education at the University of Hamburg. From 1966 to 1969 he was assistant to the Hamburg’s Egmont Zechlin Chair. He graduated in 1975 after a dissertation on the Hamburg labour movement of the early 20th Century, after which he worked as a Hamburg school teacher. He was, for a time, a lecturer in politics at the Lüneburg University, and in 1988 he became a research fellow at Hamburg’s Foundation for 20th-century Social History. Since 1990 Ullrich has been the head of the political section of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit.
Ullrich has published articles and books on 19th- and 20th-century history. In 1996 he reviewed the thesis postulated in Daniel Goldhagen’s book Hitler's Willing Executioners that provoked fresh debate among historians.
In 1992 he was awarded the Alfred Kerr Prize for literary criticism, and, in 2008, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Jena.

Reviews

[Helga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Authored by the German historian and journalist Volker Ullrich, Eight Days in May recounts the last days of the Nazi Germany.
The book begins by Hitler’s suicide, relates the social and political events of the final 8 days of the Third Reich and ends with Germany’s unconditional surrender.

The book was excellently researched and compiled, but was a bit textbookish and at times it felt like I was reading dates and names only; a manual on ‘how it was’ rather than ‘how it was and how it felt’ if you know what I mean.

[Jill H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It will take me a little time to review this excellent book since there is so much in the 271 pages and how can I capture some of this little known history.
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WWII did not end with the suicide of Hitler on April 30, 1945 but dragged on for another eight days as indicated by the title of this fascinating book. Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, who Hitler named as his successor, set up a government in northern Germany in the city of Flensburg, one of the few places in the dying Reich which was still in control of Germany.

The Allies were demanding unconditional surrender but Donitz had a strategy which was shared by many of the Nazis who admitted that the war was lost.........surrender to the Western Allies but not to Russia. And so began the final eight days of the Reich that would last 1,000 years.

Of course we know that Donitz's plan was rejected by the Allies and the war continued in various parts of Europe.............death marches, massacres, mass suicides. These horrors were not ordered "from above" but by SS guards, members of the police, and party functionaries. Additionally, the German citizenry participated which indicated how much the virus of uninhibited violence and the hatred of the Jews had infected parts of German society.

Each chapter is dedicated chronologically to the eight days and there is an interesting epilogue which goes beyond those days to the days of the Occupation and German society.

I can't say enough about this book which packs so much information in 271 pages. It is beautifully written and will add to the knowledge of those who are WWII buffs. I highly recommend it........highly recommend it!!

[Geevee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Misery, denial, relief, retribution, hope, survival and defeated.

Volker Ullrich's account of the final eight day's of the 12 year Reich that was trumpeted as lasting a thousand, is a lively one that is broken down into each of those days. There is a short preamble around the preceding period with good positioning of 30th April and Hitler's suicide that leads to the 1st May and the book proper.

Over these eight days we read of the German leaders and military commanders reacting to the encroaching allied armies on all fronts of the Fatherland, and as the news of the death of Hitler slowing filters through their responses ranging from resistance to capitulation immediately.
We also read of the German civilians - some well known, some not - living under bombardment and certainly in the East their terror of the Russians' advance and what that will mean - and as the advance enters Berlin the stories of the brutality of occupation. There are descriptions of Germans across the country living in fear with no food, little shelter and a rapid realisation that Germans and Germany have many crimes to confront as occupation and a new world order begins.

This latter aspect [the crimes] is covered in the eight days as the allies liberate extermination and concentration camps, and also how Germans react and quickly remove signs of National Socialism and adopt the (now disproven, as Volker points out) refrain of "we didn't know".

One of the most interesting parts of the book is the handover of power after Hitler's death to Karl Dönitz, and the establishment of the Flensburg Government, and how he and the administration, attempted to effect a surrender of German troops in the West but continue to engage Russia in the East. This was rebuffed by Eisenhower as per the agreements made at the Yalta Conference in early 1945. Only unconditional surrender would suffice.

On the 7th May, the Flensburg Government's delegates lead by Alfred Jodl, in front of American, British, French and Russia senior officers, signed to end the war on the 8th. Wilhelm Keitel signed another surrender agreement on Stalin's insistence in Berlin late on 8th May. The war had ended.

There is a short chapter on some key aspects post 8th May, notably the dissolution of the Flensburg Government on 23rd May and Dönitz's arrest, along with many others. There is also brief information on key Nazis and their fate, and how areas of Germany were administered, principally in respect of refugees [Displaced Persons] and Jews.

A good book about a momentous and influential period of just over a week on the ending of WWII and all our lives since.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

An in-depth accounting of the last days of the Third Reich. The author gives us an up-close view of Germany’s collapse: the arrogant power struggles of the Nazi high command; the rape, violence, and plundering inflicted by the Soviet army in Berlin, death marches and massacres of prisoners of war and forced laborers by diehard Nazis.

An excellent read.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it" (from Shakespeare's Macbeth) and nothing made more obvious the utter self centered, meretriciousness, vulgarity and worthlessness of all those who held power in the last eight horrifying days of the Third Reich's ridiculously drawn out and pointlessly lengthy death knell. It is a shocking tale of elaborately uniformed, sharply tailored, bemedaled and grotesquely titled nonentities shuffling bits of paper while millions of displaced men, women and children - concentration camp inmates, refugees, displaced persons and forced workers - shuffled along the roads of the fast dwindling thousand year Reich desperate for their misery and suffering to end. To read the barbaric banalities issued by the likes of Donitz and Speer makes you wish that they had faced the justice of Czech partisans like the revolting Karl Hanke (the last gaultier of Breslau who exhorted the civilians of 'fortress' Breslau to fight and die for the glory of the Reich while himself fleeing by private airplane) rather then the dubious 'justice' of Nuremberg (and least there is any doubt I believe Donitz and Speer should have hung at Nuremberg).

Nothing shows the true face of the Third Reich then its last eight days. It was no Götterdämmerung - of good men, brave, true, standing alone, facing the overwhelming onslaught of all that was evil and wrong and dying honourably so that their exemplary sacrifice would provide an inspirator for future generations. Nothing could be further from what happened in those eight days or the antics of the 'paladins' of the thousand year Reich. It is a tale of the banal, but horrifying, antics of monsters without conscience continuing to relentlessly cause death and destruction to no purpose. Volker Ullrich's 'Eight Days in May' is a book that is essential reading for anyone interested in 20th century history. In those eight days you will read about countless acts of meaningless and unnecessary misery and suffering but in the end you will also see how something died with a thoroughness that nobody could quite believe at the time. That for many this was in part simply denial of responsibility but in truth it freed those too young and those not yet to be born to create a new Germany which would face up and accept responsibility for its past.

That all the Nuremberg criminals and those from countless other trials would have loathed the world, and most particularly the Germany, that emerged after WWII is one of history's greatest examples of schadenfreude for the rest of us. Can you imagine how enraged Hitler & co. would have been by Angela Merkel's 2015 statement "Wir schaffen das" and follow up decision to allow 400,000 refugees into Germany, all of whom Hitler would have certainly regarded as "Lebensunwertes Leben" (unworthy of life).

Hitler wanted to tear down the world onto his funeral pyre but what he really fed the pyre with was the Nazi party, ideology and beliefs. Rarely can so much horror have produced a result that almost tempts one to say it was necessary. Those eight days in May were unspeakable but that they made the resurrection of Nazism impossible can never be forgotten.

I started this review by saying anyone interested in 20th century history should read. I expand that now - everyone should read this book to understand that no matter how strong and immovable, there is no avoiding comeuppance for life's bullies.

A really remarkable and splendid book.

[ConalPriest · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eight Days in May illuminates a period, albeit short, that is so often darkened by Hitler’s long shadow; that between his death and the end of the war. The end of Germany’s war is often intimately tied to the life of the man who had taken it there. However, the Karl Dönitz government that succeeded the suicide was not simply an administrative means to sign a surrender agreement. Volker Ullrich examines, for example, the way in which Dönitz commanded Wehrmacht troops to continue fighting the Red Army, leading to further death well after Germany was defeated in all but name, whilst also attempting to broker partial surrenders with the Western powers. However, the Germany of early May 1945 was, despite Dönitz’s attempts to produce policy, often sand through his fingers. As the channels of German influence and communication narrowed in those final days, as did the ability of Dönitz and the remaining administrative functionaries to govern effectively. Therefore, the book is also an account of a chaos. The reader is confronted with a panoramic view panorama; we sweep across the scene and take in failed surrender negotiations, fanatic gauleiters, and the horrific spectacle of columns of refugees and Jews being marched through it all.
The structure, despite ostensibly capturing each of the eight days as an individual chapter, does allow events to stretch into the past and future from their narrative origin in early May. Through this method, Ullrich produces for the reader a legible guide to a chaotic, often overlooked period, one that is panoptic in its narrative scope, but laced with the primary accounts necessary to tell a human story.
The work is damning of Dönitz and his government, of the mindless death that was visited upon soldier and civilian alike, and perhaps also of those Germans whose complicity made so many crimes possible. He is, however, also critical of the Allies’ activities and policies during early May. The Allies appear at times to be uncompromising in their desire for unconditional surrender, and the violence that lay in the wake of the Red Army is shown in all its brutality. Even the US, so often conjured as liberator in the popular imagination of 1945, is shaded into grey as the conditions of German POWs in the infamous Rhine Meadows camps is raised.
For those wishing to learn more about that sharp final breath of Hitler’s war, before the Allied rearrangement of Germany began in earnest, this is surely required reading.

[Mosco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Libro molto denso: come si è arrivati a quegli 8 giorni, cosa è successo subito dopo, che ne è stato dei protagonisti, anche molti di quelli meno noti. Cosa è rimasto in piedi della Germania e dell'Europa, quanti morti e quante battaglie ancora dopo la capitolazione.
Interessante, molto.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, gripping and detailed reconstruction of the last days of the Nazi regime, from Hitler's suicide until the signing of Germany's complete surrender. Brilliantly researched and written, this engrossing account is one of the best WWII books I've read (and I've read... entirely too many).

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Covers the events, power struggles, and such after Hitler and his wife committed suicide. Some good info, not really a great book. My recommendation for someone that wants to read about this subject the book - After Hitler - The Last Ten Days of the War in Europe by Michael Jones. A much better book.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wars Never End Cleanly

Author Volker Ullrich has written a compact book that focuses on the last eight days of the Third Reich following Hitler’s suicide. German military collapse was all but total but the final, unconditional surrender of Germany to the Allies was beset by disagreements among surviving top Nazis and the chaos that reigns whenever a war ends.

For many, the narrow focus of the book, 270 pages length, is about right to add to one’s knowledge of the final days of Germany’s collapse and surrender. And it is a reminder that wars never end cleanly or entirely justly, as the U.S. has learned in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

One surprise in Ullrich’s narrative was the extent of the delusional hopes of Joseph Goebbels and Karl Doenitz as each, separately in these eight days, sought to orchestrate a split between the Western powers and the Soviet Union.

Astonishingly, after Hitler’s suicide on April 30, 1945, Goebbels reached out that very evening to Soviet General Vasily Chuikov, whose troops were well inside Berlin. “Goebbels hoped that the conflicts of interest between the western Allies and their Soviet partner would come to a head and that the Soviet leadership might be inclined to desert the anti-Hitler front,” Ullrich writes. The Soviet general was incredulous that Third Reich leaders thought that memories were so short that his country would agree to such a proposal, given the millions upon millions of Soviet civilians as well as soldiers who had died at the hands of the German invaders.

Hitler’s named successor, Admiral Karl Donitz, was as unrealistic in his appeals to the British and Americans and, until the very end, was hypocritical as well as he asked German soldiers and citizenry to continue to make senseless sacrifice to give him additional negotiating time with the West. Convinced that the Western allies did not want to see the spread of Communism, he assumed that by delaying surrender British and American troops would occupy a greater area of Germany, perhaps even including Berlin. Having had contempt for agreements as a Nazi, Donitz apparently discounted the possibility that the Western armies under Eisenhower would honor the occupational boundaries agreed with Stalin.

And, to the very end, Donitz believed that in defeat political democracy could still be avoided in Germany. In that belief he may have been encouraged by the fact that he and his entourage were not immediately arrested. Churchill, for one, was inclined to leave Donitz in place as the top administrator under Allied control for a time, until new appointees could run vital services, ensure civilian order, and replace Nazi administrators. The Americans and Soviets rejected this notion and Donitz and other top Nazis were arrested about a week after surrender was signed.

As the Third Reich collapsed in its final days, author Ullrich provides some striking accounts of human behavior. Female Soviet army soldiers entering Hitler’s underground bunker had a priority: Where is the wardrobe of Hitler’s mistress? They quickly carried off Eva Braun’s elegant clothes. German civilians in Berlin risked their lives, while the battle was still raging, to fetch water or to fall upon dead horses for meat. The rape of German women and widespread looting by Soviet soldiers is better known. Touched on by Ullrich, but perhaps underemphasized, were the actions of fanatical Nazis to summarily execute those Germans who realized the war had been lost and who shed their uniforms or otherwise refused to fight further.

And, although this was largely the story of the months to come, Ullrich recounts the challenge at war’s end of some 11 million displaced persons. Some 7.6 million of these, including two million prisoners of war, were foreign slave laborers. The Germans feared that this population would exact revenge, and with some justification. Slave laborers killed their cruel bosses and foremen. Displaced persons, in their desperation, ransacked German farms.

Furthermore, the Allies had not made plans to house and feed the displaced. This was particularly tragic for the 50,000 to 70,000 Jewish displaced persons, many of whom were near death. And, even though fighting had stopped, many Jews in the East experienced continued persecution and succumbed to starvation and disease.

Expanding beyond the eight days in the title, Ullrich recounts the efforts to repatriate the millions of displaced persons, the main approach the Allies took to address this huge problem. By September, only 1.2 million displaced persons remained in Germany. Those from Western Europe were eager to return to their home countries. The Poles and other Eastern European nationalities were much less eager. The Soviets often punished the 4.1 million from their territories, of whom 2.25 million were handed over to Soviets by the West.

Ullrich has chosen to explore the desperate, disorganized, and irrational behavior of Nazi leadership in the last eight days of the war. And he tells the story of the American, British and Soviet response as the allies sought to honor their own agreement regarding territory to be occupied by each country and to bring the defeat of the Third Reich to conclusion. This is a well-told and informative narrative, succinct and enlightening.

[Brendan Monroe · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rise and fall of Nazi Germany has been exhaustively covered, with the release of dozens, if not hundreds, of books on the topic every year. Despite that, common knowledge of the regime's downfall seems to end with Hitler killing himself in his bunker. But what happened in the days immediately following?

After his fantastic two-volume biography of Hitler, German historian Volker Ullrich is back with what could very well be the third volume — "Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich."

Most of the other books I've read about the unraveling of Nazi Germany have come from an American or British perspective, but as a German himself Ullrich provides a point of view that those books lack.

Rather than rejoice in Allied victories, Ullrich is more often examining Germans' denial and their refusal to take responsibility for the horrors perpetrated by the regime, though he also highlights the efforts made by "good" Germans during the war.

I never knew, for example, that Hollywood actress Marlene Dietrich accompanied the advancing American army as it battled its way up through Italy and then, later, across France into Germany as a "captain" — performing for GIs the whole way. Dietrich stated that she did so because she felt some responsibility, having emigrated from Germany herself.

Similarly, Ullrich writes about the actions of men like Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, and Kurt Schumacher, the chairman of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), in light of the price they paid for protesting the Nazi party and the role they'd go on to play in post-war Germany. Attention is also paid to another notable figure who would become German chancellor — Willy Brandt.

As a non-German who knew little about how the country rebuilt following World War 2, and even less about the backgrounds of the politicians who would assist in that rebuilding, these parts were really enlightening.

As he did in his comprehensive Hitler biographies, Ullrich never falters at any point from pointing out the grievous crimes committed by the Nazis and the assistance they received from a populace that was far too eager to look away.

[Kamil Bryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Na wstępie chciałbym podziękować panu bibliotekarzowi z Biblioteki Miejskiej w Luboniu za polecenie tej książki. Sam z siebie nie sięgnąłbym pewnie po “Osiem dni maja” wychodząc z założenia, że istnieją ciekawsze tematy niż dogorywanie III Rzeszy. Cieszę się, że pozycja trafiła ostatecznie do moich rąk, gdyż lektura była ogromnie satysfakcjonująca.

Każdy z rozdziałów poświęcony został osobnemu dniu z maja 1945. Ullrich opisuje działania niemieckiego rządu, sytuację na froncie i w okupowanych już przez aliantów częściach Niemiec. Oczywiście autor nie ogranicza się czasowo jedynie do konkretnego dnia. Wydarzenia stanowią często punkt wyjścia do szerszych rozważań. Nierzadko cofniemy się w czasie, by zrozumieć kontekst danej sytuacji. Poznamy też życiorysy postaci ważnych dla powojennej historii Niemiec.

Dawno nie czytałem tak dobrze opatrzonej przypisami pozycji. Książka nie jest pracą naukową, widać jednak akademicki warsztat autora. Ullrich sięga często po wspomnienia uczestników opisywanych wydarzeń, nie jest to zatem jedynie synteza prac innych historyków.

Mimo mocnego akademickiego zacięcia książkę napisano w bardzo przystępny sposób. Język nie jest przeintelektualizowany, a autor zawsze przytacza kontekst potrzebny do zrozumienia danego zagadnienia. Brawa również dla tłumacza, który sprawił, że książkę czyta się, jak gdyby została pierwotnie napisana po polsku.

Warto też wspomnieć, że autor zachował wyważony, obiektywny ton. Dla Ullricha, Niemca, praca nad książką musiała być obciążająca emocjonalnie. Nie widać tego jednak w treści, brak narracji o Niemcach-ofiarach, brak też skrzywienia w drugą stronę. Ocenę postawy ówczesnych Niemców autor pozostawia współczesnym im świadkom, przytaczając ich wypowiedzi bądź zapiski.

Myślę, że nie będzie przesadą stwierdzenie, iż praca Ullricha to pozycja obowiązkowa dla każdego zainteresowanego historią.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very very good.

[Agris Fakingsons · Rating 4 out of 5]

..no "ļoti interesanti" līdz "pārlieku politiski". bet karš jau viena liela politika vien ir, tāpēc jāpieņem tas, kas ir. un lai gan grāmata it kā vēsta par astoņām dienām maijā, tā, protams, aptver visu Otro pasaules karu un visu ap to. radās jautājums – vai ir vēl kas tāds, kas no šī kara ir palicis nepastāstīts? patika epiloga sarkasms par vāciešiem, kas pēc kara visi kā viens taisnojušies, ka ir palīdzējuši vismaz vienam ebrejam ar maizi vai ko citu, ka klausījušies ziņas radio un ir bijuši pret Hitlera politiku, ka viņi patiesībā ir lielākie cietēji un kāpēc pret viņiem tā izturas, ha! utt. :)

[Writemoves · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am an avid reader of World War II history. If this book had any failings, it was because I did not learn that much new. I found William Shirer’s book, End of a Berlin Diary to be a far more interesting book on post war Germany 1945 as he was on the ground. That being said, Ullrich’s book is obviously well researched and very useful reading for those interested in the collapse of Hitler and his Third Reich.

Ullrich, like Shirer, emphasized how much the German people were in denial, specifically about the atrocities committed against Jewish people during the war.

There is a lot of ugliness and violence during this time in May 1945. More unnecessary killings, rapes, plunder and violence. Man at his very worst, particularly from the vengeful Russians but no army is immune to incredible inhumanity.

[Nick Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

lots of fun anecdotes, but not a suitable reference even for the eight days covered.

[Brett Milam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-known (some would argue cliché at this point, but it’s eternally apt) phrase, coined by philosopher Hannah Arendt when describing the horrors of Nazi Germany — and in particular, the phrase was applied to Adolph Eichmann, one of the main architects behind the Holocaust — is the “banality of evil.” That is, the ways in which the machinations of terror and genocide become as routine as pushing paper; where evil becomes the wallpaper to daily living in a modern, Western society; where those who perpetrated unspeakable tragedies went back home to their wives, children and pets, somehow separating the two; and where the banality is turning the machinery of death into a bureaucracy.

Let me humbly proffer another way of thinking about the horrors of Nazi Germany after reading the German historian Volker Ullrich’s 2021 book, Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich: the propensity to parry. That is, in the immediate — by immediate, I mean that as literal as I can, as Ullrich’s book almost gave me whiplash in describing just how quickly “normal” life began to resume in cities hollowed out by bombs and depravity — wake of the Third Reich’s collapse, which as with most things, was foresaw months ahead of time with the advancement of American, British and Canadian troops from the west and the Red Army from the East, and particularly pronounced after Adolph Hitler’s cowardly suicide (the rare time those two words can be put together) on April 30, 1945, was how seemingly everyone in German society, from the Nazi elites to the regular German citizenry, parried away any suggestion of culpability with or for the horrors of National Socialism, as if Hitler had been conjured out of thin air and disappeared as suddenly. After all, as Ullrich pointed out, it simply wasn’t the case that the German people were able to rid themselves of Hitler; that had to happen externally. That parrying manifested in outright denial, pretending as if you were secretly helping Jews all along, or a general sense of apathy (“Please don’t detail the horrors of the Holocaust in the newspapers.” (that’s my own summation)), or worse yet, the ways in which many of the Nazi elite and sympathizers were able to either evade justice with light-to-no prison time and/or resume operating in polite society again as if the prior 12 years of the Reich’s hoped-for thousand-year reign had never happened.

It’s appalling, quite frankly, and Ullrich isn’t without words to describe the ways in which the German populace tried to turn its head from reality. However, while I’m coming out strong, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remark upon how the book offers some room for optimism in this regard. As Ullrich notes at the end, the story of Germany in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Third Reich was that of a military defeat and collapse so complete, “its physical destruction so vast, and its crime so unprecedented that more than a few contemporary observers doubted whether this vanquished nation could have any future at all.”

The fact that Germany would go on to have a future in rather short order relative to historical time, no less, is rather remarkable. Ullrich calls the end of the Third Reich an “end,” but also a “beginning,” He provides a quote from centrist politician Hildegard Hamm-Brücher saying “never again would she feel so intensely what it meant to be allowed to live on.” Because that’s the other thing worth remembering: Yes, the vast majority of German peoples and even some contingents in the occupied countries of Denmark, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere who collaborated with the Nazis, lacked a “general sense of self-blame,” as Ullrich refers to it, but also, within Germany, occupied countries and the expatriates who fled Germany, this was a new beginning for them.

One of the parts of the book that made me tear up was when Canadian troops liberated the Netherlands, an 18-year-old Jewish woman, Cary Ulreich, remarked, “Drank half a glass of vermouth. Went to bed at 12:30, but at 2:30, we still hadn’t fallen asleep. How we talked, and how loudly! We’re allowed to do that now. Joy, happiness, gratitude that we escaped with our lives.”

They can do that now! So beautiful and lovely. The human spirit is a heck of a thing, folks. It sounds sappy and cliché, but the fact that the human spirit can endure the horrors of Nazi occupation for a number of years and come out the other side, not unscathed of course, but still vibrant? So beautiful.

In a contrast to the vibrancy of hope in the human spirit is the abject cowardice and delusions in abundance in the finals days of the Third Reich. After Hitler kills himself and his high-ranking associates flee his bunker in the hopes of seeking passage elsewhere, the only image that came to mind was that of cockroaches scurrying away from the dawning of a new light. As it happens, too many for my comfort were able to scurry away, whether by offing themselves before capture (or even after capture), getting to South American countries, or just simply blending back into polite society.

Speaking of contrast, reading the book is impossible without thinking about the context of the Cold War to come between the United States and the Soviet Union. The contrast between the Nazis’ abject fear of the Red Army approaching from the East and willing to do virtually anything, and eventually surrendering, to American and British forces in the West, is stark. They were terrified of the Red Army and for good reason.

One can’t speak of WWII without stepping into tragedy after tragedy and horror after horror and one of those is how much pillaging and raping occurred once the Red Army did take over previously occupied German countries and cities in Germany. An unspeakable number of German women were raped, sometimes multiple times. The depravity shown by the Germans, particularly at Stalingrad, does not then justify what the Red Army did to civilians in Germany.

Something I marveled at while reading Ullrich’s book, and which reflects what I’ve previously written about regarding embracing my ignorance, is that despite how ubiquitous the teachings of WWII are, there is still so much I don’t know, as revealed by this book.

For one, I never knew about the, for lack of a better word, unfortunate, handling of recently liberated Jews from the concentration camps by the Americans. That is, the Jews were lumped in with everyone else instead of being recognized for the particular horror they had went through and that merely replacing the guards from Nazi to American wasn’t enough. Fortunately, American officials recognized how awful this was and separated the Jews out and allowed those within the camps to be the leaders.

Another thing I never really put much of any thought to is the issue of displaced persons, as they were called at the time. That is, millions of foreign peoples brought to Germany to be slave labor and to be what essentially enabled the gears of the Holocaust and Germany’s improbable two-front war to continue apace. Once Germany surrendered, the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union had to deal with the repatriation of those millions of people, which actually was quite the logistical success for the Western countries, not so much for the Soviet Union, who treated DPs rather horribly it seems.

A welcome addition to my thinking about WWII is the role Ullrich supplies throughout the book women played, whether as war correspondents, or just their voices in the wake of the Third Reich’s collapse. I appreciated that, but also, I wish I had known about American reporter, Lee Miller, for example, whose most famous photo was a shot of herself taking a bath in Hitler’s bathtub in his private Munich apartment on May 1, 1945. If that’s not the coolest sentence you’ve ever read, please read it again.

Ullrich doesn’t expand upon it, but I made a note as to another item I wasn’t familiar with before: the fanatical Nazi guerilla movement known as Werewolf, which perpetrated evils against the attempts to rebuild Germany in the places Allied forces had retaken cities, such as murdering Franz Oppenhoff, who the Allies had named the mayor of the westernmost Germany city of Aaachen. I’d be interested to know how long that kinda guerilla movement lasted.

Something I’ve always found interesting, whether in fiction, such as Stephen King’s The Stand, or in nonfiction, is how do people rebuild after something apocalyptic? The Third Reich and its barbaric sweep across history in such short order must be thought of as apocalyptic for those who experienced it; ergo, I’m fascinated by how you reconstitute after that as a people, as a polity, as a culture and as a society. That aspect of the book, which Ullrich provides great detail on, particularly the political part of rebuilding, was fascinating to me and provided perhaps my favorite lines from the book.

Kurt Schumacher, who would become chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and warned against the rise of Hitler, remarked in a 1932 speech that Nazi rabble-rousing was a “constant appeal to people’s bastard within.” (If that doesn’t feel pertinent to today …)

He continued, “If we recognize anything in National Socialism, it is the fact that for the first time in German politics, human stupidity has been completely mobilized.”

Despite my policy differences with Schumacher in terms of him advocating socialism of a different kind, I love this man. He was arrested for his words, surveilled by the Gestapo and sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp. But survived. His level of bravery is remarkable and if there isn’t a movie about him, I need to see one!

Ullrich’s book hits upon several areas for me: 1.) Empathy, of course, at the plight of all those affected by the Third Reich; 2.) Anger at the ways in which the Nazis and the German people tried to acclimate to a new normal by turning a blind eye to recent atrocities; 3.) Hopeful at the endurance of the human spirit; and 4.) Wondering just how a society, but particularly the German society, would “rebound” after Nazism and the whiplash sense I felt at just how quickly the rebounding already began mere days after Hitler’s suicide.

If you think you know everything already about WWII and the Nazis, I promise you you do not and Ullrich’s book would be a welcome addition to someone’s further knowledge on the subject. I highly recommend it and at 271 pages (a good chunk at the end is devoted to the Notes for sourcing purposes), it’s an accessible accounting of the historical record.

[Buchbesprechung · Rating 5 out of 5]

REZENSION – Völlig zu Recht kam „Acht Tage im Mai“, das kürzlich im Verlag C. H. Beck erschienene Buch des Historikers Volker Ullrich (76) über „die letzte Woche des Dritten Reiches“, im Juni auf Platz 1 der Sachbuch-Bestenliste. Denn überaus interessant und fesselnd geschrieben, dabei trotz der schnellen Abfolge damaliger Ereignisse vom Leser leicht nachvollziehbar, schafft es der Autor, seinen Lesern einen umfassenden Einblick in die militärisch und politisch komplexen Geschehnisse nach Hitlers Selbstmord bis zur Kapitulation zu vermitteln.
Volker Ullrich schildert chronologisch Tag für Tag diese „zeitlose Zeit“, die Woche des für die Deutschen nur scheinbaren Stillstands in der „Lücke zwischen dem Nichtmehr und dem Nochnicht“, wie der Schriftsteller Erich Kästner zitiert wird. Wir lesen vom täglichen Vorrücken der sowjetischen Truppen vom Osten und der Alliierten vom Westen, von Massenvergewaltigungen und „Selbstmordepidemien“, von Todesmärschen und Vertreibungen, von befreiten Konzentrationslagern und ersten Absetzbewegungen höchster Nazi-Funktionäre. Und wir erfahren von ersten Anzeichen politischer Differenzen zwischen den Westalliierten und den Sowjets, die bald zum Kalten Krieg führten.
Aus unzähligen Quellen, auf die der Autor in einem 30-seitigen Anhang verweist, ergänzt um ein Literatur- und Personenregister, formt Volker Ullrich aus „historischen Miniaturen und Mosaiksteinen“, wie es der Klappentext verspricht, „ein Panorama dieser letzten Woche des Deutschen Reiches“. Ein fortwährender Wechsel der Perspektive – mal aus Sicht der heimatlos oder ausgebombten Deutschen, belegt durch Tagebuchnotizen bekannter (Anne Frank) und unbekannter Personen, mal aus Sicht der provisorischen Regierung unter Großadmiral Dönitz sowie abwechselnd aus der Perspektive der westalliierten sowie sowjetischen Kommandeure und Staatschefs – lässt beim Leser aus Puzzleteilen ein umfassendes Gesamtbild entstehen, ohne den roten Faden des historischen Zusammenhang zu verlieren.
Nicht nur historisch interessierte Leser, sondern auch Freunde der Literatur kommen bei Lektüre dieses Buches auf ihre Kosten, da Ullrich einige Bücher zeitgenössischer Autoren als Quellen nutzt. Natürlich gehören die Tagebücher von Viktor Klemperer oder Bertolt Brecht ebenso dazu wie die „Erinnerungen eines Davongekommenen“ (2007) von Ralph Giordano. Aber auch das Kriegstagebuch „Eine Frau in Berlin“, das mit Unterstützung des Schriftstellers Kurt W. Marek alias C. W. Ceram erst 1953 mit Verspätung veröffentlicht wurde, schildert die Schrecken des Kriegsausgangs. Sogar etwas Hollywood-Glamour fehlt nicht in Ullrichs Buch, wenn er die Suche des deutschen Hollywoodstars Marlene Dietrich nach ihrer Schwester in Bergen-Belsen schildert (dazu: Heinrich Thies, „Fesche Lola, brave Liesel. Marlene Dietrich und ihre verleugnete Schwester“, 2017).
Beim Lesen dieses Buches läuft das komplexe Endzeit-Geschehen der letzten Kriegswoche wie im Film in packend kurzer Szenenfolge vor dem geistigen Auge ab - ohne die bei historischen Werken oft langatmigen Ausschweifungen. Im Gegenteil: Volker Ullrich lässt seinen Lesern kaum Zeit zum Reflektieren. Gerade diese schnelle Szenenfolge ist es, die bei der Lektüre für anhaltende Spannung sorgt und das Buch „Acht Tage im Mai“ auch solchen Lesern empfehlenswert macht, denen das Genre historischer Sachbücher sonst eher nicht zusagt. Wer vom Film „Der Untergang“ (2004) über die letzten Tage Hitlers im Führerbunker fasziniert war, findet in Ullrichs Buch eine hervorragende literarische Fortsetzung.

[Susan Paxton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not finish. It's unquestionably useful, but the "translator" apparently poured the text into Google Translate. It is truly astonishing that a major publisher would permit a book from an important author to receive such shabby treatment.

[Alison FJ]

How does a war actually end? One day, people across Europe are shooting at "enemy" soldiers, taking prisoners, denouncing neighbors, murdering civilians, dropping bombs on cities, shooting down airplanes, sinking ships, torturing prisoners, planning and carrying out the genocide of European Jewry. And then, another day, the war is over? How does that work?

Roughly speaking, 50-60 million were killed as a direct result of WW2 and another 20-30 million from famine or disease caused or exacerbated by the war. Every single one of those deaths was unnecessary. But it's very hard to grasp what 90 million or 50 million or even 6 million deaths means. Perhaps for that very reason, Daniel Mendelsohn made an entire book out of looking for six of those six millionThe Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. Eight Days in May offers a different way to focus on a smaller portion of the vast tapestry of horror that was the Second World War. For months - arguably even for years, ever since Stalingrad – it was clear that Germany would eventually lose the Second World War. And yet millions and millions of lives would be lost because, among other reasons, Hitler simply would not allow the war to end.

This book covers the steps between Hitler's suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30, just ten days after his 56th birthday and the official end of the war on May 8th (although depending on how you tell time, one could argue it was just after midnight on May 9). And the number of people who died in those last days is astonishing. Ullrich goes day by day, but dips back in time to provide background on the events transpiring. So the discovery of a group of half-dead concentration camp prisoners goes back to describe the beginning of their death march; the "liberation" of the Netherlands goes back to describe the conditions of the murderous occupation of the Netherlands (including the fate of Anne Frank and her family).

The stories told here are simply terrible.

And yet, despite the horrors it recounts, this is a simply fantastic book. It's the third book by Volker Ullrich I've read (the others were his two-volume biography of Hitler) and I'm just so impressed. His research is impeccable and his writing is both accessible and, especially in this book, simply riveting. Ullrich manages to combine empathy with a calling to account (after three books, I can say with some confidence that Ullrich will never pass up an opportunity to remind his readers about what a lying, opportunistic, murderous snake Speer was, for example). I strongly recommend this for anyone who is remotely interested in WW2 or who needs any kind of reminder of the horrors of war.

[Monty Milne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author was born in the town of Celle, which I have visited. I was much struck by the beauty of its delightful architecture, which was untouched by wartime destruction. However, “Bomber” Harris had slated it for annihilation, and if the war had gone on just another day or two, it would have been reduced to rubble – even though this destruction could have had no conceivable military value. Was this just vengeful spite? An uncomfortable thought -like the mass rapes of women and girls carried out by the invading Soviets. And yet – as Ulrich makes clear – the post Hitler government were still committed Nazis, and atrocities were routinely carried out by the Germans right up to the end. The complicity or participation of the Wehrmacht and a large part of the German civilian population in these crimes is clear. Ulrich does not shy away from this.

When my regiment left the Ruhr in 1993 the Colonel gave a speech after a dinner at which many local worthies were present. “When we came here in 1945, it was as enemies” he said. “But now we leave as friends.” An elderly German who had lived through the war stood up and corrected him: “You did not come here as enemies, but as liberators!”. Well, yes, but I doubt if he and many others really thought that at the time. On the evidence of this book, huge numbers who had been fanatically pro-Nazi switched suddenly and completely to being sycophantically pro-Allied. This leaves me unimpressed – but of course, it’s easy to feel contemptuous if one has not had to live through anything comparable.

There is not much here about the military side of things in these last days – understandably, as resistance was rapidly collapsing. Nevertheless quite a lot of fierce fighting took place right to the end, and I would have liked a bit more detail on this. Also, some will feel that others (e.g. Anthony Beevor, Cornelius Ryan, etc) have already said as much as needs to be said on this subject.

There is a very funny Mitchell and Webb sketch called “The New Fuhrer” (you can see it on Youtube) in which Mitchell gives an amusing impersonation of Grand Admiral Doenitz (despite looking nothing like him). The point of the joke is that Doenitz is delighted to get the top job and very deflated when he realises he is only there to surrender. On the evidence of this book, it seems that Mitchell and Webb were not so off the mark: the real Doenitz – along with so many other leading Nazis – had a remarkable failure to grasp the realities of the situation almost to the very end.

[Tim Armstrong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe it's 2.5/5.

This was only okay. The author seems to lose focus a lot, especially in the back half of the book. Long tangents are taken to topics that aren't really related to the main topic of the book. I found this very distracting and also felt like they were there to pad out the length of the book. When the author did stick to his main topic, I found the book to be interesting, but unfortunately not interesting enough to increase my rating.

[piet van genderen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Een gedetailleerde beschrijving van de chaotische dagen die voorafgingen aan de algehele capitulatie van Nazi Duitsland in 1945. Geen aangename lectuur. Jammer dat de auteur zijn onderzoekswerk met nadruk etaleert: 25% van de tekst bestaat uit noten en literatuur.

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just a meandering collection of anecdotes about the last 8 days of the European Theater in WWII. Doesn't seem to have any point. A lot of it is just filler. For example, there is a long joint biography of Marlene Dietrich and her sister.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A day-by-day account of the principal events of the final 8 days of the Third Reich, which are among the most tumultuous days of the 20th century. What was most incredible to me was that even as their country lay in rubble and ruins and scores of cowardly Nazi bigwigs either killed themselves or went into hiding, the Nazi leadership that remained still believed they could stave off final disaster with "miracle weapons" or by engineering a collapse of the anti-Nazi coalition by sowing discord and rivalry among the Allies. Even worse, the ordinary German people, by and large, failed to acknowledge, let alone show remorse, for the monstrous crimes of Hitler and his thugs. Instead, they grumbled about the immense suffering the war had caused them, casting themselves as the true victims of the Third Reich, the regime that just months before they believed would bring glory to the Fatherland for a thousand years. The demons that possessed this people took many years after Hitler's death to be exorcised.

[Mirtha Rivadeneira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente libro 📖 lei y sigo leyendo muchos libros sobre la Segunda Guerra Mundial , pero todos terminaban con la invasión Rusa , Americana , Inglesa , canadiense y luego 🧐siempre me preguntaba que paso después , ahora con este libro no tengo más que preguntarme !! Cosas nuevas , se ve que el escritor hizo una exhaustiva investigación de los hechos acontecidos.👍

[Fabiano Parmesan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il diario di quanto accadde in Germania dopo il suicidio di Hitler.
Gli eventi precipitano. Lo svolgimento dell'atto finale di un'era. La caduta degli dei del Reich millenario.

[Franky Van Buggenhout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alhoewel dit boek vol zit met historische gegevens belicht het op een heel leesbare manier de laatste dagen van de oorlog vanuit Duits standpunt.

[Yannic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ullrich erzählt spannende und verstörende Episoden aus den letzten Tagen des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Dabei zeigt er einige Kontinuitäten zwischen dem Hitler-Reich und der Dönitz-Regierung auf. Alles in allem fehlt mir in diesem Buch aber eine relevante "Take home message". Es handelt sich eher um eine Aneinanderreihung von Ereignissen als um eine Analyse der letzten Kriegstage.

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most historical accounts of the Third Reich date its end to the minute that Adolf Hitler put a bullet in his brain, on April 30, 1945. Much as it would be nice to tie up historical events with a nice little bow, however, the facts are usually more complicated than that. The Third Reich did die with Hitler, to be sure, but the death throes took a little longer.

Volker Ullrich writes in "Eight Days In May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich," that nothing was assured when Hitler died. Germany was losing the war, but efforts were still made to have some sort of "peace with honor" (to borrow a phrase from Nixon) and to allow refugees and German army personnel the chance to flee to the west (away from the revenge-minded Soviets). Karl Donitz, Hitler's successor, was not about to let Hitler's dream of a thousand-year Reich die so swiftly, despite the obvious fate that his nation was about to endure. But the tide of history was sweeping over the Nazi regime, and it was only a matter of days before the final collapse happened.

Ullrich, whose has written a two-volume biography of Hitler (the second volume I have yet to read, but the first was spellbinding), documents the many varied reactions not just to Hitler's death but also to the growing realization that the war was essentially over, and that Germany would have to account for its crimes. Far from repentant, however, many consoled themselves with the false narrative that "we had no idea" what went on in the camps or "the Wehrmacht didn't participate in war crimes" (they most assuredly did). Ullrich captures portraits of Germans both high and low in the dying embers of Hitler's slaughter house who bent over backwards to distance themselves from their crimes, including Albert Speer (whose self-mythologized status as "the Good Nazi" would be undermined only after his death, when the full extent of his involvement with slave labor from concentration camps was revealed) and Wernher Von Braun (whose achievements with rocket technology came at a high cost to the lives of concentration camp inmates, but who nonetheless made a life and career in America by working with NASA).

Many people, of course, didn't live to see how things would turn out post-Hitler; numerous are the instances of ordinary Germans taking their own lives rather than face the fearful repercussions of their nation's actions against Russia and other enemies. Hitler's suicide set off a chain reaction, resulting in the death-by-their-own-hands of countless Germans, from the well-known (Goebbels, Himmler, and so on) to the obscure everyday citizens of towns under threat from Russian occupation. Once occupied by Western allies like the British or Americans, German citizens tried to hide behind the notion that they had no idea what went on in concentration camps, with varying degrees of success in convincing the world of this position. Prominent German exiles like Klaus Mann and Marlene Dietrich came back to see what twelve years of Nazism and war had done to their native land; many who sought refuge in Russia because of their Communist beliefs would return to lead the state of East Germany while others who were anti-Communist but also anti-Nazi became leaders in West Germany.

I am a WWI/WWII history buff from way back, and this book answered a question I'd long had about how the war continued after Hitler's death, even if only for a little over a week. Much like Jay Winik's "April 1865" (which documented the surrender of the Confederacy and the death of Lincoln, but also much of what went on during or after those events that helped determine the end of the Civil War), "Eight Days in May" shows that the end of a long, drawn-out conflict is never as cut and dry as textbooks make it out to be. This is a fascinating look at some of the lives affected by the end of the Nazi era in Germany, and deserves to have as wide a readership as it can find.