Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich

by Joachim Fest

Book Overview

There is nothing in recent history that comes close to the cataclysmic events of the spring of 1945. Never before has the defeat of a nation been accompanied by such monumental loss of life, such utter destruction. Author Joachim Fest shows that the devastation was the result of Hitler's determination to take the entire country down with him; he would make sure that his enemies would find only a wasteland, where once there was a thriving civilization...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374135770
• ISBN13: 9780374135775
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 190 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

the dark, nihilistic end of the Thousand Year Reich

Fest's haunting description of the last days of the Third Reich is a magnificent accomplishment. Despite its brevity, Fest manages to weave larger historical issues into a narrative full of surreal, compelling details about the Nazis' end. There are the evocative stories of Berlin in turmoil: SS patrols summarily hanging whoever they felt was a shirker, citizens struggling to survive in the shelled-out ruin of a city, the Soviet encirclement growing ever closer. Meanwhile, inside the Hitler's bunker, the story of delusion and denial grew ever more fantastical -- Hitler commanding generals to counterattack the Russians with army units existing in his imagination, and growing more and more furious with their "betrayals" as the Russian advance still came on. The story arrives ultimately at the Russian approach to the bunker and the suicides of Hitler, Eva Braun, and the inner circle. Their grimly nihilistic end, burned in a trashheap, paralleled their desire for the same fate for Germany. Hitler wanted Germany to go down with him. That so many in Berlin actually did follow him in suicide, or fighting the Russians to the end against suicidal odds, seems now almost too bewildering to believe. Fest's book is bleak, but in a straightforward journalistic style argues why the end in the bunker was the culmination of Hitler's theatrical, nihilistic vision.

Interesting (Brief) Look at Hitler's Last Days

Basic facts and figures about the Third Reich are good data, but nothing can really help you understand the Hitler/Nazi phenomenon so well as reading his own words, and the words of the people who made his regime possible - in the volatile environment of Hitler's bunker in April, 1945. Though the book is short, there is a lot to digest in it. I personally didn't feel that it was overly dry, or boring (at all!), particularly in comparison to your average history, but I was a little disappointed in the lack of bibliographical notes. All in all, it's a good place to start, a good book to point you in the direction of the right questions to ask, to lead you to more in-depth information.

Excellent overview of a tragic time & place

Despite perhaps being "old hat" history for those long familiar with the events which took place in Hitler's bunker as WWII drew to a close, Joachim Fest's "Inside Hitler's Bunker", is, for those of us new to this subject, an excellent introduction to the claustrophobia, paranoia and rampant stupidity which pervaded Hitler's final residence. It is, additionally, the book upon which the recent Oscar-nominated (Best Foreign Film) "Downfall" with Bruno Ganz (as Hitler) was based. Mr. Fest's narrative races along like a well-tuned Aston Martin - indeed, the book almost reads like a page-turning best-selling novel - and sweeps the reader up in heartbreaking and senseless death and madness. I've since gone on to read other works by Mr. Fest and have been well-pleased. I highly recommend this one, no matter WHAT you know about Adolf Hitler's final days and hours. -

A Dark Ending to a Dark Time

Joachim Fest is a distinguished German journalist and the author of an acclaimed biography of Hitler. In "Inside Hitler's Bunker," he focuses on the last days of the Third Reich, beginning his narrative on April 16, 1945 as the Soviets open their final offensive against Berlin. The book explores the surreal and miserable world of the "Fuhrer Bunker" under the Reich Chancellery, the fanatical resistance and eventual collapse of the German armies defending Berlin, Hitler's delusional attempts to command armies that had been wiped out, and the astonishing willingness of soldiers and civilians to obey his orders until the very end.This is a highly readable and very powerful book, and the translator (Margot Bettauer Dembo) deserves high marks for the result. I read the book avidly, and as soon as I was done my wife picked it up and did the same. "Inside Hitler's Bunker" may be somewhat disappointing for those who have read a great deal about the Battle of Berlin or Hitler's last days (the book does not appear to break a great deal of new ground), but it will prove to be a gripping narrative for those who are new to the horrors of Berlin in 1945. Part of the continuing fascination of this dark time is the challenge of trying to understand the incomprehensible: how could a madman like Hitler stay in control of Germany in the last weeks of April 1945, and why did so many Germans follow him as he dragged them into the final catastrophe?The answer to those questions may lie in the 12 years of indoctrination that preceded those fateful days in 1945. For a brief and readable perspective on this period (which has been thoroughly explored in numerous more massive tomes), you may want to try "Inside Hitler's Germany: Life Under the Third Reich" by Matthew Hughes and Chris Mann.

An Authentic Look inside the End of the Nightmare

We have our own evils to contemplate in the twenty-first century, but the demon Hitler will forever occupy those who study the evils of the twentieth. It may be that we need reassurance that he is really and permanently dead, because the story of his end has been told many times. There was room, however, for a comprehensive summary of Hitler's last days, and we now have one, told by a German who is a historian of the Third Reich and a reporter. Joachim Fest, in _Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich_ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), has pulled together evidence and drawn a dramatic picture of those final days, and the immediate aftermath. It won't be the last volume to examine this extraordinary subject, but it should be the current reference for anyone interested in it.Hitler had known that the war was lost; he said as much four years before the Russians started to close upon Berlin. After the Ardennes offensive failed, Hitler had returned to Berlin, where the air raids drove him for refuge into the bunker he had prepared for himself and his cronies. It was more than thirty feet below the ground, about twenty reinforced rooms with few furnishings, even in Hitler's private rooms. Each room had a naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. The water system was untrustworthy, ventilation was bad, and diesel exhaust often pervaded the inside. It was grim, and even Goebbels avoided the rooms as much as possible because they caused a "desolate mood." The night before his death, Hitler married Eva Braun. Retiring to his room with her, he used a pistol and cyanide to bring their ends about. In the bunker's canteen, the inmates sought relief from all the weeks of tension and danced to boisterous music over the loudspeakers. An orderly had been sent up to ask for quiet, since the Fuhrer was about to die, but no one paid any attention. The drinking and dancing only continued.There were famous reports that Hitler had survived, reports that the tabloid press made much of during the next decades; there were plenty of conspiracy theories. The Russians found a body that looked like Hitler, and insisted that they had his corpse. It was just the sort of end he had not wanted, however, and he had taken precautions to make sure it did not occur. A ration of gasoline was obtained, and the two bodies were cremated near the exit of the bunker. What happened to the remaining dust can only be guessed at; artillery shelling and flamethrowers turned the area even more chaotic. Some of Hitler's henchmen followed him in suicide, some fled. Fest's book gives a rough description of the subsequent battle for Berlin, but this is mostly a ghastly story of awful gloom within a grotesquely unnatural cave. It is a short book, in a readable translation, accompanied by vivid and shocking pictures, unrelieved by any light anecdotes or instances of individual heroism. Fest's explanation of Hitler's motivation ("like a gang leader, he pursued a course