Endgame, 1945: The Missing Final Chapter of World War II

by David Stafford

Overview

To end a history of World War II at VE Day is to leave the tale half told. Endgame 1945 highlights the gripping personal stories of nine men and women, ranging from soldiers to POWs to war correspondents, who witnessed firsthand the Allied struggle to finish the terrible game at last.

Endgame 1945 highlights the gripping personal stories of nine men and women, ranging from soldiers to POWs to war correspondents, who witnessed firsthand the Allied struggle to finish the terrible game at last.

Through their ground-level movements, Stafford traces the elaborate web of events that led to the war's real resolution: the deaths of Hitler and Mussolini, the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau, and the Allies' race with the Red Army to establish a victors' foothold in Europe, to name a few. From Hitler's April decision never to surrender to the start of the Potsdam Conference, Stafford brings an unprecedented focus to the war's "final chapter."

Narrative history at its most compelling, Endgame 1945 is the riveting story of three turbulent months that truly shaped the modern world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316035996
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	02/11/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	624
Sales rank:	1,094,488
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

A leading writer on military intelligence and project director at the Center for Second World War Studies at the University of Edinburgh, David Stafford is the author of Churchill and the Secret Service, Spies Beneath Berlin, and Ten Days to D-Day.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Maps xx

Part 1 Friday, 20 April 1945

1 Cruel Spring 3

2 "Sorrow and darkness" 30

3 Avenging Justice 60

4 "A Curious Pearly Color" 80

5 "To Tall Heroically" 99

6 "Ich War Immer Dagegen" 117

Part 2 20-30 April 1945

7 "A Sort of Alice in Wonderland Air" 141

8 "The Most Degenerate Spectacle" 159

9 Death of a Dictator 179

10 Himmler's Bid 196

11 "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" 210

12 Alpine Refuge 233

13 "Death Fled" 248

14 "The Bitterest Battle" 264

Part 3 Hitler's Death To VE Day

15 Dealing with Nazis 279

16 The Cap Arcona 291

17 "The Dead-End of Hitler's Reich" 307

18 Hitler's Loot 320

19 "The Dawn Has Broken through at Last" 341

Part 4 VE Day To Potsdam

20 VE Day 361

21 "Fortune Is Not Always Jay" 387

22 "A Grotesque Comerly" 407

23 "An Iron Curtain" 423

24 "You Lost People as you Gained Your Freedom" 442

25 Berlin: The Gray City 464

26 Monday, 16 July 1945 482

27 "Other Beasts in Other Lairs" 502

Epilogue: What Happened to Them? 516

Notes 527

Bibliography 555

Index 569

Editorial Reviews

Hitler's death did not end the war in Europe in 1945. Instead, as diplomat-historian Stafford (Ten Days to D-Day: Citizens and Soldiers on the Eve of the Invasion, 2004, etc.) writes, the fighting dragged on for three more momentous months, during which Europe was reshaped. That quarter-year has not exactly been overlooked. The closing pages of Stephen E. Ambrose's Band of Brothers, for instance, find its paratrooper protagonists in western Austria, where, as Stafford notes, it was feared that the remnants of the Nazi state would attempt to regroup for a last stand in the mountainous redoubt. That prospect, surmises the author, contributed to Eisenhower's decision not to race to Berlin but instead to stop the Western Allies's advance at the Elbe River and cede the land east of it to the Soviets, even though Churchill was strongly agitating to "capture Berlin and use it as a bargaining tool with the Soviet leader." Even in the desperate days before Hitler's suicide, German soldiers were offering stiff resistance. In its wake, strong German resistance continued until the government of Admiral Doenitz finally agreed to unconditional surrender, having offered to make peace with the West under the condition that Germany be allowed to continue fighting against the Soviet Union. Eisenhower did keep the lines open for two days to allow German units an escape route to the west, and, writes Stafford, "thanks to Doenitz's delaying tactics, almost two million German soldiers were able to avoid Soviet captivity." With that surrender, the Allies now had the task of imposing occupation rule on Germany, quashing any last efforts at armed resistance and cleaning up a horrific mess while attending tomillions of displaced, starving persons-a story that stretches well beyond July 1945, but one that Stafford capably outlines. Drawing on the memoirs of participants-from Nazi test pilots to concentration-camp inmates-and on an impressive body of historical work, Stafford delivers a useful survey of a transformative time.

Kirkus Reviews