Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich

Written by Volker Ullrich

Narrated by John McLain

The bestselling author of Hitler: Ascent and Hitler: Downfall reconstructs the chaotic, otherworldly last days of Nazi Germany.

On April 30, 1945, in a bunker deep beneath the Old Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler and his newly wedded wife, Eva Braun, killed themselves. But Nazi Germany lived on, however briefly. The subsequent eight days were among the most turbulent in history, witnessing not only the final battles of World War II and the collapse of the Wehrmacht, but the near-total disintegration of the once-mighty Third Reich.

In a taut, propulsive narrative, eminent historian Volker Ullrich depicts the final days of the Nazi empire through the eyes of Germans, both famous and ordinary, who experienced them. He takes us inside the phantomlike regime of Hitler's chosen successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, while capturing the drama of a society in its death throes-from mass suicides to fanatics calling for one last stand. Integrating an astonishing variety of new primary sources, Ullrich offers an indispensable account of the costs of mass delusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Translator: Jefferson Chase
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781666152982

Reviews for Eight Days in May

[kamakirinoko · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The material is, as always from Ulrich, spot on. But yet again, the producers make the TOTALLY inexplicable decision of hiring someone to whom the challenges of pronouncing the German language are . . . MANY. Bizarrely, the narrator has little trouble with words like "Berlin" and "Munich," but hearing him pronounce the extremely numerously-mentioned title of the leader of Germany the "FOO-rer"—I wish I were joking but I am not—is almost a deal-breaker for me. It's so gratingly annoying—kind of like pronouncing "Hitler" as "HITE-ler"—that one is almost forced to give it up. I've heard about an hour of the book and it's my hope that the Foorer is rarely mentioned from now on.

[Mark Tosi · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting to know what happened after Hitler killed himself and how all the other Nazis abandoned the Nazi sinking ship like rats. The war in Europe was over and it was clear Stalin had plans for captured territory. Citizens on both sides thought war was over and life could begin again and it was not to be in same capacity as before the war. Book has good information. I enjoyed it.