Review by Choice Review
The distinguished biographer of Winston Churchill and author or editor of two dozen other volumes and atlases on modern world history has now compiled ("written" would be a misnomer) an account of the final days of WW II. This book consists largely of excerpts from letters Gilbert solicited in late 1994 from soldiers and civilians, men and women, the famous and the unknown, who personally experienced the war's end, as well as from contemporary newspaper articles, diaries, and private correspondence. These recollections are often strikingly apt, even moving, especially those by Holocaust survivors and pre-1939 Jewish refugees from Nazism, whose memories predominate among the sources cited. However, the quotations are sometimes awkwardly juxtaposed because Gilbert adopts a too-rigid chronological framework. Nor did the conflict in Europe end officially or for its participants and victims on any single day, as his title ambiguously implies. There are disparaging comments about Ireland's wartime attitude toward Germany, but Swedish and Swiss immigration policies are uncritically presented, as is the behavior of the Channel Islanders under enemy occupation. Overall, a readable and useful though not a significant scholarly contribution. General readers, lower-division undergraduates. L. D. Stokes; Dalhousie University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Gilbert is the unrivaled candidate to catalog the facts surrounding the culmination of the war. The prolific historical editor here arranges the activities of people, from commanders down to prisoners and foot soldiers, attending the death throes of the Third Reich during April and May of 1945. The work revolves around the principle that the war ended on a sequence of days, an idea symbolizing the victors' wrangling about the time and place of the official German surrender: Should it be in Reims or Berlin? On May 7, 8, or 9? For the texture of the experience on the ground, Gilbert inserts personal narratives from major locales of the drama: in eastern Prussia, where the vengeful Russians reciprocated the destruction their motherland endured from the Germans; in the ghastly camps--POW, concentration, and extermination; in places where the fuhrer-less Nazi machine sputtered on. Finishing with the celebrations from Times, Trafalger, and Red Squares, Gilbert has diligently delivered the victory's sense of relief--and the doleful intimations of the cold war to come. --Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The beginning of the end began that April, with the liberation of the concentration camps. The Allies, sickened by their discoveries at Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, turned vengeful. Gilbert (The First World War) relates that at Dachau, within one hour of its liberation, 500 SS troops were killed, 346 of them by one machine gun-toting American lieutenant. There was an orgy of surrender, with a million prisoners taken by the Allies in one month. The Soviets captured Berlin and went on a raping spree. Lack of trust among Allied leaders forced Gen. Montgomery to push north to secure Denmark and head off the Soviets. The Germans meekly gave up Norway but fought bitterly to the end in Czechoslovakia. With victory on May 8coincidentally, President Truman's birthdaycame the celebrations in London, Paris and New York City, but there was still work to be done. The U.S. Eighth Air Force stopped bombing Germany and started dropping food to the starving Dutch people. And the seeds of the Cold War were sown, when Stalin sentenced one million of his repatriated troops to the Gulag. Filled with personal reminiscences from people on all sides of the conflict, this comprehensive and compelling chronicle of events has the ability, even at this remove, to stun readers. Photos not seen by PW. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Churchill's official biographer reflects on the end of World War II-in time for the 50th anniversary. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
For all the drama inherent in the story of WW II's end, this is one of the noted British historian's least interesting books. Gilbert (The First World War, 1994, etc.) bases his account of the day the war ended on contemporary letters, documents, newspapers, diaries, memoirs, histories, and the recollections of 190 individuals he contacted while working on the book. He contributes new vignettes but little that alters existing perceptions. Still, the scale of the event remains awe-inspiring: This was the most destructive war in history; on an average, more than 20,000 people, soldiers and civilians, were killed each day, the same number killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The liberation in April 1945 of the Belsen concentration camp, with its huge mounds of unburied bodies and skeletal survivors, was a moment that, Gilbert rightly argues, transformed the Allied perception of the war. Pointing up a detail that has escaped general notice, however, he records that one American lieutenant, immediately after entering Dachau and seeing the corpses there, machine-gunned 346 SS guards after they gave themselves up. There was the usual maneuvering about where and when the German surrender would be signed and announced: It was signed in Reims early on the morning of May 7 by General Alfred Jodl, but was not announced until May 8 by Britain and the United States, and on May 9 by Stalin. The aftermath was filled with jubilation, tragedy, and the grotesque: jubilation as millions celebrated; tragedy as hundreds of thousands of Russians were forcibly returned by the Allies, France even allowing NKVD commissions to travel through the country in search of non-returnees; and elements of the grotesque, as Ireland's president made an official visit of condolence to the German embassy after Hitler's death. Rich in incident and anecdote, but Gilbert turns over soil already so thoroughly mined that it is hard to find a nugget.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
