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Eight Days in May
Eight Days in May
Sep 20, 2024 2:51 AM

Author:Volker Ullrich,Jefferson Chase

Eight Days in May

'Superb' David Aaronovitch, The Times

'A punchy account that is a proper page-turner' Financial Times

'The last days of the Third Reich have often been told, but seldom with the verve, perception and elegance of Volker Ullrich's rich narrative' Richard Overy, author of The Bombing War

1 May 1945. The world did not know it yet, but the final week of the Third Reich's existence had begun. Hitler was dead, but the war had still not ended. Everything had both ground to a halt and yet remained agonizingly uncertain.

Volker Ullrich's remarkable book takes the reader into a world torn between hope and terror, violence and peace. Ullrich describes how each day unfolds, with Germany now under a new Führer, Admiral Dönitz, based improbably in the small Baltic town of Flensburg. With Hitler dead, Berlin in ruins and the war undoubtedly lost, the process by which the fighting would end remained horrifyingly unclear. Many major Nazis were still on the loose, wild rumours continued to circulate about a last stand in the Alps and the Western allies falling out with the Soviet Union.

All over Europe, millions of soldiers, prisoners, slave labourers and countless exhausted, grief-stricken and often homeless families watched and waited for the war's end. Eight Days in May is the story of people, in Erich Kästner's striking phrase, stuck in 'the gap between no longer and not yet'.

'A fast-paced, brilliant recounting of the turbulent last days of the Third Reich, with all the energy and chaos of a Jackson Pollock canvas' Helmut Walser Smith, author of Germany: A Nation in its Time

Reviews

Superb ... excellent and admirably succinct.

—— David Aaronovitch , The Times

Ullrich delivers a punchy account that is a proper page-turner ... there is still plenty to say about immediate postwar Germany.

—— Giles MacDonogh , Financial Times

Strongly written and deeply researched ... a vital and often vibrant account of eight days when people all across Europe were suspended in confusion and chaos.

—— Kirkus

The last days of the Third Reich have often been told, but seldom with the verve, perception and elegance of Volker Ulrich's rich narrative. For Western nations that have never faced comprehensive and destructive defeat, this is an instructive lesson in how societies cope with the devastating reality of a surrender that they grimly await.

—— Richard Overy

A fast-paced, brilliant recounting of the turbulent last days of the Third Reich. With all the energy and chaos of a Jackson Pollock canvas, Eight Days in May evokes the complete and utter chaos of a collapsing society.

—— Helmut Walser Smith, author of Germany: A Nation in its Time

The last chapter of the Nazi regime, just before its fall, is perhaps the most interesting. And Volker Ulrich manages to cover the days after Hitler's suicide with brilliant prose, and excellent original research.

—— Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

Ullrich's compact, gripping narration brings to life the death throes of the Nazi regime as individual acts of delusion, desperation and resignation. This vivid mosaic of German reactions to defeat is a suspenseful account and original depiction of the ambivalence and disbelief of those who had been spellbound by Hitler.

—— Wendy Lower, author of The Ravine

A vibrant and vivid tale, of victory, defeat, savage retribution and 'high' art... In our field one is often inclined to think or say, 'Do we really we need yet another book on Culloden?' However, if they are written as well and as excitingly as Paul O'Keeffe's...then the answer is a resounding 'Yes!'

—— Robert Woosnam-Savage FSA, Curator Emeritus, Royal Armouries, University of Leeds

A luminous portrait of both Amrit Kaur and Livia Manera: two exceptional women who had to question their assigned fates as daughters, wives, lovers and mothers in order to define themselves

—— Judith Thurman, author of SECRETS OF THE FLESH

Plenty of jewels, plenty of balls, plenty of secret agents and adventurous characters but also plenty of pain in the story that Manera tells, intertwining the destiny of a special woman to the vortex of equally special times.

—— Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy

'This biography is a many-faceted gem'

—— Asian Review of Books

Weaving together biography and her personal narrative . . . [this is] an engaging book, with twists, turns, and detours galore'

—— Kirkus Reviews

'[Manera Sambuy's] eloquent and poetic prose enlivens the searching historiography. Original and difficult to classify, [In Search of Amrit Kaur] is a pleasure to read'

—— Publishers Weekly

Rich with originality and memoiristic detail

—— New Statesman

A fluent and authoritative account of Europe since the Second World War

—— Literary Review

An insightful analysis of the transformation of central and eastern Europe in the decades between the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine

—— Guardian

Garton Ash is a clear-headed chronicler of the Continent [and] Homelands is an engaging read

—— Irish Times

An authoritative big picture well matched with revealing, important human details

—— The Tablet

Timothy Garton Ash tells the epic story of ... [postwar] Europe

—— Irish Times

Excellent ... Read as a letter, such gemlike vignettes can be treasured. Because in them, Garton Ash has captured something of what it means to be European. Though he is proudly in love with Europe, he is not blind to its faults

—— Washington Examiner

Part memoir, part history and is fascinating, rich in anecdote, and at times intensely moving

—— The Times, *Summer Reads of 2023*

A panoramic contemporary history of Europe, in which sharp political analysis is enlivened with personal memoir — drawn from decades of distinguished work as a journalist and academic

—— Financial Times, *Books of the Year*

Extraordinary. Exhaustively researched and beautifully (and wittily) written, a thrilling and immersive tale that offers the reader a rare window into the terrifying events of the English Civil War when religion and ambition divided families, friends and neighbours. One of the finest books I've read for years, a stunning achievement

—— Saul David

The Siege of Loyalty House is not only deeply researched. Childs has composed a wonderfully poetic narrative and adds a touch of the gothic

—— Leanda de Lisle , The Times

This heroic story has not been told before in such detail and with such an eye for the tragedies of civil war. Childs handles a remarkable amount of source material with masterly skill...Thrilling

—— Linda Porter , Literary Review

Gripping ... The accumulation and deployment of facts is impressive. The understanding of what they signify is profound. The elegance, wit and brio of the writing is sheer delight

—— Allan Mallinson , Country Life

The Siege of Loyalty House is exciting and scholarly, vivid and accessible. It is a perfectly-crafted triumph of narrative history...one of the most pulsating books on seventeenth-century England I have read for many years

—— Critic

In Jessie Childs [Basing House] finds at last a writer able to bring out in full its excitement, pathos, glory and tragedy, with a deep political, military and social context. As so many of the defenders of the house were transplanted Londoners, it is a tale that links the heart of Hampshire to the heart of the capital. Local Civil War history does not get better than this.

—— Professor Ronald Hutton

Childs brilliantly shows us the world of the civil war

—— Daily Telegraph, *Summer Reads of 2022*

Enthralling... This is history as rip-roaring narrative. ... Both her previous books won awards, and I would be amazed if this does not make it a hat-trick

—— Art Newspaper

Fantastically well written

—— Sunday Times

A masterpiece

—— Monty Don

Jessie Child's The Siege of Loyalty House turns an English Civil War stand-off into a fable of murderous polarisation: gripping, timely history

—— Spectator, *Best Books of 2022 I*

The Siege of Loyalty House ... tingles with a discerning historical imagination

—— Spectator, *Best Books of 2022 II*

[A] thrilling tale of war

—— Mail on Sunday

[A] gripping tale of a royalist house standing its grown against the Roundheads ... Atmospheric, unflinching, and at times extraordinarily witty

—— UK Daily News, *Best History and Politics Books of 2022*

[A] poignant book... the story is timeless

—— Economist, *Books of the Year*

Compelling

—— Spectator, *Books of the Year 2022*

Exhaustively researched and beautifully written, [The Siege of Loyalty House] tells the story of the epic two-year siege of Basing House, a royalist mansion finally captured by Oliver Cromwell in 1645.

—— Daily Express, *Books of the Year 2022*

When you are as good a writer as Jessie Childs, and as assuredly immersed in the archives, the pages zing with the technicolour of celluloid. ... [A] masterpiece.

—— Critic, *Non-fiction books of the year 2022*

Childs writes an engrossing, spellbinding narrative while laying out a clear and comprehendible history

—— New York Journal of Books

The broad subject of this poignant book is what happens to people during civil war: how quickly and imperceptibly order becomes chaos and decency yields to cruelty. In other words, how close to inhumanity humanity always is. The focus is on an episode in the English civil war, but the story is timeless

—— Economist

A gripping account of the agony at Basing, The Siege of Loyalty House is also a potted social history of the civil wars and how they started. Jessie Childs, [is] a gifted storyteller

—— London Review of Books
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