Downfall (The Last Days of Hitler - Trevor Roper)

Member Name: Jake Speed

Product:	The Last Days of Hitler - Trevor Roper
Date:	18/12/08 (338 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A vivid, brilliantly written account

Disadvantages: Nothing major

'In September 1945 the fate of Adolf Hitler was a complete mystery. He had simply disappeared, and had been missing for four months. Hugh Trevor-Roper, a British intelligence officer, was given the task of solving the mystery. His brilliant piece of detective work not only proved finally that Hitler had killed himself in Berlin, but also produced one of the most fascinating history books ever written.'

Hugh Trevor-Roper established himself as one of our most famous historians, in no small part thanks to this book, 'The Last Days Of Hitler' which was first published in 1947. In 1945 he was appointed by Counter-Intelligence in the British zone of Germany to find out what had happened to Hitler at the end of the war. The conclusion of the book, and the facts that were recorded, may be familiar to us today through history documentaries and films, but The Last Days Of Hitler remains an absorbing and brilliantly written account of the fallen tyrant's final days.

My paperback copy of The Last Days Of Hitler is about 215 pages long. It includes a map of Berlin including 'escape routes' and a very interesting diagram of Hitler's bunker which tells you who each room was allocated to. There is a 1995 preface and a 1959 introduction, both written by Trevor-Roper. He uses these to talk about how difficult it is to get an accurate account of an event from oral witnesses sometimes, how the Russian authorities were eccentric, paranoid, and not much help, and, perhaps most of all, the fate of Martin Bormann. Bormann, we learn, was a bit like the Elvis of his day with stories of him popping up everywhere from South America to Russia years after the war. There are even theories that he was a Soviet spy! Trevor-Roper pours cold water on all this speculation and tells us in his notes that Bormann's remains were eventually found in Berlin in the early seventies, close to where witnesses saw him him fall in 1945.

As much as anything, The Last Days Of Hitler is about political intrigue. Hitler and his closest circle have retreated to his claustrophobic, damp, but heavily fortified bunker. The endless massed tanks and soldiers of the Red Army are within sight of Berlin with only some hopelessly outgunned and outnumbered German forces, including Hitler Youth, between them and the bunker. US troops are over the Elbe river and spearheads of Field Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army Group are closing in around Bremen and Hamburg. The French First Army is on the upper Danube and the Allied forces of Field Marshal Alexander in Italy have captured Bologna while General Patton's Third US Army races south into Bavaria. The bunker shakes and rattles with dust as the shells and air raids continue from both the Allies and the Red Army. The game is up and the war is lost but, trapped in this surreal atmosphere, Hitler fluctuates between rage and optimism. He gives orders to German Armies that actually ceased to exist weeks ago but still appear on his battle maps, planning the defence of Berlin with phantom divisions.

Meanwhile, a surreal and completely pointless power struggle between Goering, Bormann and Himmler over who will replace Hitler continues. Himmler is so divorced from reality he assumes, with some manipulation, that he can negotiate with the Allies and be the leader of a post-war Germany! He continues to attend grand SS conferences with all the trappings of wealth and power as German cities lie in rubble and the war draws to a close.

'Like obselete dinosaurs, moving inappropriately in the wrong geological age, they gathered at his headquarters - high SS and police leaders, heads of defunct organizations, sustained only by portentous titles, the memory of vanquished authority and absurd illusions.'

It's interesting to read that Himmler was manipulated by subordinates into considering a negotiated peace with the Allies and turning agaisnt Hitler. Himmler is being used but he's too politically stupid and pompous to even notice. Trevor-Roper is equally interesting writing about Bormann and Goering. Bormann, who had Hitler's ear in the bunker, spins agaisnt Goering constantly and, despite being Hitler's chosen successor, Goering is arrested when he assumes that Hitler is cut-off in the bunker and incapable of further leadership. Goering is blamed by Bormann and Hitler (and Trevor-Roper too it seems) for the failure of the Luftwaffe in the war. He is corrupted and ruined by power and wealth, a 'Scented Nero fiddling while Rome burns.' Bormann is described as 'This Brown Eminence sitting in the shadows' and 'Hitler's Mephistopheles'. When Hitler's court begin making plans for their suicides Bormann is still working out how to save his own skin.

Another interesting figure in the book is Albert Speer, an architect who Hitler became fond of and made Minister of Armaments. Hitler orders a 'scorched earth' policy whereby Germany's industrial infrastructure is to be destroyed. He wants to go down in a blaze of destruction. Speer knows this would be a crime agaisnt the German people and cause needless suffering after the war. He goes to see the German Generals charged with these orders and has them stopped. He even has plans to kill Hitler by piping gas into the bunker. 'To every industrial suicide which emanated from the Fuehrer's headquarters, or the Party Chancery, Speer issued, through his own channels, a countermanding order. By his great authority and his continual journeys throughout Germany, he stayed the hand of the destroyer, and persuaded his agents, his subordinates and his sympathisers that if communications and factories must be surrendered to the enemy, they should be surrendered intact.' He even confesses his actions to Hitler when he visits him for the last time but a resigned Hitler takes no retribution agaisnt him.

As you'd expect there is a lot of detail about the Nazi philosophy and the struggle between the German Army Staff and Hitler. Trevor-Roper explains that the German Army wanted a limited war with conquests that would be easy to defend or maintain. Hitler however wanted living space in the East. Few of the German Generals were thrilled to hear that they were about to invade the Soviet Union but they gave Hitler leeway because he exercised charismatic authority and was assumed to be a genius in military affairs. When they eventually realised he wasn't, and that he was leading the country into ruin instead, the plot of 1944 develops.

Nazism is described by the author as 'this vast system of bestial Nordic nonsense.'

The story of these surreal, mad days in the bunker is morbidly absorbing throughout with the little details provided. Hitler studies development plans for his home town of Linz, oblivious to his plight. He devises a defence plan for Berlin and, with great enthusiasm, goes over these plans with maps many times, talking out loud. General Walther Wenck's Twelfth Army and a rag-tag collection of units commanded by General Felix Steiner are ordered by Hitler to attack at two seperate points agaisnt the Red Army and relieve Berlin. In reality, Wenck's Army was defeated weeks ago and Steiner's forces are so weak, and his orders so ludicrous, he doesn't even bother to forward them to his men. When Hitler hears that his order to attack has been ignored by the Generals he launches a furious tirade agaisnt them but finally realises the end has come.

'He still interested himself in every detail, still moved armies by battalions and regiments; but it was an imaginary battlefield. He was mounting the impossible Steiner attack, or marshalling the phanton army of Wenck.'

The grim end to this story with the mass suicides in the bunker is familiar to us now but Trevor-Roper's account is certainly on a par with any other. He gives the reader an insight into the mood in the bunker of those left behind and what happened to each of them. There is also, of course, an account of the extraordinary journey of the famous test pilot Hanna Reitsch and Ritter Von Griem, who flew into a besieged Berlin and landed on a street in order to visit the bunker.

The Last Days Of Hitler is a incredibly well written and researched book and provides a vivid account of this dark chapter of history.

Highly recommended.

Summary: Absorbing history