Eight Days in May

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

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'.


'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 ... an instructive lesson in how societies cope with the devastating reality of a surrender that they grimly await' Richard Overy, author of The Bombing War

'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

© Volker Ullrich 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Critics Review

  • Superb … excellent and admirably succinct.

    The Times

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

    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

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