The extraordinary German bestseller on the final days of the Third ReichOne of the least
understood stories of the Third Reich is that of the extraordinary wave of suicides carried
out not just by much of the Nazi leadership but also by thousands of ordinary Germans during
in the war's closing period. Some of these were provoked by straightforward terror in the face
of advancing Soviet troops or by personal guilt but many could not be explained in such
relatively straightforward terms. Florian Huber's remarkable book a bestseller in Germany
confronts this terrible phenomenon. Other countries have suffered defeat but not responded in
the same way. What drove whole families who in many cases had already withstood years of
deprivation aerial bombing and deaths in battle to do this? In a brilliantly written
thoughtful and original work Huber sees the entire project of the Third Reich as a sequence of
almost overwhelming emotions and scenes for many Germans. He describes some of the key events
which shaped the period from the First World War to the end of the Second showing how the
sheer intensity allure and ferocity of Hitler's regime swept along millions. Its sudden end
was for many of them simply impossible to absorb.
