... a gripping, immaculately researched retelling ... Mr. Ullrich also looks further backward and forward in time to add the context that a study confined to eight days alone could not provide ... As Mr. Ullrich demonstrates, Kästner’s concept of the 'no longer' was not one that the Dönitz government was comfortable accepting.
... excellent and admirably succinct ... A commendation too for the translator, Jefferson Chase, who also translated Ullrich’s recent two-part biography of Hitler. He really understands his author, from Ullrich’s use of irony to his occasionally more polemical moments. It still must be hard for a German scholar to be entirely dispassionate about what was done in (still, just) living memory.
... vivid, fast-paced prose ... Superbly researched, Eight Days in May communicates the pity of Hitler’s war and its aftermath with sympathy and an impressive narrative verve.
... reads like a thriller 'who dunnit.' As each day unfolds the reader feels the tension and drama as World War II wrenches to a close. The level of detail is fascinating, providing ample grist and satisfaction for World War II history buffs. The book tells a story of what happened after Hitler that few know about. By far, one of the best and unique books on the end of the war in years.
Ullrich provides a sweeping view of Germany’s collapse: he documents the regime’s last-minute power struggles, sexual violence and plundering inflicted by the Soviet army, death marches and massacres of prisoners of war and forced laborers by diehard Nazis, and brutal sieges and battles. Most intriguingly, he recounts the formation of postwar German leadership ... Less magisterial than Ullrich’s two-volume Hitler biography, this slimmer work is still expertly researched and written ... Ullrich offers little new information or critical insights, but his book delivers to historians of all stripes a lean and perceptive survey of the last week of the Third Reich.
This vivid account by historian Ullrich renders the death throes of the Third Reich in riveting detail ... This immersive and often disturbing chronicle brilliantly evokes a surreal moment in history that gave 'the impression of apocalypse on the one hand and of a new beginning on the other.'
The author delivers a richly textured day-by-day account of that week in Germany and in parts of German-occupied Europe ... Throughout the book, Ullrich strains to encompass not just the political and military currents, but quotidian details, as well ... deeply researched without feeling weighed down. However, Ullrich’s descriptions of various political or military meetings sometimes feel onerous, as he lists the name and rank of every person present. These details might be crucial to a wider historical reckoning, but nonscholars may get bogged down. Ullrich can be uneven in his coverage, too, as when he describes the end of the war in the Netherlands but not in, say, England or France. Though his latest book is by no means comprehensive, it’s still a vital and often vibrant account of eight days when people all across Europe were suspended in confusion and chaos ... Strongly written and deeply researched, Ullrich’s account only suffers from an occasional surfeit of detail.
