The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

From January 1945 through the bitter end four months later, Hitler remained in his Berlin bunker. His paranoia deepened, and visitors noted his physical deterioration. Goebbels looked to astrology for signs of the Reich’s salvation and believed he found one in the death of President Roosevelt on April 12. Eva Braun, Hitler’s longtime mistress, arrived on April 15. On April 20, Hitler’s 56th birthday, most Nazi high officials fled Berlin, including Himmler, Goering, and Ribbentrop. The Fuehrer remained. Russian tanks entered the city. Outside Berlin, Himmler and Goering, convinced that Hitler would be dead in a matter of days, each tried to take control of the Third Reich. Hitler, his mind wavering, flew into a rage and accused them of high treason. He talked of last-minute campaigns to save the city and expected relief from armies that no longer existed. Meanwhile, his soldiers fled westward in hopes of surrendering to the British and Americans rather than the Soviets. On April 29, as the Soviet Red Army approached the city center, Hitler married Eva Braun.

Hitler wrote his last will and testament, which proves that he “had learned nothing” (1123). In his parting screed, the Fuehrer blamed everyone—the Jews, the British, the Army officer corps—everyone but himself. On the afternoon of April 29, Hitler learned that Italian partisans had captured and executed both Mussolini and his mistress. At 3:30 on the afternoon of April 30, 1945, Hitler fired a revolver into his mouth. Eva Braun swallowed poison. Their bodies were burned in the garden outside the Chancellery. On May 1, Goebbels poisoned his six children and then ordered that he and his wife be shot to death. Soviet forces identified the two bodies the next day. The end of the Third Reich came at 2:41am on May 7, 1945, when a pair of German officers formally surrendered at General Eisenhower’s headquarters.

This two-page epilogue describes the fate of various high Nazi officials. On May 23, Himmler swallowed poison while in British custody. At the International Military Tribunal held in Nuremberg, Shirer observed the “drab assortment of mediocrities” who had terrorized Germany and the world: Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, and seventeen others (1142). All but seven received death sentences. Two hours before he was scheduled for execution by hanging, Goering swallowed poison that someone had smuggled into his cell.