Swansong 1945 A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich [Hardcover]

An emotionally immediate and multi-faceted perspective of the last days of the Third Reich& No mere anthology but an artful collage& Difficult to put down.A disturbing but compulsively readable slice of history.From the absurd to the sublime, and everywhere heartbreaking: a collage of voices from the tail end of the world's conflagration.& Raw [and] tremendously moving& Riveting.This is a book that can be read comfortably only page by page. Otherwise it will break your heart.Riveting& Kempowski's careful selection and sequencing convey the horror, misery, irony, and intensity of living through the last month of war in Germany. The work is noteworthy not just for its unique first-person perspective, but also for its breadth and depth& Essential.A treasure& [The power of [A unique and haunting insight into what it was like to live through the violent twilight of the Third Reich. Indispensable and, above all, unforgettable.A remarkable collage of experiences and impressions of the catastrophic last days of the Second World War, which provides a unique panorama of the war and a very powerful impression of its impact on and the responses of those involved.A bewitching, dramatic, utterly extraordinary range of voices and eyewitness testimony as Europe entered its year-zero moment.A rare combination of aesthetic and historic truths& What gives Kempowskis work its reach and humanity is his keen eye for both the sensory experience of war at its most destructive and individuals compulsion to go on making sense of it as it engulfed them.Amidst the fascinating multitude of voices assembled here the one that speaks most powerfully is that of Kempowski himself. This is a remarkable document of one persons lifelong struggle to make sense of national collapse.Kempowski is a master of form and proportion& The end of the war has never before been depicted like this.A monumental work of history that captures the last days of the Third Reich as never before.