Hitler’s Last Day: Minute by Minute

by Jonathan Mayo and Emma Craigie

On 30th April 1945 Germany is in chaos…

Russian troops have reached Berlin. All over the country, people are on the move – concentration camp survivors, Allied PoWs, escaping Nazis – and the civilian population is fast running out of food. The man who orchestrated this nightmare is in his bunker beneath the capital, saying his farewells.

Hitler’s Last Day: Minute by Minute is pure chronological narrative, as seen through the eyes of those who were with Hitler in those last tumultuous hours; those fighting in the streets of Germany; and those pacing the corridors of power in Washington, London and Moscow. It was a day of endings and beginnings when ordinary people were placed in extraordinary situations.

Take Sisi Wilczek, fleeing the advancing Russians with her family’s vast fortune in a shoebox; President Truman, weighing up whether to use the atomic bomb that his Secretary of War calls “the most terrible weapon ever known in human history”; German officer Claus Sellier, on a last mission across the country to deliver vital documents; or Allied aircrews, dropping food parcels to feed the starving Dutch population.

30th April 1945 was a day that millions had dreamed of, and millions had died for.

 

 

“Beyond fascinating... this book brings to life a thousand different people in the most dramatic moment of the last century”
Jeremy Vine
“Mesmerisingly recreates the minute by panic-filled minute, as madness and terror engulfed the Fuhrer's bunker”
Daily Mail
“Riveting... A vivid present is maintained throughout”
London Review of Books

About Jonathan Mayo

Jonathan Mayo joined the BBC in 1987, first working in radio and then television, where he won awards for his documentaries. In 2012 he became a freelance producer, director and writer. He lives in Surrey with his wife Hannah and son Charlie.

About Emma Craigie

Emma Craigie is a writer and teacher. She is also author of Who Was… King Henry VIII (Short Books, 2006). She lives in Somerset with her husband and four children.