Reviews

Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich by Walter Kempowski

silvermadeleine's review

challenging dark informative reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

This is the final volume of Walter Kempowski's ten-part nonfiction series on the Third Reich. It's a collage of voices, mainly German but also including Allied soldiers, Eastern European forced labourers, etc. This volume focuses just on the days between Hitler's birthday and Germany's surrender. I loved being able to read first-hand accounts from so many different people about the same set of events. Depressing, nonetheless.

reinhardt's review against another edition

5.0

A selection of letters, diaries, and other notes. From top-level politicians and generals to lowly privates and civilians. All levels, all sides. A good way to understand the sentiment on both sides at the end of WWII.

Could have used occasional intros to provide context. Even one sentence would help to put things in a bit of context, but I think they didn't want to slant the direct nature of the entries.

I don't suggest for nighttime reading as some of the entries contain some disturbing realities. As you can imagine, some horrible things happened.

amandawoodruff's review against another edition

5.0

The tenth volume in what is considered a modern German classic, Swansong 1945 is the only volume to be published in English. This volume covers four dates during the last two months of the war: Hitler's birthday, the meeting of the Americans and Russians at the Elbe river, Hitler's suicide, and the German surrender. It is a stunning piece of work and an absolutely fascinating read of first-hand accounts of WWII. Kempowski has done the world a favor with his tireless compilation of these documents.

hellohannahw's review against another edition

4.0

Obviously this book took me like two months to read so it appears that I must have found it boring in some way. In actual fact I really enjoyed this book. It provided such an in depth look at a tiny window of history. I did, however, find it difficult to have long sessions reading the book because without a narrative through-line or whatever it could get quite heavy and repetitive. The book also contained some disturbing topics (rape, death etc.) which wasn't the happiest to read about. Part of me wants to suggest that there should have been some sort of commentary so the book felt more consistent but I think that would have ruined the fact that this book had no biases, no commentary and no conclusions. Overall I enjoyed the book and it very much extended my knowledge of the period but I am also very glad to be able to read something else now.

apattonbooks's review against another edition

4.0

This is a great book, at first I did not like the narrative style but it grows to come at you in waves of horror and sorrow. It gives a first hand account of the last days of the Nazis, of the weak and the devastation that Hitler brought to his people and the massive body count in World War II.
I wish the others in the series were available in English.