Among the military leaders of the Second World War, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz remains a deeply enigmatic figure. As chief of the German submarine fleet he earned Allied respect as a formidable enemy. But after he succeeded Hitler – to whom he was unquestioningly loyal – as head of the Third Reich, his name became associated with all that was most hated in the Nazi regime. Yet Doenitz deserves credit for ending the war quickly while trying to save his compatriots in the East – his Dunkirk-style operation across the Baltic rescued up to 2 million troops and civilian refugees. Historian Barry Turner argues that while Doenitz can never be dissociated from the evil done under the Third Reich, his contribution to the war must be acknowledged in its entirety in order to properly understand the conflict. An even-handed portrait of Nazi Germany's last leader and a compellingly readable account of the culmination of the war in Europe, Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich gives a fascinating new perspective on a complex man at the heart of this crucial period in history.

This is the first English-language translation of a crucial memoir of the dying days of Hitler’s Third Reich. Walter Ludde-Neurath was an accomplished officer, who served with a variety of torpedo boats and destroyers, slowly rising through the ranks. In September 1944 he was selected to be the new adjutant to Grand Admiral Donitz. He enjoyed a close relationship with Donitz over what proved to be a crucial period: the formation and dissolution of the Flensburg Government (named after the headquarters Donitz was using at the time of the appointment). The memoir details the discussions within the new cabinet, which was created after Hitler’s suicide, and records how Donitz believed he would rule a new Germany and reach an accommodation with the Allies. Ludde-Neurath details the fighting amongst the candidates - in particular, the confrontation of Donitz with Himmler (for which Donitz kept a revolver within his reach). Ludde-Neurath was present when the British Royal Hussars carried out Operation Blackout, surrounding and arresting the fledgling government and records how Donitz was asked if he had any comment. Donitz responded: ‘Any words would be superfluous' and was taken into custody.

"[G]ripping, immaculately researched . . . In Mr. Ullrich’s account, the murderous behavior of the Reich’s last-ditch loyalists was not a reaction born of rage or of stubbornness in the face of defeat—common enough in war—but of something that had long ago tipped over into the pathological." —Andrew Stuttaford, Wall Street Journal The best-selling author of Hitler: Ascent and Hitler: Downfall reconstructs the chaotic, otherworldly last days of Nazi Germany. In a bunker deep below Berlin’s Old Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler and his new bride, Eva Braun, took their own lives just after 3:00 p.m. on April 30, 1945—Hitler by gunshot to the temple, Braun by ingesting cyanide. But the Führer’s suicide did not instantly end either Nazism or the Second World War in Europe. Far from it: the eight days that followed were among the most traumatic in modern history, witnessing not only the final paroxysms of bloodshed and the frantic surrender of the Wehrmacht, but the total disintegration of the once-mighty Third Reich. In Eight Days in May, the award-winning historian and Hitler biographer Volker Ullrich draws on an astonishing variety of sources, including diaries and letters of ordinary Germans, to narrate a society’s descent into Hobbesian chaos. In the town of Demmin in the north, residents succumbed to madness and committed mass suicide. In Berlin, Soviet soldiers raped German civilians on a near-unprecedented scale. In Nazi-occupied Prague, Czech insurgents led an uprising in the hope that General George S. Patton would come to their aid but were brutally put down by German units in the city. Throughout the remains of Third Reich, huge numbers of people were on the move, creating a surrealistic tableau: death marches of concentration-camp inmates crossed paths with retreating Wehrmacht soldiers and groups of refugees; columns of POWs encountered those of liberated slave laborers and bombed-out people returning home. A taut, propulsive narrative, Eight Days in May takes us inside the phantomlike regime of Hitler’s chosen successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, revealing how the desperate attempt to impose order utterly failed, as frontline soldiers deserted and Nazi Party fanatics called on German civilians to martyr themselves in a last stand against encroaching Allied forces. In truth, however, the post-Hitler government represented continuity more than change: its leaders categorically refused to take responsibility for their crimes against humanity, an attitude typical not just of the Nazi elite but also of large segments of the German populace. The consequences would be severe. Eight Days in May is not only an indispensable account of the Nazi endgame, but a historic work that brilliantly examines the costs of mass delusion.

"In examining that strategy, Grier answers lingering questions about the Third Reich's final months and also provides evidence of its emphasis up naval affairs and of Admiral Karl Donitz's influence in shaping Hitler's grand strategy. Donitz intended to starve Britain into submission and halt the shipment of American troops and supplies to Europe with a fleet of new Type XXI U-boats. But to test the new submarines and train their crews the Nazis needed control of the Baltic Sea and possession of its ports, and to launch their U-boat offensive they needed Norway, the only suitable location that remained after the loss of France in the summer of 1944." "This work analyzes German naval strategy from 1944 to 1945 and its role in shaping the war on land in the Baltic."--BOOK JACKET.

The story of the last world war, as told by Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz himself. His memoir covers his early career with submarines in the First World War and follows both his successes and failures through the Second World War, with great detail on the way the U-boat campaign was waged, as told by the man who invented U-boat tactics. Doenitz includes details of the U-boat campaigns during the Second World War as well as the opinions, ideas and commentary on the period. Of particular interest are the comments regarding British and American conduct during the war. An important social document, and an invaluable source for any student of the last war. He became the last Führer of Germany after Hitler's suicide in May 1945 and the book’s subtitle, Ten Years and Twenty Days, is a direct reference to the time Karl Doenitz spent in Spandau Prison having been convicted of war crimes following trial at Nuremberg.

Acclaimed historian Barry Turner presents a new history of the Cold War's defining episode. Berlin, 1948 – a divided city in a divided country in a divided Europe. The ruined German capital lay 120 miles inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. Stalin wanted the Allies out; the Allies were determined to stay, but had only three narrow air corridors linking the city to the West. Stalin was confident he could crush Berlin's resolve by cutting off food and fuel. In the USA, despite some voices still urging 'America first', it was believed that a rebuilt Germany was the best insurance against the spread of communism across Europe. And so over eleven months from June 1948 to May 1949, British and American aircraft carried out the most ambitious airborne relief operation ever mounted, flying over 2 million tons of supplies on almost 300,000 flights to save a beleaguered Berlin. With new material from American, British and German archives and original interviews with veterans, Turner paints a fresh, vivid picture the airlift, whose repercussions – the role of the USA as global leader, German ascendancy, Russian threat – we are still living with today.

In every decade of the twentieth century, there was one sensational murder trial that riveted public attention and at the time was called "the trial of the century." This book tells the story of each murder case and the dramatic trial—and media coverage—that followed. Starting with the murder of famed architect Stanford White in 1906 and ending with the O.J. Simpson trial of 1994, the authors recount ten compelling tales spanning the century. Each is a story of celebrity and sex, prejudice and heartbreak, and all reveal how often the arc of American justice is pushed out of its trajectory by an insatiable media driven to sell copy. The most noteworthy cases are here--including the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the Sam Sheppard murder trial ("The Fugitive"), the "Helter Skelter" murders of Charles Manson, and the O.J. Simpson murder trial. But some cases that today are lesser known also provide fascinating glimpses into the tenor of the time: the media sensation created by yellow journalist William Randolph Hearst around the murder trial of 1920s movie star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle; the murder of the Scarsdale Diet guru by an elite prep-school headmistress in the 1980s; and more. The authors conclude with an epilogue on the infamous Casey Anthony (“tot mom”)trial, showing that the twenty-first century is as prone to sensationalism as the last century. This is a fascinating history of true crime, justice gone awry, and the media often at its worst.