The End by Ian Kershaw

More than a decade ago Prof Ian Kershaw told me of his readiness to break from of Hitler having completed his towering two-volume biography of the 20th-century’s most monstrous figure.

After ten years spent researching and writing about the Führer, he felt it was finally time to break free from the shadow of the Third Reich.

Given that he had produced the most important life of Hitler since Lord Bullock’s Study In Tyranny, it was all the remarkable to learn that he in fact counted himself as first and foremost a medieval specialist.

At Merton College, Oxford, the subject of his DPhil was an economic study of Bolton Priory in the 13th and 14th century.

His long involvement with Adolf Hitler, he explained, had come about through a chance encounter with a former Nazi in a cafe in a small town near Munich.

The conversation stirred his interest in the social history of the Third Reich.

The depth of his knowledge and ability to offer fresh insights into how Hitler was able to exercise such power meant any break from the darkest period in European history would inevitably be short lived. His new book The End is only likely to intensify demand for more.

For as we all sat at home wondering why Gaddafi’s forces were continuing to fight on, Prof Kershaw gets to grips with the question of what made Germany keep the war going, long, long after defeat was inevitable.

The End begins with the shocking account of how a 19-year-old theology student in the closing days of the war attempted to prevent his town being destroyed by cutting telephone wires.

With the Americans at the gates, enormous effort was put into ensuring that he was hanged. Even some of the towns people punched and kicked him on the way to the gallows.

From this grizzly starting point Prof Kershaw describes the terror, power structures and underlying mentalities that resulted in the regime having to be stamped out town by town with a level of brutality almost without precedent.

His understanding of the cult of Hitler, the ferocious terror apparatus and the workings of the party and army allow him to show why in his bunker Hitler was still able to go on giving absurd and unachievable orders almost until Russian soldiers kicked in the door — and most shockingly, why, whatever the cost in lives, Germans still tried to carry them out.

* Prof Kershaw raises questions about the nature of the Second World War and how ordinary people behave in extreme circumtances in his talk as part of the Woodstock Literary Festival at St Mary Magdalene Church, in Woodstock, at 5pm this evening. Tickets, costing £8, are available by calling the box office on 01865 305305 or through the website woodstockliteraryfestival.com