badb_catha 's review for:

The End by Ian Kershaw

5.0

---

Any time you visit Hitler’s Germany, if you’re a functioning adult with a conscience, it’s horrifying and unsettling. Doubly so here as we witness the collapse and destruction of Germany at the end of the war, the self serving lies of its apologists and “who me?” tens of millions who seemed just fine with National Socialism when it was “winning.” Anti semitism and anti lgbt sentiment and the corresponding laws were an easy sell to these tens of millions - but they were shocked, shocked I tell you, by concentration camps. Ravening Slavic hordes were the “real” enemy, said a nation which invaded the Soviet Union, raped and murdered her people, and then reaped the whirlwind she herself instigated. In a world where we see plenty of resurgent neo Nazi white supremacist sentiment among those under 40, books like these are important. Hard to read, yes - but important. Nazis and their apologists and enablers were contemptible then - they remain so now.