A hiding to nothing

The story of Hitler’s last days in his bunker has been told and retold many times, perhaps most famously and certainly first by Hugh Trevor-Roper, an elegant writer and witty satirist but not really much of a historian. No doubt it will continue to be told again and again for many generations to come. The sheer frightfulness of his power and the devastating effect that Hitler personally had upon the course of history marks him out as unique in modern times and the whiff of mystery that envelops his demise excites a still incompletely quenched curiosity. So there was certainly room for a pulling together of the available evidence about, and a reassessment of, the macabre circumstances and events concerning Hitler’s bunker. Nor can there be a doubt that Joachim Fest has succeeded triumphantly in this disagreeable task.

The dust-jacket tells us that Fest is Germany’s most distinguished historian of the Third Reich and also his country’s ‘greatest living journalist’; an unlikely combination perhaps, but in this work he does display some of the best attributes of both professions.