Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich (ISBN 0374135770)

Not a Worthwhile Text:
I wish that I had read the negative reviews of this book and avoided it. This is a very poorly done account of Hitler's final days in the bunker. The book is poorly written, lacks linear progression, and provides an erratic treatment of the subject. The text itself is cobbled together in piecemeal fashion from other books on the subject - there seems little original here. Quotes about Hitler are often made without attribution leaving the reader to wonder whose opinion was being posited. Fest writes pages and pages of filler material consisting of his own amateur psychoanalysis of Hitler which adds nothing to the record and further sidetracks this work. If you wish to read an engaging and informative account of Hitler's final days, skip Fest's book and read instead the book written by Hitler's secretary Traudle Junge's or Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting's book The Women Who Knew Hitler which chronicles Hitler's last days extremely well.

This book didn't need to written.:
James O'Donnell's "Bunker" is the authoritative history of the Fuhrerbunker. Even Mr. Fest acknowledges that in his Bibliography notes. "Inside Hitler's Bunker" is cursory, superficial and unoriginal and it escapes me that there can be any reason this book was written except to make a quick buck off of unwary readers. It's a joke. Avoid it at all costs.

the dark, nihilistic end of the Thousand Year Reich:
Fest's haunting description of the last days of the Third Reich is a magnificent accomplishment. Despite its brevity, Fest manages to weave larger historical issues into a narrative full of surreal, compelling details about the Nazis' end. There are the evocative stories of Berlin in turmoil: SS patrols summarily hanging whoever they felt was a shirker, citizens struggling to survive in the shelled-out ruin of a city, the Soviet encirclement growing ever closer. Meanwhile, inside the Hitler's bunker, the story of delusion and denial grew ever more fantastical -- Hitler commanding generals to counterattack the Russians with army units existing in his imagination, and growing more and more furious with their "betrayals" as the Russian advance still came on. The story arrives ultimately at the Russian approach to the bunker and the suicides of Hitler, Eva Braun, and the inner circle. Their grimly nihilistic end, burned in a trashheap, paralleled their desire for the same fate for Germany. Hitler wanted Germany to go down with him. That so many in Berlin actually did follow him in suicide, or fighting the Russians to the end against suicidal odds, seems now almost too bewildering to believe. Fest's book is bleak, but in a straightforward journalistic style argues why the end in the bunker was the culmination of Hitler's theatrical, nihilistic vision.

Spicy journalistic report:
Inside Hitler's Bunker is a good introduction to the final days of the Second World War from the Nazi perspective - a horrific denoument to a great crisis in world history as Hitler and his cohorts, realising defeat was inveitable, still pursued a grand Wagnerian ending until the last. Berlin was in ruins, thousands were dying by the day, the Red Army were marauding in from the East. And Hitler, a 'cake gobbling wreck', shattered by events, bloodily ended it all along with his wife. This is a short, journalistic history, mainly from secondary sources, with a good deal of speculative rumination. It is not a deep scholarly book. It will appeal as an introduction to the topic, interspersed with some interesting pictures of the war ravaged Berlin, and inside the Bunker itself.

Great World War II Reading:
I found Joachim Fest's book to be a fascinating documentary of Hitler's final days. It clearly describes Hitler's state of mind during the fall of Berlin and Germany. Hitler was a delusional fanatic, and history bears this out. This book takes us inside the actual bunker where Hitler plans his own wedding, and his suicide, as an entire country descends into chaos and ruin around him. If you are a World War II history buff like me, then this book is a must read. It confirms everything that I already knew about Hitler the person. But it also reveals the anguish and desperation of a dictator during his last days on earth. Mitch Paioff, Author, Getting Started as an Independent Computer Consultant Getting Started as an Independent Computer Consultant