Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler's Capital, 1939-45

(Paperback)

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A fascinating portrayal of the German experience during the Second World War told through the eyes of the citizens of Berlin. Berlin was the nerve-centre of Hitler's Germany - the backdrop for the most lavish ceremonies, it was also the venue for Albert Speer's plans to forge a new 'world metropolis' and the scene of the final climactic bid to defeat Nazism. Yet while our understanding of the Holocaust is well developed, we know little about everyday life in Nazi Germany. In this vivid and important study Roger Moorhouse portrays the German experience of the Second World War, not through an examination of grand politics, but from the viewpoint of the capital's streets and homes.He gives a flavour of life in the capital, raises issues of consent and dissent, morality and authority and, above all, charts the violent humbling of a once-proud metropolis. Shortlisted for the Hessell-Tiltman History Prize.

Reviews

Roger Moorhouse has a deep knowledge of Wartime Germany... Moorhouse has a nice eye for social detail -- Max Hastings * Sunday Times *
As a leading historian of modern Germany, Moorhouse has chronicled a largely unknown story with scholarship, narrative verve and, at times, an awful, harrowing immediacy -- Ian Thompson * Sunday Telegraph *
Moorhouse's evocative social history of Hitler's capital brings all these aromas together, along with the sights, sounds, thoughts and feelings of the ordinary Germans who lived here -- Keith Lowe * Daily Telegraph *
Few books on the war genuinely increase the sum of our collective knowledge of this exhaustively covered period, but this one does... By trawling through the complex, often deeply morally compromised personal stories of many survivors, Moorhouse has produced new insights into the way ordinary Berliners tried to escape the disastrous ill-fortune of living in the belly of the beast -- Andrew Roberts * Financial Times *
Roger Moorhouse's measured, sympathetic book offers a fascinating corrective to that Anglocentric perspective... After reading this thorough and engaging book you'll never be able to watch a war film or even a World Cup football match in quite the same way -- James Delingpole * Daily Mail *

Author Bio

Roger Moorhouse is an historian and author specialising in modern German history. He is the co-author, with Norman Davies, of Microcosm- Portrait of a Central European City, and the author of Killing Hitler- The Third Reich and the Plots Against the F hrer.