Endgame 1945

Wars do not end when the fighting stops. While Hitler and Goebbels took their lives in the bunker under ruined Berlin, Mussolini was hanged in Milan and Himmler fled Germany, men and women everywhere faced the prospect of rebuilding peace. In this remarkable account of the days and months after Victory in Europe, David Stafford uncovers the stories of those who had lived through the Second World War and now had to endure the daily horrors and hardships of its aftermath: Robert Reid, a leading BBC journalist of the day, witnesses the Allied troops' first shocking encounter with the death camps at Buchenwald; British Intelligence officer Geoffrey Cox fights doggedly alongside Italian and Yugoslav partisans; and Fey Von Hassell, a German mother separated from her children in the labour camps, sets out on a heartbreaking mission to find them. Using letters and interviews, Stafford creates an unforgettable panorama of the defeat of Fascism, of ordinary people and extraordinary valour, and of Europe in every way tested to its limits. ENDGAME 1945 is the chilling final chapter of the Second World War.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.