Democracies are fragile. Freedoms that seem secure can be lost. Few historical events illustrate this as vividly as the failure of the Weimar Republic. Germany’s first democracy endured for 14 tumultuous years and culminated with the horrific rise of the Third Reich. As one commentator wrote in July 1933: Hitler had “won the game with little effort…. All he had to do was huff and puff --- and the edifice of German politics collapsed like a house of cards.” But this tragedy was not inevitable. In FATEFUL HOURS, award-winning historian Volker Ullrich chronicles the captivating story of the Republic, capturing a nation and its people teetering on the abyss. 

1923 was a “year of lunacy” in Germany, defined by hyperinflation, violence, a political system on the verge of collapse, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and separatist movements threatening to rip apart the German nation. Most observers found it miraculous that the Weimar Republic --- the first German democracy --- was able to survive, though some of the more astute realized that the feral undercurrents unleashed that year could lead to much worse. Now, a century later, Volker Ullrich draws on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles and other sources to present a riveting chronicle of one of the most difficult years any modern democracy has ever faced --- one with haunting parallels to our own political moment.

In a bunker deep below Berlin’s Old Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler and his new bride, Eva Braun, took their own lives just after 3:00 p.m. on April 30, 1945 --- Hitler by gunshot to the temple, Braun by ingesting cyanide. But the Führer’s suicide did not instantly end either Nazism or the Second World War in Europe. Far from it: the eight days that followed were among the most traumatic in modern history, witnessing not only the final paroxysms of bloodshed and the frantic surrender of the Wehrmacht, but the total disintegration of the once-mighty Third Reich. In EIGHT DAYS IN MAY, Volker Ullrich draws on an astonishing variety of sources, including diaries and letters of ordinary Germans, to narrate a society’s descent into Hobbesian chaos.

In the summer of 1939, Hitler was at the zenith of his power. Having consolidated political control in Germany, he was at the helm of a newly restored major world power and now perfectly positioned to realize his lifelong ambition: to help the German people flourish and to exterminate those who stood in the way. Beginning a war allowed Hitler to take his ideological obsessions to unthinkable extremes, including the mass genocide of millions, which was conducted not only with the aid of the SS, but with the full knowledge of German leadership. Yet despite a series of stunning initial triumphs, Hitler’s fateful decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941 turned the tide of the war in favor of the Allies. Now, Volker Ullrich offers fascinating new insight into Hitler’s character and personality.

Volker Ullrich's HITLER, the first in a two-volume biography, has changed the way scholars and laypeople alike understand the man who has become the personification of evil. Drawing on previously unseen papers and new scholarly research, Ullrich charts Hitler's life from his childhood through his experiences in the First World War and his subsequent rise as a far-right leader. Focusing on the personality behind the policies, Ullrich creates a vivid portrait of a man and his megalomania, political skill and horrifying worldview.