The collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 was an event nearly
unprecedented in history. Only the fall of the Roman Empire fifteen
hundred years earlier compares to the destruction visited on Germany.
The country's cities lay in ruins, its economic base devastated. The
German people stood at the brink of starvation, millions of them still
in POW camps. This was the starting point as the Allies set out to build
a humane, democratic nation on the ruins of the vanquished Nazi
state-arguably the most monstrous regime the world has ever seen.
In Exorcising Hitler,
master historian Frederick Taylor tells the story of Germany's Year
Zero and what came next. He describes the bitter endgame of war, the
murderous Nazi resistance, the vast displacement of people in Central
and Eastern Europe, and the nascent cold war struggle between Soviet and
Western occupiers. The occupation was a tale of rivalries, cynical
realpolitik, and blunders, but also of heroism, ingenuity, and
determination-not least that of the German people, who shook off the
nightmare of Nazism and rebuilt their battered country.
Weaving together accounts of occupiers and Germans, high and low alike Exorcising Hitler
is a tour de force of both scholarship and storytelling, the first
comprehensive account of this critical episode in modern history.
