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End April 1945. The mutilated bodies of Mussolini and his mistress hang by the heels in Milan while an angry crowd whistles and jeers. Desperate to avoid the same fate, Adolf Hitler leaves orders for his own body to be burned after his death. With the Russian army closing in on Berlin and his world crashing in flames, Germany’s doomed leader will never allow his enemies the satisfaction of desecrating his corpse.
This is the story of an immensely exciting day, but it is also a snapshot of the whole world at the end of an extraordinary week. Everyone remembered where they were when Hitler died, from Leni Riefenstahl in Mayrhofen and Jack Kennedy in San Francisco to Vidkun Quisling in Norway, Audrey Hepburn sick with hunger in Arnhem and Simon Wiesenthal in Mauthausen, so close to death that he could no longer stand. For the British traitor Lord Haw Haw, Hitler’s death spelled disaster as he tried to flee Hamburg, but for the future Pope Benedict it was a heaven-sent opportunity to desert from the Wehrmacht and escape home under the noses of the SS.
For ordinary people too, many of whose stories are told here for the first time, the day Hitler died was one they would never forget. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished material, Nicholas Best tells a wonderfully compelling tale, a sequel in part to his widely praised account of the 1918 Armistice, The Greatest Day in History, and featuring many of the same characters.
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