Inside Hitler's bunker

By 1945, Hitler had developed a vast concrete bunker of interconnected chambers thirtythree feet beneath the surface of Berlin. In the last months of the war, while desperate battles raged in the ruins above, the Fuhrerbunker was to become the setting for the most dramatic final act in modem history: the collapse of the Third Reich. In this compelling new reconstruction, Germany's greatest historian of Nazism, Joachim Fest, describes in vivid detail the claustrophobic atmosphere of those bitter last days, when a drugged and enfeebled Hitler veered wildly between hysterical despair and lunatic optimism. Using newly available material and drawing on years of meticulous research, Fest shows us how the Nazi regime finally disintegrated amidst acts of betrayal, recrimination and suicide. He also reveals how these desperate last scenes offer fresh insight into the true nature of Hitler and his entourage.