Prevail Until the Bitter End

Germans in the Waning Years of World War II

De: Alexandra Lohse

Narrado por: Christa Lewis

In Prevail Until the Bitter End, Alexandra Lohse explores the gossip and innuendo, the dissonant reactions and perceptions of Germans to the violent dissolution of the Third Reich. Mobilized for total war, soldiers and citizens alike experienced an unprecedented convergence of military, economic, social, and political crises.

Lohse uncovers how Germans experienced life and death, investigates how mounting emergency conditions affected their understanding of the nature and purpose of the conflagration, and shows how these factors influenced the people's relationship with the Nazi regime. She draws on Nazi morale and censorship reports, features citizens' private letters and diaries, and incorporates a large body of Allied intelligence, including several thousand transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations among German prisoners of war in Western Allied captivity.

Lohse's historical reconstruction helps us understand how ordinary Germans interpreted their experiences as both the victims and perpetrators of extreme violence. We are immersively drawn into their desolate landscape. Prevail Until the Bitter End is about the stories that Germans told themselves to make sense of this world in crisis.

©2021 Cornell University (P)2021 Tantor

Outstanding

Christa Lewis narrates all my favorite books it seems. I think we’ve all wondered what the Germans were thinking during all the horror and destruction of the Nazi era. This book answers that.

Pronunciations are questionable

Book is good so far, obviously well researched. The narrator is distracting for her pronunciations. The Fuhrer is Hit-laah. Prisoners who were on U-boats are Sub-Mariners. with the accent on the second syllable. Her pronunciation of German words makes them unreckoniazable. Deb Copaken narrated her own book and was constantly stopped for corrections to her pronunciation. Couldn't the producer do the same for this much more serious opus?

Poor naration

Hate to say it this way, but the female voice ruined it overall. Then, her insistence in using the proper pronunciation of the names of people sounded contrived. She was not consistent with her pronunciations, only certain people. She was also quite monotone. Boring. Not able to finish the book. I stopped with 6+ hours remaining. I didn't have the nerve to ask for my money back/return the title because I kept thinking I must be wrong to not like this based a lot on her voice.