The new evidence presented here makes this a must-read for students of World War II.
The story of how Brisard and Parshina were allowed into Russian archives is as compelling as the evidence of Hitler’s death they were shown.
Admittance to the hallowed State Archives of the Russian Federation was primarily achieved by the fame of the Russian-American Parshina. Her major achievement—the last interview with Stalin’s favorite daughter, Svetlana, who was hiding out in a hospice in the United States—made her a household name in Russia. Parshina’s understanding of the complex wheels of the bureaucratic Russian machine helped the authors gain access to the secret, sensitive, and complex files. Throughout their adventure in the bowels of Russian secrecy, Brisard’s French identity elicited hesitation, but Parshina’s quick thinking and wit always seemed to alleviate the situation. Meetings were postponed, delayed, and cancelled during their quest, which ran from early 2016 to late 2017. Their first meeting was with the director of the archives. During that meeting, they were shown the skull remains said to be Hitler’s. Along with that, there were some blood-stained table legs, photos, and documents from April 1945, which Brisard was allowed to photograph. The next step was to translate the documents, including memos written to Stalin regarding the discovery of Hitler’s bunker and interviews with prisoners. The ever paranoid Russians spread information among three separate services, all of which hated and distrusted each other. The authors’ perseverance paid off, as they eventually succeeded with all three and got permission for a forensic scientist to examine the remains. Alternating with the story of finding the documents, they reconstruct the tale of the last days in Berlin. Ultimately, the evidence shows that Hitler died in a bunker from a self-inflicted bullet wound; he did not escape. There are still questions unanswered, and who knows when they might be allowed to be asked.
The new evidence presented here makes this a must-read for students of World War II.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-306-92258-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
