The End is a meticulous survey of the collapse of Nazi Germany, from the July Plot on Hitler's life to the final surrender.

There's not much variation in what happens. The military situation lurches from bad to worse against the implacable weight of the Red Army, the Allied bombing campaign, and the invasion in the west. Hitler sought an increasingly delusional victory, based on superweapons, the volkssturm militia, and a heroic mobilization of an exhausted population. Many senior leaders, both Nazi Party members and the "apolitical" generals and bureaucrats who had no problems with fascism, knew that the war was lost but were too scared to do anything to shorten it. And ordinary people, both civilian and military, did their best to survive under increasingly bad conditions.

As the war closes in on it's end, faith in the Nazi Party and Hitler collapse. True believers carried out punitive executions against deserters and traitors, while concentration camp victims were sent on purposeless death marches across Europe. Even so, German soldiers kept fighting, motivated by terror of reprisals under Soviet occupation, fear of their leaders, and a kind of bloody-minded obstinance.

This is a long, ugly book, and deeply researched, but I'm not sure any words can capture those final months of collapse.