By early 1945, the destruction of the German Nazi State seems certain. The Allied forces, led by American generals George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower, are gaining control of Europe, leaving German leaders scrambling. Facing defeat, Adolf Hitler flees to a secret bunker with his new wife, Eva Braun, and his beloved dog, Blondi. It is there that all three would meet their end, thus ending the Third Reich and one of the darkest chapters of history. Hitler's Last Days is a gripping account of the death of one of the most reviled villains of the 20th century—a man whose regime of murder and terror haunts the world even today. Adapted from Bill O'Reilly's historical thriller Killing Patton, this book will have young readers—and grown-ups too—hooked on history. This thoroughly-researched and documented book can be worked into multiple aspects of the common core curriculum.

Revealed for the first time: how the SS rounded up the Nazis' most prominent prisoners to serve as human shields for Hitler in the last days of World War II In April 1945, as Germany faced defeat, Hitler planned to round up the Third Reich's most valuable prisoners and send them to his "Alpine Fortress," where he and the SS would keep the hostages as they made a last stand against the Allies. The prisoners included European presidents, prime ministers, generals, British secret agents, and German anti-Nazi clerics, celebrities, and officers who had aided the July 1944 bomb plot against Hitler--and the prisoners' families. Orders were given to the SS: if the German military situation deteriorated, the prisoners were to be executed--all 139 of them. So began a tense, deadly drama. As some prisoners plotted escape, others prepared for the inevitable, and their SS guards grew increasingly volatile, drunk, and trigger-happy as defeat loomed. As a dramatic confrontation between the SS and the Wehrmacht threatened the hostages caught in the middle, the US Army launched a frantic rescue bid to save the hostages before the axe fell. Drawing on previously unpublished and overlooked sources, Hitler's Last Plot is the first full account of this astounding and shocking story, from the original round-up order to the prisoners' terrifying ordeal and ultimate rescue. Told in a thrilling, page-turning narrative, this is one of World War II's most fascinating episodes.

Relates the final days of World War II in a study of Hitler's final days in the bunker and the torment in Germany's cities and towns as the Third Reich collapsed under the weight of American, British, French, and Russian forces.

Offering an insider's perspective on the final days of the Third Reich, the recollections of a woman who became Hitler's secretary in 1942 sheds new light on his day-to-day life, character, and habits.

Think You Know Everything about the death of Hitler? Think Again. After World War II, 50 percent of Americans polled said they didn’t believe Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had committed suicide in their bunker in 1945, as captured Nazi officials claimed. Instead, they believed the dictator faked his death and escaped, perhaps to Argentina. This wasn’t a crazy opinion: Joseph Stalin told Allied leaders that Soviet forces never discovered Hitler’s body and that he personally believed the Nazi leader had escaped justice. At least two German submarines crossed the Atlantic and landed on the coast of Argentina in July 1945. Plus, there were numerous reports of top Nazi officials successfully fleeing to South America where there was a large German colony. Incredible as it sounds, the mystery surrounding Adolf Hitler’s final days only deepened in 2009 when a U.S. forensic team announced that a piece of Hitler’s skull held in Soviet archives was not actually Hitler’s. International interest increased further in 2014 when the FBI released previously classified files detailing investigations surrounding Hitler’s possible escape. And the following year, The History Channel launched a three-year reality TV series investigating if it was possible Hitler did somehow survive. So what really happened? Popular history writer Robert J. Hutchinson, author of What Really Happened: The Lincoln Assassination, takes a fresh look at the evidence and discovers, once and for all, the truth about Hitler’s last week in Berlin. Among the questions the book explores are... * What did surviving Nazi eyewitnesses really say about the Führer’s final days in the bunker—and could they have been lying to aid Hitler’s escape? * If Hitler didn’t escape, why did the Allies not find his body? * What about Hitler’s proven use of body doubles? Could Hitler have used a body double in the bunker while he and Eva Braun flew to safety in a long-range aircraft that took off from a runway in Berlin’s Tiergarten? * Why did the FBI continue to investigate reports of Hitler’s survival for more than a decade after World War II—reports that were only declassified in 2014? * What about sensational claims in books such as The Grey Wolfthat Hitler and Eva Braun lived in an isolated chalet in the Andes – and that Hitler died in 1962? * Why were forensic tests on crucial physical evidence only conducted in 2016, more than 70 years after World War II ended? * And lots MORE.

Have you ever wondered what was going on in Adolf Hitler's mind during his final hours in the Führerbunker? What were his thoughts as radio contact with the outside world grew faint, Soviet explosions became louder and louder, and he began to feel his unassailable power ebbing away? Did Hitler repent of his crimes against humanity or was he obsessed with thoughts of his imminent defeat and suicide? With an inimitable cast of doomed characters, from Hitler himself to his mistress Eva Braun, mass-murderer Heinrich Himmler, cunning chief of Nazi propaganda Joseph Goebbels, and the manipulative Martin Bormann, this book captures all the drama and dread in the bunker as the Red Army remorselessly advanced into the heart of Berlin, and Hitler and his Thousand-Year Reich vanished into history.

A compulsively readable account of Hitler's last days, written by one of the first Americans to enter Hitler's bunker after the fall of Berlin

The story of how Germans came to embrace the Third Reich.Germany in early 1933 was a country ravaged by years of economic depression and increasingly polarized between the extremes of left and right. Over the spring of that year, Germany was transformed from a republic, albeit a seriously faltering one, into a one-party dictatorship. In Hitler's First Hundred Days, award-winning historian PeterFritzsche examines the pivotal moments during this fateful period in which the Nazis apparently won over the majority of Germans to join them in their project to construct the Third Reich. Fritzsche scrutinizes the events of theperiod - the elections and mass arrests, the bonfires and gunfire, the patriotic rallies and anti-Jewish boycotts - to understand both the terrifying power that the National Socialists came to exert over ordinary Germans and the powerful appeal of the new era that they promised.