Good, but maddingly jumpy in coverage: big picture Yalta / Leaders conversations, recollections of POWs, battle accounts from 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 different locations, recollections of refugees, much Hitler minutiae.... All of it is variously interesting and enough of it is new to me, but it is such a hodgepodge. Like 1000 anecdotes about the last 100 days. ( )

We were appeasing communists then as we still are. ( )

A pleasantly racy account of the collapse of German resistance in Europe. I think his book about Japan is a sounder work, but this was a popular theme at the time. ( )

Toland is an excellent writer who uses people on the scene to personalize what would otherwise be mundane details or lists. I was more interested in what was going on with the Nazis than I was in the allied advances, but Toland would catch me up in some event and I'd find myself reading hundreds of pages I hadn't intended to. This book covers not only the military history, but also diplomatic history, the political problems of Roosevelt's illness and death, and the personal histories of prisoners of war and refugees. I can highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the details of the end of World War II or who wants a better appreciation of how the Cold War got started. ( )

Even after surviving D-Day, Market-Garden, and the Battle of the Bulge achieving victory in Europe in WWII was far from a simple, straightforward task. While Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin were clearly on their way to victory, finishing off the war and convincing Hitler he had lost was another task entirely. This book covers everything from the Yalta conference to the signing of the surrender documents. In between those events Stalin was maneuvering to get as many countries under the umbrella of communism as he could while Hitler was irrationally insisting victory was still possible. The Germans were terrified of the Russians and were desperately trying to surrender to the Americans. The Russians were exacting horrible revenge on the Germans as they marched to Berlin. Some of Hitler's men were trying to work backroom deals to surrender and escape the sinking ship while others were showing unvarying allegiance. Roosevelt died of a stroke and Truman took up the reigns midstream. Mussolini was captured and killed by Partisans and Hitler killed himself in his bunker. Even though the Germans unconditionally surrendered the Americans still had to deal with Japan and it was clear that the seeds of the Cold War had already been planted. Well-written and well-paced, this book does a great job of laying out the events of the closing chapters of the war in Europe. ( )