Customer Reviews

The Last 100 Days: The Tumultuous and Controversial Story of the Final Days of World War II in Europe (Modern Library War)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this book when it first came out in paperback in the 1960s, when I was a middle school student. It made a profound impact on me at the time. I recently saw it in basically the same Bantam mass market paperback edition I'd bought in the '60s (though without the photos and map contained in the '60s version, even though the price had increased five-fold in the interim). I re-read it again primarily out of curiosity, simply to see what I thought of it forty years later.

Despite having read many dozens of books on WWII in the intervening years, I was wowed by Toland's account all over again. Toland was a master storyteller, not an academic or military historian as such, and had a novelist's understanding of the illuminating detail, the minor tragedy emblematic of the whole, and the reader's fascination with the character of people acting under the most extreme duress imaginable.

Toland weaves together numerous narrative threads of the highest diplomacy (FDR, Churchill, and Stalin at Yalta), the lowest farce (the goings on of Hitler and his bizarre entourage in Hitler's underground bunker), and endless violent encounters -- between enemy forces, and between military forces and the huge masses of civilians fleeing the fighting or trapped in cities under ferocious bombardment.

While the book is populated with the brave and noble, at high levels and low, it is also frequented by monsters, knaves, cowards, innocent victims, and thugs on all sides (though the Germans, of course, were peerless in the scope and cruelty of their barbarities). This is not the place to go if you are looking for "the good war." This book gave me my first deep insight into why my uncle (now deceased, but at the time I first read this book younger than I am now), who had served as a rifleman in the 8th Infantry Division in Europe, seldom could be persuaded to talk about the war.

Toland's work was also somewhat unusual, when first published, in its lack of triumphalism. The atmosphere which permeates The Last 100 Days is not that of the impending victory of the good, or the impending defeat of the evil -- although the end of the war in Europe was certainly both -- but of immense tragedy and the dawning awareness that at the end of the war, the world was going to remain an exceedingly dangerous place, as the unnatural marriage of necessity between the Western powers and Stalin's Soviet Union came to an end.

Toland's narrative method has been adopted and adapted in other's subsequent works (Toland doubtless borrowed elements of it from others before him as well), but few have been his equal. And having read all of John Toland's several excellent books at one time or another, I am convinced that this book was his best. On the mountain of books on WWII, The Last 100 Days belongs near the top. This book should remain in print for a long time to come because it is great history, powerfully told.

John Toland is a master. I have read three of his books on WWII and each is a masterpiece in its own right. "The Last 100 Days" is a perfect example. I couldn't put this book down. I have little time to read for fun but when I get my hands on a book like this my time flies!!! "The Last 100 Days" cover exactly that, from a multitude of perspectives: Soldiers: German, Russian, English, and American; leaders; and civilians. It's a story that could have only been told this way by someone with Toland's talents. His words always seem to come alive and "100 Days" is not different from other works of his I have read ("Battle" and "Adolf Hitler"). Despite the fact that I am pretty versed with WWII and the end of the ETO,fall of Berlin, etc., I was on the edge of my seat reading this book. It wasn't so much from new content but just in the way Toland tells the story. I highly recommend this book to both beginners and seasoned buffs alike. Its wonderful reading!!!

Amid the literal landslide of books written to date on the single subject of the final fateful overthrow of the Third Reich by Allied forces advancing both from the east and west simultaneously, this early effort by famed author John Toland is easily the single best nugget in all that ore, a single volume effort that is a literal treasure trove of both anecdotal eye-witness testimony and exhaustive historical research. As in most of his terrific book, Toland threads an integrating narrative that plies us with a battery of both useful and entertaining information, with amusing nuggets of historical facts such as the fact that a visiting Winston Churchill halted the caravan in which he was being escorted for security reasons to very publicly urinate on the bridge, quipping that Hitler could "take that".

Indeed, in January of 1945, the Allied forces were poised to smash through the remnants of the Wehrmacht even as Hitler, convinced he could still win the war by dividing the two Allied armies and soliciting the western Allied phalanx to join him in an unholy war against the godless Bolsheviks. It is no exaggeration that it is unlikely that any other three-month period in modern history had the monumental impact of these three months as the evil empire of the Nazi regime was smashed into smithereens. Indeed, the ninety-day period saw historical events ranging from the conference at Yalta to the controversial and merciless bombing of Dresden, from the crucial crossing of the final bridge over the Rhine at Remagen to the brutal extermination of the German army at the hands of the Russians. And all of these, and many more, are described, discussed, and placed in historical context by an author who is a master of the trade of writing substantial popular works of history.

Toland's focus here is with the individuals involved, both those, who like Eisenhower, Churchill, Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, shaped the evens even as they transpired, and also with the soldiers, civilians, and observers who provide the human angle of what living on the ground in the midst of what sometimes was an endless cycle of carnage, murder, and devastation was like to experience. It is all here, from Hitler's suicide to Eisenhower's original plans for the Nazi war criminals (he wanted them shot without benefit of trial). Toland's narrative is tight, informative, and exciting to read. He does not so much provide an overall interpretation of what happened and why so much as he fully immerses the reader in the particulars and gives the contexts in which these specifics occur, letting the reader make his or her own decisions about what that means. This is popular history at its best, delivered by a master of the trade. Enjoy!

I read "The Last 100 Days" shortly after it came out when I was still in my mid-teens. I was fascinated with the many stories that were strewn together within the events that were the final days of the Third Reich. It was a real page-turner for me and I enjoyed the mutliple perspectives; Russian, German, Western Allied. Over the years I have read other books that dealt in part with this subject. However, I always looked back on "The Last 100 Days" as the real authority on the subject. Much of what happened over the next 50 years had its' beginnings in these last 100 days and John Toland does an excellent job of explaining that. Anyone interested in either WWII or the Cold War should read this book.

With all due respect to others who write about WWII, it would be difficult to find anyone better.
I would never have thought it possible to read a book that puts you "there" during the last 100 days.
The Chicago Tribune says it very well "Fascinating ... the narrative shifts from scene to intimate scene of every conference room... from liberated camp to Hitler's underground bunker... to GI's storming the railroad bridges across the Rhine... Toland has woven the tapestry of history."
If you read and enjoy WWII, this book is a MUST.

My first contact with Mr. Toland's writings was "Gods of War" and found it a great WWII novel. At that time I wasn't aware Mr. Toland was a professional historian on war themes. Researching in Amazon, for bibliography on WWII I was delighted to find out Mr. Toland's works.

In "The Last 100 Days" he collects hundreds of testimonies from the actors of this last war drama, ranging from State Heads to simple privates and fleeing civilians.
Mr. Toland blends all of them in an overwhelming and coherent picture. His prose is entertaining and informative. The reader has the sensation of "being there" and will be presented with vignettes of very different kind.
It is amazing how in the same book, without losing coherence, you are able to witness Hitler's maddening last days and Yalta Conference's intimacies vis-à-vis with the story of two young Poles running to freedom.

With great patience and skill Mr. Toland sew a huge tapestry showing these momentous Last Days.
A great stuff to read for historians, students or casual readers. Enjoy!!!.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

This is a gripping look at the final months of World War II in Europe. Author John Toland covers many angles as the Allied armies advanced into Germany and squeezed what remained of the Nazi Empire. The author rotates between subjects, and keeps the reader's interest with vivid descriptions and many personal accounts of events. Readers learn of Yalta and the politics of Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt (and then Truman), and note the seeds of the coming Cold War. We get a bird's eye view from inside the Fuhrer's bunker as his brutal empire collapsed. We also read about atrocities against both prisoners and civilians, hear of the plight of refugees, and learn about the views from the top Allied commanders in the west (Eisenhower, Montgomery, Patton, Bradley, etc.).

John Toland (1912-2004) was a master story teller, although not an academically trained historian. Judging by the sales figures, most readers seem to prefer his readable and well-researched approach. This is a vivid and gripping narrative.

I am an avid reader of WWII history and must say that this is without a doubt the best book I have read on the period. This book manages to read like a novel in the majestic way in which it is written and at the same time it makes the war feel personal; the people throughout the pages are more than names, they are lives, maybe ones that could have been your own. Of all the books I have read on war this is the only one that has forced me to stop reading because some of the material in it actually made me want to cry, is this is not literature at its best, then I don't know what is.

In the end I must say that this is not only a classic read on WWII history but on the history of War itself and the major part it plays on the human experience. Trust me, you can't go wrong with this book; this is as close as you will get to feeling like you were in the middle of WWII.

This book was written in 1965. Such a book dealing with the Second World War period potentially has the disadvantage that it does not have the benefit of the latest scholarship and material (such as the former Soviet records, available on the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s). On the other hand, it has the advantage of being written while many of the participants of these great events were very much alive, and could provide eyewitness accounts and even dialogue. Naturally the author has to allow for memory failures and distortions (both inadvertent and deliberate), and this requires meticulous fact checking.

With this book, Mr. Toland seems to have been wildly successful on all fronts. To me, it seems that the later material hasn't detracted at all from his account. Moreover, the book has a freshness and immediacy that takes one right into conferences, discussions and battle situations as if one were actually there, sitting at the shoulder of Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill, Stalin, Zhukov, Eisenhower. In a way, it is reminiscent of Cornelius Ryan's "The Longest Day", also written when many of the participants were still available for interview and the events still relatively fresh in mind, yet sufficiently removed for some reflection.

It is particularly good at disentangling the complicated threads of communications failure, conflicting ambitions and wishful thinking inherent in all large human enterprises - the Nazi's fervent belief that the Allies must surely turn with them against the Soviet Union and save "civilisation", and the poker-playing between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union as the former tried (in vain) to extract from the latter its real intentions and to prevent its domination of all eastern Europe. It also puts a human face on some of the greatest monsters of the 20th century, such as Hitler and Himmler, showing what pathetic excuses of humans they really were.

There may be more detailed, perhaps more accurate, accounts of the final 100 days of the European war. However, it is difficult to imagine anyone ever doing it better than this always fascinating, immensely readable account, which holds the reader's attention from page 1 to the end.

With all the other glowing reviews obviously this is a fine book. I offer this review only to point out the publication date. I purchased the book erroneously thinking it was a new 2003 release only to find that the release was really in the 1960's. I fully admit that this was my own mistake.
My disappointment is that, while Toland presents accurately, much new and enlightening information has come out since the 1960's. For those who are younger or who have not read much on WWII history the book will be very enjoyable.