| German author Walter Kempowski's
Swansong 1945 is the culmination of 20 years of collecting
"ordinary people's accounts of their personal experiences"
during WWII. Only this final volume of a 10 volume series
was translated from German and covers the collapse of Nazi
Germany as derived from diaries, letters, and autobiographies
surrounding four pivotal days: April 20 (Hitler's last birthday);
April 25 (American and Russian armies link up at the river
Elbe); April 30 (Hitler's death); and May 8/9 (Nazi Germany's
surrender).
This work has been characterized as a literary collage of
various and disparate "ordinary" peoples' experiences
to portray the final days of Nazi Germany's chaotic collapse
into utter ruin. Kempowski has painted a cohesively powerful,
compelling and disturbing view of these final days. He interleaves
the experiences of German and Russian soldiers and generals,
civilians and officials, concentration camp survivors, writers,
Hitler's testaments, forced labor workers, refugees, journalists,
housewives, etc. to graphically detail the impact of the last
days of the war on these people. Those last days around Germany
saw the greatest movements of people - civilians and military
- that Europe had ever experienced. It is their voices that
provide the conflicting feelings of despair and hope; absurdity
and realism; optimism and pessimism; and confusion and clarity
of purpose. In Swansong 1945, I felt these voices rise
from the pages to remind readers of the calamity, confusion
and absolute horrors these people experienced.
This is an extraordinary and fascinating work with little
parallel in the published world. No expository narrative structure
links these experiences into a well-designed presentation,
but rather specific dates are use as context for the various
experiences. As readers, it is up to us to realize the emotional
upheaval of those final days. |
