Scenes from the End - the Last Days of World War II

Scenes From The End by Frank E. Manuel, published by Steerforth Press, 2000.If you are looking for the usual reminiscences where an old soldier describes his Sherman tank cracking a curbstone in Prague in 1945 and seeing the same crack in 1995, then this book is NOT for you. Manuel's present memoirs, on the end of World War II in Europe, are written in a literate style by a man literate, not only in English, but also in French, German and Yiddish. Frank E. Manuel begins his book with the Battle of the Bulge, but he really does not see much action. The central theme of his book is not, however, about military action, but rather the feelings and motivation of the enemy soldiers he interrogated. The POWs ranged in rank from private to general. Mr. Manuel describes their attitudes and personal attributes when captured. A particularly notable chapter is Chapter 8, entitled, "A Houseful of Generals", where , in a the town of Weilheim, many of the German generals and their staff decided to stop running from the advancing American armies. This chapter is a literate rebuttal of the German offer to become allies with the Anglo-Americans to keep the Mongol-Bolsheviks out of Western Europe. Of course, this offer was rejected, and Frank Manuel states, "We wanted the Germans to say that they were ashamed of themselves", p. 97. His next-to-last chapter is on his encounter with Admiral Horthy, Regent of Hungary, when he and the Admiral are transported to General Patch's headquarters. He describes the Admiral's ineffectual attempts to break with his German allies, as the War comes towards its end. The quote Mr. Manuel uses is, "Was konnte ich denn machen?", in English, "What could I do?" These are the words he also uses to end this chapter.Throughout this book, Frank Manuel is well aware of his own Jewishness and how others could identify him as being a Jew. The author senses that old Admiral Horthy knew that he was Jewish, and Horthy gave a monologue on "...his protection of Hungarian Jews and his refusal to participate in their round-up by the Nazis". P. 120. The author also relates how Polish officers questioned him, in Yiddish, about being a Jew. But, in all of this, Frank Manuel is not, as far as I can read, defensive about being Jewish. In describing the fate of the Poles, he states that "...they would wander the earth like the Jews and the Irish". P. 71. In this single line, the author shows a deeper understanding of the many diasporas (Irish, Jewish or Polish) than many who believe in a monopoly of persecution, suffered only by their own kind. This book is well worth your time.

In the spring of 1945, Frank Manuel was a 34 year old intelligence officer fluent in French, German, and Yiddish as the American Army pushed into Germany. Scenes From The End: The Last Days Of World War II In Europe begins at about the same time as the Battle of the Bulge, and covers the last few months of combat with the German forces until the surrender of Germany to the Allies. Manuel vividly distills the utter chaos and frequent absurdity of war in its final hour. He is able to provide the reader with a clear and candid sense of what it was like, from anonymous encounters with Holocaust survivors, to the interrogations of captured German soldiers, to an unforgettable car ride with Admiral Horthy, Regent of Hungary, at a time when the Allies had not yet decided wether to regard him as a victim of circumstance or major war criminal. Scenes From The End is a unique and invaluable contribution to the growing body of military memoirs and biographies focused on the World War II European Theater.

I found the book interesting but one item stuck out as strange. The author talks about interviewing a German soldier named General Otto Hermann Fegelein who gave himself up in the Bavarian Alps. However this same officer was discovered in Berlin trying to escape during the last days of April 1945 and was executed by direct orders of Hitler himself. I do not see how this SS general could have been at two places at once.

I'm writing to offer a retort of sorts to the review below. While it's true Manuel's style is unconventional, and therefore unexpected, I found it stunning, engrossing and to great effect, and I think this will be considered an essential book on WWII for a long time to come. Manuel, an esteemed historian, author of many academic books and winner of a National Book Award explains of his unique approach, "Military historians have assembled a picture of the grand design, creating the myth of an official history, but fragments may be closer to the chaos of experiece in war before it has been subjected to cleansing." I can think of no other book that plunges the reader into the situation more authentically or cconveys a purer sense of the dizzying conditions under which real history unfolds. To have such a book appear at this late date is remarkable and of great value.

I usually prefer great war fiction like The Triumph and the Glory or The Thin Red Line to non-fiction military topic books, but Scenes From the End is so well done that I just had to take the time to give it a good review. Compellingly told and rich in vivid passages about life and death, courage, betrayal, submission and surrender in the gotterdammerung that was Europe in 1945 it richly deserves five stars!