- Published: 27 April 2022
- ISBN: 9780091917593
- Imprint: Ebury Press
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 320
- RRP: $34.00
Their Darkest Hour
People Tested to the Extreme in WWII
- Published: 27 April 2022
- ISBN: 9780091917593
- Imprint: Ebury Press
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 320
- RRP: $34.00
Rees has made an important contribution to our understanding of the Second World War. His great urge to comprehend the mentalities of those who took part in the conflict is fired by a passionate curiosity, and his wide body of work is distinguished by a fierce intellectual honesty
Antony Beevor, author of STALINGRAD
Rees is one of the few people - perhaps the only one - who has met and interviewed at length not only hundreds of people who suffered from the barbarities of World War Two right across the globe but also, crucially, many of the perpetrators ... All this has given Rees a comparative, cross-cultural perspective on the horrors of the war that no academic could match
Daniel Snowman, author of HISTORIANS and THE HITLER EMIGRES
Laurence Rees has devoted much of his life to trying to understand how the atrocities of the Second World War were possible. Nobody else has penetrated as far into the motivation and psyche of such a varied group of people from the war. We should be grateful to him for his work - and we should all read this book
Andrew Roberts, author of A HISTORY OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES SINCE 1900
Fascinating but disturbing
Daily Mail
Powerful and unsettling
Sunday Times
Laurence Rees has done more for good history on television in this country than anyone else. Over several series, he has examined the most terrible aspects of the Second World War with a passionate longing to understand, while rejecting facile moral judgment ...Their Darkest Hour comes from a selection of his interviews with both perpetrators and victims ...The cumulative effects of Rees's observations, to say nothing of the stories themselves, become deeply disturbing
Anthony Beevor, Daily Telegraph
Chilling collection of eye-witness testimonies ... bringing nuance to our understanding of the horrific experience of war
Financial Times
Enthralling and often chilling
Wales on Sunday
A remarkably powerful collection
Antony Beevor, Daily Telegraph
An incredible, well-written, must-read book
Glasgow Evening Times
A lasting contribution to our understanding of the Second World War and a powerful insight into the behaviour of human beings in crisis
Independent
A horrifying, spellbinding work
BBC History magazine
The absence of high-profile participants and broad range of source material gives this emotive, elegantly written work an indelible authenticity that will be difficult to erase.
Glasgow Herald