Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #253637 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Customer Reviews

A CLASSIC ACCOUNT
Beevor's account of the last days of The Reich, because that's what this book basically covers, is in my opinion already a classic one. After its more than 400 pages, "The Fall of Berlin 1945" leaves a huge impact on WWII history writing because it contains all: personal accounts, strategic moves, Hitler's final days, the suffering of the Berlin citizens (they had their share), great pictures and much more.

The book is written well balanced as both sides (Germans and Russians) get their share of critics: the Germans for their crazy and fanatic attitude while the Russians are severely blamed for raping and looting. All in all it's another fantastic book of Beevor, after his gripping "Stalingrad".

A savage retribution from the East
In a novelization of the World War II capture of Berlin, THE END OF WAR by David Robbins, the author paints a powerful word picture of the hatred between German troops and the Red Army when he describes a fictional band of German POWs being escorted to the rear by Russian guards commanded by one Ilya:

"The guards hurl more names at the Germans. Names of prison camps, Rovno, Ternopol, Zitomir; names of occupied villages, Braslav, Balvi, Vigala; names of death camps, Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka; names of dead comrades ...; names of fathers and mothers, brothers, women. The Red soldiers vent themselves on the Germans ... They have debts to collect ... One of the Germans mutters in Russian, `Bastards' ... All of these men hate. Back and forth, volleys of loathing ... One of the Russians raises his rifle to his cheek, ridiculous, as though he needs to aim this close to his targets ... Ilya's mouth is bone dry. He could speak ... He could say, what? ...Another crow dispatches his voice from the trees ... Ilya turns his back."

Debts. Oh, yes. THE FALL OF BERLIN 1945 by Antony Beevor is the true account of the savage retribution visited on the Third Reich and its capital by avenging armies from the East.

At 431 paperbacked pages, THE FALL OF BERLIN 1945 hasn't the length to be overly detailed. Rather, as Beevor might put it, it's "the tidy version of events - the staff officer's summary." The narrative could arbitrarily be divided into five sections: the Red Army's assault across the Vistula River into western Poland to the German border at the Oder River, the defeat of the Nazi armies along the Baltic in East Prussia and Pomerania, the final drive across the Oder to Berlin by the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukranian Fronts, the fighting within the city itself, and the immediate aftermath of the German surrender. Relatively little is said of the conflict on the Western Europe except as it contributed to Stalin's paranoia about a separate peace treaty between Germany and the Western Allies and/or the possibility that the Anglo-American forces might reach Berlin first. Stalin needn't have worried about the latter. Eisenhower's political and strategic naiveté, and a misplaced desire to keep Uncle Joe a happy camper, assured a halt of the western armies on the Elbe River.

The bare bones of the narrative are fleshed out with details derived from a multitude of other written sources and the author's interviews with survivors, especially evident in those sections relating to events in Hitler's Reich Chancellery bunker both before and after his suicide.

The book includes a number of maps that are perfectly adequate, and three photo sections. My only complaint is that there are no pictures of certain individuals. While Hitler, Goebbels, Eva Braun, Himmler, Keitel, Zhukov and Stalin appear, key players such as Konev, Rokossovsky, Chuikov, Vlasov, Weidling, Guderian and Heinrici do not. And where's that famous photo of Soviet soldiers planting the Red Banner on the Reichstag - an image just as famous to Russians as that of the Iwo Jima flag raising is to Americans?

A subtitle to the book might as well be "The Red Army and Rape". Beevor is particularly struck by the horrific record of the Soviet forces in that regard. The author reports the estimate that 95,000 to 130,000 Berlin women were sexually assaulted, and another 1.4 million German women in Pomerania, East Prussia and Silesia - many, if not most, multiple times.

THE FALL OF BERLIN 1945 is a superlative overview of the last four months of fighting on the Eastern Front, and is a must-read for any casual student of the European Theater of WWII.

After "Stalingrad" the sequel
This is another magnificent book on the grand scale of Stalingrad. As usual Beevor combines the latest archive findings with a gripping narrative. The grand strategic picture is combined with intimate human stories.
A new revelation is the Russian quest for German nuclear research facilities in Berlin. The gigantic scale of mass rape by the Red army is well known to German readers but seems to have avoided in accounts of the war in the English speaking world. Beevor gives an honest account of these awful events. Yet even here there is the triumph of the human spirit. Many German civilians are spared ill treatment after the intervention of Yiddish speaking Jewish red army men. This after traversing a thousand miles of territory where their compatriots have been almost totally exterminated.