Product Description

'Fascinating, extraordinary, gripping' Jeremy Paxman The Storming of Berlin had been the Red Army's dream of vengeance ever since the German's invasion of Russia in the summer of 1941. Antony Beevor has reconstituted the experience of those millions caught up in the nightmare crescendo of the Third Reich's final defeat.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #162863 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Military history, even at its best, can be a cold art. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that wars involve individuals, each with their own hopes, fears and desires. Berlin: the Downfall, 1945, is Antony Beevor's account of the bloody Götterdämmerung that brought the Second World War in Europe to an end, and in which he has fused the large and the small scale effects of war. Beevor paints the broad picture of Marshals Zhukov and Konev, competing for glory and Stalin's attention, as they race their armies towards Berlin. He gives the reader a gripping account of the brutal street-by-street fighting in the German capital and provides an unforgettable portrait of the last, insane days of Hitler and his entourage in the bunker.

His attention to emotional detail is what made his previous book Stalingrad such a magnificent work, combining a sweeping hisorical narrative with a remarkable sensitivity to human drama. Yet he also highlights the small details of ordinary people caught in the nightmare of history--the sick children evacuated at the last minute from a Potsdam hospital; the Soviet soldiers shaving themselves for the first time in weeks so that they would make appropriately presentable conquerors; and the Nazi Youth teenagers peddling their bikes in despairing, last-ditch attacks against the Red Army's tanks.

The story Beevor tells is an almost unremittingly terrible one--one of death, rape, hunger and human misery--but he tells it with both an epic sweep and an alertness to individuality. The result is a masterpiece of narrative history that is as powerful as Stalingrad. --Nick Rennison

Review
'Fascinating, extraordinary, gripping' Jeremy Paxman

About the Author
Educated at Winchester and Sandhurst, Antony Beevor served in the British Army for five years. He then lived and worked in Paris for two years where he wrote his first novel. His works of non-fiction have included PARIS AFTER THE LIBERATION, THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR and CRETE. He is best known for STALINGRAD which became an international number one bestseller.

Customer Reviews

Excellently researched, compassionately written history
Antony Beevor showed in his excellent Stalingrad how to clearly and accurately portray the chaos and confusion of a vast and sprawling military engagement without losing sight of the individual experience and harrowing minutiae of enormous human tragedy. In this book, he again succeeds in portraying the staggering scale of the battle for Berlin, but also brings out the astonishing and shocking level of suffering that accompanied it.

Beevor successfully measures the human suffering against the "meat-grinder" mentality of the ideological clash of Stalinism and Nazism. He contrasts the pride and vanity of Hitler and the paranoid totalitarianism of Stalin, the meeting of which was guaranteed to result in terrible casualties as combatants, deluded and indoctrinated by continuous and insidious propaganda, fought desperately for every inch of ground.

Tales of gang rape and wanton destruction by the invading forces, particularly in East Prussia, hit heavy notes in the reading, whilst the knowledge of how deeply the Red Army operated under the prying and intolerant eyes of its Soviet masters is also clearly and compassionately portrayed; the dispassionate NKVD reports of summary execution and Gulag imprisonment of liberated Red Army prisoners for simply having surrendered fills one with anger, particularly as the Red Army had suffered over 9 million casualties by this time.

In his Stalingrad book, Beevor shifted his sympathies initially from the Russians gradually toward the Germans as the tide of battle shifted; in Berlin: The Downfall, Beevor's sympathies throughout remain in favour of the German civilians, and the German Army commanders who acted against the Nazi leadership. I found this slightly distasteful in view of the preceding four years; indeed, Beevor quotes an injured German veteran speaking out on a crowded Berlin train that if the Russians repay Germany a quarter what was done to them, then Germany would cease to exist. But this appears to be in keeping with the underlying political subtext of the book, which seems to be a demonstration of the consequences of political indoctrination of totalitarian regimes, at the expense of stifling humanity.

Beevor succeeds in delivering a hard-hitting, compassionate story of needless suffering, bravery and sacrifice woven beside unspeakable cruelty, revenge and butchery. It is by turns a clear and well-researched historical account of military operations, and a barely-disguised polemic on the evils of political extremism and the dire consequences of totalitarian expansionism.

A multilayered historical account with a heavyweight political subtext. This is a fine book which should be read by all.

A brutal but gripping read
I had read Stalingrad and was not sure that Berlin could be as gripping a story - the result of the fighting was a forgone conclusion. But its not the description of the progress of the war that really makes this book. Its the individual stories that make this book a 'must read'
What I also did not realise was the reason why the last months of the war ended as they did - ferocious defense by the Germans in the East and rolling over in the West - and the ulterior motives behind the Allies behaviour. If you read Stalingrad in conjunction with Berlin you begin to see that the Russians felt almost justified in their actions. But its the last few pages that are the classic twist in the tail - I won't spoil it but the German Army attitude to the events of the war is stunning. If you think history is a dry affair then read this and get a fresh perspective.

A grim and gruesome masterpiece
This is by no means "another war book". It brings the harsh realities of totalitarianism to the fore. This is the story of the last battle of the European theatre of World War 2, a battle to the end.

It is the story not so much of the downfall of Berlin in 1945, but the crushing of the city and the brutalisation of the population.

Finishing this book you are left with a disgust of war, a disgust of mans inhumanity to man, and a digust of men's inhumanity to women.

A shocking and enthralling read, brilliantly written by a brilliant author. It is unputdownable and eclipses his earlier "Stalingrad" work.

A masterpiece.