Berlin

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

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Insightful. - Rated
An amazingly detailed account of the scope & horror of the event. For all the movies & documentaries about WWII they berely scratch the surface of the reality of warfare. If war's were told like this we may be more apprehensive about starting new ones. Seven million strong the Red Army had on the border of East Prussia prior to the invasion, that was the entire population of Australia at the time!

"Berlin" or "The Last Battle"? - Rated
This book is, in fact, made up of three shorter books welded together and none of them quite work.
The first is a book about the strategy of the end of the war in Europe, focusing on the advance of the Soviet armies. This is just plain confusing, with inadequate maps and indistinct Soviet generals commanding armies that are literally just numbers and attacking places you've never heard of. My advice is: you know what's going to happen so skip through them.
The second book is a description of the final days of Hitler and his entourage in the Bunker. Even to a casual history reader like me, this was very, very familiar ground. Watching the film "Downfall", while maybe not as historically accurate, is far more memorable and evocative.
Squashed in between these two is the third book, the really interesting one, about what ordinary people - be they German civilians, Russian soldiers, or prisoners-of-war - experienced, thought and felt. These were far-and-away the most interesting sections, although (as other reviewers have noted) it seems a bit obsessed with rape almost any woman by Soviet troops. I am not saying this doesn't deserve attention: it must have traumatised the victims beyond my imagining and ruined many lives, but the author returns to it over and over again and the repetition becomes slightly numbing. More emphasis could have been given to how people lived for the rest of the time.

The other serious quibble I have is that the book takes way too long to get going. Despite being called "Berlin", it begins in January in Poland and it is almost halfway over before the fighting gets to Berlin. The book is easy enough reading and did keep me going but really only to find the next genuinely interesting patch. There were certainly some of these - for example, the author can barely conceal his impatience, even contempt, for what he sees as the naivety of Eisenhower, Marshall and Roosevelt in their dealings with the Soviet army and Stalin in particular.

So, good in parts, but way too long. There's far too much repetition of familiar material here - if only this was genuinely a book about the people involved in the battle in Berlin. Since finishing "Berlin" I have read "The Last Battle" by Cornelius Ryan - I would recommend the latter.

The audio cd - Rated
I read this captivating yet deeply tradgic account of the catastrophic end to the German third reich, but was even more taken by the audio version. If you can afford the unabridged version, or can borrow it from your library you will be totally absorbed by the wonderful reading of Sean Barrett. After so many hours of listening he became the commanding voice of the text and was a perfect choice and is deserving of an award for its epic power of narration.

Not as good as it could be - Rated
Anthony Beevor's best-selling account of the death throws of the Third Reich - young boys, old men and foreign SS volunteers battle desperately for the capital against the rapacious advance of the Red Army, whilst outside the capital German armies once separated by the three thousand miles between the eastern and western fronts are now only one days' march apart.

This book deals particularly well with the period from January to April 1945 along the whole of the Eastern Front in Poland and Germany, especially the ravaging of East Prussia and the Soviet advance into Pomerania and Silesia. There are also interesting details on the French volunteers of the SS Charlemagne battalion.

This book is definitely an interesting read for those new to this subject, but those who have read the 1966 book, "The Last Battle" by Cornelius Ryan, will find "Berlin: The Downfall 1945" something of a disappointment. Beevor's book falls down somewhat in its treatment of events once the Soviets cross the Oder-Neisse Line. Although we are treated to the Soviet perspective of the Battle of the Seelow Heights, the Germans hardly get a look in.

I also found Beevor's descriptions of the locations of the two German armies to the south of Berlin confusing and the maps insufficiently detailed. And post-Seelow, the German forces east and north of Berlin are scarcely mentioned. As for the battle for the city of Berlin itself, the treatment is adequate and there are some interesting insights, but here again Beevor's book comes off very much second best compared with "The Last Battle".

"Berlin: The Downfall 1945" is definitely worth a read, particularly for information on the wider Eastern Front at the beginning of 1945, but nearly 40 years after its original publication, the Ryan book remains the masterpiece on the fall of Berlin itself.

Another great writing - Rated
Another book magnificient writed. A little worst then "Stalingrad", but afterall the subject is not the same. Antony Beevor is undoubtedly an excellent writer.