Antony Beevor's "Berlin: The Downfall 1945" - A Detailed Account of the Last Days of the Third Reich

CUrrete: Interesting book but not as thorough/ indepth as others from the same author. Maybe just harder to reach out to soviet war vets?

Spain on May 27, 2023

Sugawara Michizane: This book will give you all the details you require. Also gives you the wider context of the battle and manages to skilfully interweave the events inside and outside of the bunker. I have read quite a few books about this topic, but found many things in "Berlin" that I hadn't heard elsewhere.

If I had to find something to nitpick: Beevor has a tendency for foreshadowing things, sometimes dozens of pages before the event he teased earlier actually transpires.

Germany on May 04, 2023

AvdRedr: Having read Stalingrad by Beevor earlier, I knew what I was in for. Like Walter Issacson, and David McCullough, Beevor’s books tend to be long and you think they will never end. But when they do, you’ve been exposed to the history they cover in a way that makes you feel like you understand what it was like to be there. And you’re both relieved and disappointed that you’ve completed the book. This book was no different. The story focuses on the period between Christmas, 1942 when rumors were first heard of the German troops surrounded in Stalingrad by the Russians and the Christmas of 1944, when circumstances had changed so much and the Russians were on the borders of Germany.
The book necessarily focuses on Hitler and Stalin and their Armies, as capturing Berlin had become an obsession of Stalin’s as a retribution for the Germans capturing Stalingrad. The role of the American and British Armies are antecedent here because even though Churchill recognized what the significance would mean politically and strategically to the Allies in negotiating after the war he failed to convince General Eisenhower. Ironically, Eisenhower, the General, would have to deal with the...

United States on Aug 15, 2021

JaguarJon53: I read this account of the fall of Berlin after reading Vasily Grossman's account of the 1941 invasion and the hellish Siege of Stalingrad. I also read Svetlana Alexievich's Last Witnesses which recounts in personal testimonies the Russian children's memories of invasion, murder, vile tortures, starvation and loss of parents, families and friends.
All of these three books have the same remorseless, driving intensity. On top of all the noise, destruction and bloodshed, both the Germans (SS, Waffen SS) and the Soviets (NKVD, SMERSH) had political fanatics filling their lives even more full of dread of instant execution and extreme punishments.
The Soviet push to Berlin was dictated by Stalin - all other subordinate Generals had to get agreement from him before taking action. His paranoia and ego pushed him to play games with his senior commanders, sometimes to the detriment of campaign progress. Some of Stalin's ideas succeeded but others caused huge numbers of unnecessary casualties for no result.
Hitler behaved in a very similar way - pessimism followed by manic optimism informed his decision-making - Anthony Beevor's Berlin is extremely insightful on Adolf's state of...

United Kingdom on Aug 29, 2019

Bill Greenhalf: It is hard to define what makes Antony Beevor so good in his writings on the great Second World War battles. I am not a fan of 'Battle Books' in general as I much prefer a broader context to my history and Battle stories, although they usually come with some background introduction and an epilogue are usually unsatisfying in this respect. Beevor doesn't make much of an effort in this regard, granted the book begins in December 1944 and ends with the disposal of Hitler's body in 1970, but nearly all of the intervening 400 odd pages describe events in just March and April of 1945, with nearly all events described taking place between the rivers Vistula and Elbe.

For all of you who take my initial description at face value and are enthused by the possibility that this is a day by day, minute by minute description of the race for Berlin (by which I mean the race between Soviet Generals, not between the Soviets and the Western allies - Beevor makes clear the Americans were never in a race) I must warn you that this is not that book. As with  Stalingrad , Beevor somehow manages to make a cohesive, flowing narrative by piecing together short vignettes about individuals or...

United Kingdom on Jul 26, 2018

R Helen: This is a very interesting read, but it is primarily focused on the military history of the fall of Berlin. I personally prefer reading about social and political history and those parts of the book were really wonderful. However, the reason I gave this four stars is that, despite its heavy stress on battles and army movements, Antony Beevor is a great writer. I know it sounds cliche, but through his descriptions of the last days of the Third Reich, you really feel the allies closing in and the dying of an inglorious empire. As more and more of Germany falls to the allies, you feel what it must have been like for the Nazi leadership to know that their empire was slowly shrinking and closing in. You vividly picture the armies moving. It was a very moving book.

And through the military conquest of Berlin, Beevor actually details another important story, the history of the beginnings of the Cold War. The battles and movements of the Soviet, British, and American army were extremely significant to understanding how the Cold War developed in those early years. Worth reading just for this.

One little annoyance was his constant repetition (I didn't take an exact account,...

United Kingdom on Feb 02, 2015

Joe Owen: Throughout history many, many accounts of savagery and brutality has existed in war. At the end of World War II in Europe this occurred on a wide scale by both the German and Soviet Armies. Anthony Beevor in this outstanding book describes the brutality of war upon the citizens of both the USSR and Germany in "The Fall of Berlin 1945". When the Soviet Army entered former German territory, they unleashed a "revenge brutality" upon German citizens whether they were die-hard NAZI'S or plain civilians who happened to live in the territories. A "they did it to us, so we will do it to them" mentality was enforced and encouraged for Soviet soldiers to commit countless acts of brutality, rape, pillaging, torture, and murder on a scale not easily imagined. When the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS troops invaded the Soviet Union in 1940, there were massive accounts of destroying villages, soldiers raping Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and other ethnic Russian women on a wide scale, murdering wounded disabled soldiers, and other atrocities on a massive scale.
The Soviet Army felt it was time for "payback". Mr. Beevor, from interviews with former Soviet officers, records, archival reports...

United States on Mar 17, 2014