The Fall of Berlin 1945

Rating:
Summary: Not as Good as Stalingrad
Review: Anthony Beever's book on Stalingrad is a very, very good study of that campaign, one of the best World War Two books to come out in recent years. Compared to that book, the Fall of Berlin is a disappointment. Beever's book focuses on a number of story lines, all of which could have been books in and of themselves - the military campaign itself, Soviet strategy in the final days of the war, the plight of civilians, and the last days of the Nazi party and its principle players. Because of this, the book seems hurried and superficial. Treatment of the actual military campaign suffered because of this. I found myself constantly wishing the book would go into greater detail.

Still, its a well-written, interesting and informative book. I particulary enjoyed the plight of the German Civilian population. Like many other reviewers, I had never truly grasped the magnitude of the harm inflicted on them by the Red Army. While this is set forth in some detail, Beever does a good job of tying this back into the treatment of the Russian Population by the German Army after the 1941 invasion. I find it interesting that some of the reviewers below are so offended by the depiction of Soviet atrocities. While these do not lessen the horrors committed by the Nazi's, they certainly should be brought to light.

Rating:
Summary: Not much good, lots of bad, way too much ugly
Review: World War II lasted five and a half years in Europe, and many of the participants suffered greatly in the conflict. Ironically, among the worst of the sufferers were the Germans themselves, who after all started the war, and had no objections to the sufferings of civilians as long as they weren't German. This book chronicles the chickens coming home to roost, so to speak, the last gasp of the Nazi regime in Germany, and the sufferings of the German people who were in the path of the Soviet juggernaut that destroyed that Nazi empire.

The author comes in for some criticism from some of the reviewers on this site because he talks candidly about the abuses that Soviet soldiers inflicted on their Germans victims, especially the rapes that occurred as the Red Army marched across eastern Germany. No one argues whether this happened or not, and the statistics are staggering. Millions of German women were raped (and some Jews, and some Russian women who had been deported to Germany as slave labor) and a large number of civilians of all ages and both sexes were killed in various ways. This is all reported in considerable horrific detail, and if there's a lack of balance here it's because the Nazis didn't, by this time, have the chance to inflict any more atrocities on their opponents.

The military half of the campaign is handled reasonably well, though not in as much detail as some (perhaps myself included) would like. Antony Beevor isn't David Glantz, and that cuts both ways. The tactical detail is lacking, but Beevor's prose is perhaps somewhat more readable. I enjoyed this book, or at least feel I gained something from it. I will agree with the criticism that there's nothing new here, though some of the information hasn't been gathered together in a book like this before. So John Toland's book might be comparable, but he didn't have access to the information about the fate of Hitler's body, for instance.

Other than that, this is a serviceable, competent account of the campaign, not particularly enlightening, but a good book nonetheless. I would recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Let the veterans speak
Review: Before you mindlessly believe a journalist who is primarily out to make money, it is only fair that you let the Soviet veterans also have their say. We have in this book and these reviews a one-sided attack with the accused unable to defend themselves!A disgusting book.
It dehumanizes the army that almost single-handedly saved the world from Nazi oppression. Mr. Beevor's attitude is abhorrent and selfish, and his trumped up charges against the Red Army only serve to confuse and mislead people, supporting an increasingly russophobic mindset in the US and Britain.
Please, don't be closed-minded. Cold War stereotypes have no place in the modern world.
It amuses me that when Russians try to defend their army's conduct with facts, it is seen by many as a "cover up". If a Russian wrote this kind of book about Americans or Britons in the war, wouldn't you be just as outraged?

Rating:
Summary: Defeating the Red Army - What Hitler Failed to Do
Review: Mr. Beevor's latest book describes the events around the collapse of the German Nazism and the capture of Berlin. The subject is obviously very complex, because world history is yet to find a comfortable vantage point on the crimes against humanity, the number of casualties, and the ethical distortions, which WWII spurred around the globe.

It seems like the author sets out to compile an "honest" narrative - a history, which is not written by the victors. To achieve this, Mr. Beevor diligently describes hundreds of cases of looting, insubordination, and rape during the Russian advance. In fact, it is hard to imagine how the Red Army managed to preserve sufficient combative capabilities with all the acts of revenge that Mr. Beevor assigns to its members.

While I do not doubt the accuracy of the incidents described in this study, I find the author's attempt to be objective quite naïve. It is impossible to analyze fully the conclusion of WWII in Europe on 431 pages only. You have to choose the focus of the study. It seems that Mr. Beevor's focus has been to deconstruct the heroic image of the Russian conquest of northern and eastern Germany. In this, he has succeeded. As to the choice of the title of this book - I think that the historical importance of the fall of Berlin transcends the acts of vandalism committed by the armies of one of the Allies. Therefore, I would like to suggest an alternative title for this book: The Fall of the Red Army by Anthony Beevor in 2002. It seems that in this case particularly the pen is mightier than the sword...

As to his analysis of the German military and political command, the author presents a much more standard thesis, which blames the military failures on the poor leadership of Hitler and his closest political comrades. According to this line of argument, if professional military commanders as Guderian, Wenck, and Heinrici had been given the authority to guide the German troops much of the suffering could have been avoided and maybe even the final collapse of the Wehrmacht could have been averted. This distinction between the Nazi professional and criminal warfare is a separate endless issue. It suffices to read just a couple of pages from Guderian's memoirs Panzer Leader to realize that it is neither possible nor meaningful to discuss his military, nationalistic, and political values independently from each other.

I give the book 3 stars because I think that it is a very worthwhile reading if one wants to know more about the Russian presence in the occupied territories of Nazi Germany. It is a subject, which has not been explored sufficiently and Mr. Beevor makes a substantial effort to "bring out the dirty laundry".

Rating:
Summary: Long Ignored Picture of the the German Civilian Experience
Review: After 57 years, an author finally comes along with the courage to break the silence in the West concerning our alliance with Stalin and the Eisenhower/Churchill policy of turning a blind eye to the Soviet Army's actions. Definitely flies in the face of 50 years of Soviet propaganda (and most "cookie cutter" western histories of the war) - and makes a mockery of the various Soviet "heroic saviors" statues which still litter eastern Germany.
As the son of East Prussian refugees I have known from first hand accounts the long ignored aspects of the Soviet assault on the German east. Beevor's work provides long overdue, mainstream recognition to this period.
My main criticism and disappointment with the book and Mr. Beevor is his failure to fully address and acknowledge the British and American roles in facilitating the Soviet actions - particularly Mr. Beevor's ridiculing the German view of the British/American saturation-incendary bombing of their civilian population centers as "Terrorangriffe" (Terror Assaults). At the end of his work, Mr. Beevor belittles this expression as Goebbel's inspired propaganda. 40,000 incinerated in Hamburg, 20,000 + at Pforzheim, 100,000 + killed at Dresden, 98% of Konigsberg (a city the size of Cleveland) leveled in a 1 night British air raid, and Churchill himself calling for the annihilation of as many civilians a possible (through aeral bombing) in the Silisian capitial Breslau before it was taken by the Soviets, terror WAS VIEWED BY ALL THE ALLIES as a legitimate weapon against Germany (Japan also) in the effort to crush facism. The West has long ignored this truth, and the Germans through 50 years of relentless barage of guilt have had to quietly try forget this history.
Mr. Beevor's work is a brave FIRST STEP, esp. in the face of official Russian protest at the publishing of this long overdue history.

Rating:
Summary: sins of the totalitarians
Review: Both Germans and Russians are colored darkly in "The Fall of Berlin. It would be hard to pick which is worse: the insane, die-hard Hitler fanatics or the brutal, deceitful politicians and soldiers of the Soviet Union. The climax of their titantic struggle came in the rag-tag, last ditch defense of Berlin by the German army as the Russian army inexorably advanced during the last several months of World War II.

Beevor achieves a balance between his descriptions of the strategy of the armies and their clashes, the machinations of the politicians, especially Hitler and Stalin, and the experiences of the non-combatants of Berlin: bombed by Allied planes, shelled by Russians, sacrificed to the martyr complex of Adolph Hitler and his seedy colleagues, and fearing the worst when the Russian army arrived. Their fears were realized as Russian soldiers embarked on an orgy of rape and looting, responding in kind to the atrocities the Germans had committed in the Soviet Union only a year or two before.

This book was most interesting when it focused on the plight (and the cynical humor) of the civilian population in Berlin. It was less successful when describing the battles leading up to the fall of Berlin. The poor quality of the maps and the complexity of the armys' movements left me confused at times. Beevor probably attempts to cover too much ground in a book of only 450 pages, Nevertheless, "Berlin: the Downfall 1945" is well worth reading and inspires me to learn more about the fall of Berlin and the plight of the civilian population of Eastern Europe under Russian occupation at the end of WW II.

Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: This is a very detailed and accurate account of The final stages of the war on the Eastern Front. It is told on a very personal and small scale specific level, which makes it very entertaining and readable. It isn't the best for historical research (other than occupation methods of the Red Army), but I highly reccomend it anyway. One item of concern, however, early on in the book Beevor states that about 6.5 million Soviet soldiers are lined up outside of Germany at the onset of the final offensive.(...) please, there were no more than 3 million, not including Polish Auxillary units.

Rating:
Summary: Not very ground breaking but still highly engaging
Review: This book breaks little ground, and is not therefore going to be valuable to scholars. It draws heavily on previous studies, even though this is seldom acknowlegeded. It is gripping and very sad, though, especially when it reveals what horrors German women and children endured. Very good but not as good as author's previously book on Stalingrad.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting ans well-written
Review: Anthony Beevor has ventured into WWII territory before, with his well-regarded Stalingrad and his equally well-written but virtually unknown Crete: the Battle and the Resistance. Both of these previous books are about battles that hung in the balance - each side was very evenly matched and the outcome could have gone either way. This lent a spark of dramatic tension to the events. The same cannot be said of The Fall of Berlin - only the most deluded Nazi with an irrational trust in Der Fuhrer did not know the final outcome of the war. In fact, as Churchill has pointed out, the war was decided at Statlingrad and El Alemain two years earlier. Therefore, the Battle of Berlin is no more than a footnote - Stalin's need for a decisive symbol to prove to his people that he was the greatest leader in the world, slaying the Nazi beast in its lair.

However, this does not minimise the suffering and violence with which the battle was fought, and that is what Beevor focusses on in this book. The day-to-day suffering of the German population is well-documented (even over-documented) with chilling detail. Fully half of all German women were raped by the invaders, many multiple times as new units passed through. Men were transported to Siberia or executed on the spot. All livestock and produce destroyed or sent back to Russia. That the Russian troops simply duplicated the level of brutality that the Wehrmacht and SS inflicted on occupied Soviet territory just makes the scale of depravity larger. Most alarming is the fate of liberated prisoners - shipped off for "re-education" by the NKVD political divisions, lest Nazi propoganda infect the Soviet Union.

Of course, Beevor documents the military aspects as well - towns taken, divisions and their commanders, surrenders and retreats. He expects a certain level of "lay" knowledge of WWII, but for the most part, the casual reader will easily follow the action because the author is very good at keeping the identity of all the generals, party officials, and political masters clear. Maps are conveniently gathered at the front of the book, although there are too many of them and they are not well labelled for the most part.

Finally, there is the political history that is sprinkled through the pages. Beevor is especially critical of the American leaders - Eisenhauer, Roosevelt, Marshall, and Truman - for being naive and allowing Stalin and Molotov to bully and deceive them. From this dynamic, Beevor implies, descended the nature of the Cold War.

Therefore, all-in-all, it is an enteresting book covering all aspects of the Battle for Berlin. We can forgive Beevor's repetativeness and the lack of suspense in the outcome because the writing is clear and well-paced.

Rating:
Summary: NOT as good as Stalingrad
Review: I bought this book because I loved Beevor's Stalingrad account. This book was not on the same level. Beevor employs the same readable style, and tries to depict the experience of people involved in the conflict. I found the book too sympathetic with the Germans, but not to the same effect that some of the other reviewers did. What disappointed me was the lack of the same buid-up and climax that Stalingrad provided. The account does not contain much of actual the fighting, tactics and strategy. Beevor really does seem transfixed of German women being raped by Russian soldiers. I did like this book to some extant, but definitely did not live up to my expectations.