Rating: 
Summary: I liked it better when Ryan wrote it
Review: This book adds nothing to what Cornelius Ryan wrote in 1966. In fact, Ryan's book is vastly superior since Beevor had no first-hand access to participants. This hurts the book's immediacy; Beevor himself is so far removed from events that everything is reported in a rather detatched fasion. Ideed, his personal accounts are second-hand at best, typically with sparse documentation to assure us of authenticity. This concerns me greatly, as one of the main points of Beevor's book seems to be to document the suffering of German civilians at the hands of the Red Army. Therefore, as a social history, the book is sorely lacking in both immediacy and believability.On the military aspects, Beevor is also lacking. It is clear he does not understand issues of command, operations, or tactics. Consequently, as a military history, the book fails. I do not recommend this book; instead read Ryan's "The Last Battle" for the more social aspects, and Le Tissier's "Race for the Reichstag" for the actual battle.
Rating: 
Summary: More a grand narrative than a compendium of testimony
Review: I wanted to find out how an army and a nation can keep fighting when all's lost, and this book gave the facts. But I wish it offered more of the human side: the gallows humor of the Berliners was a needed, if too sporadic reminder, of the day-to-day struggle we too often forget in a dehumanized enemy. A Soviet is quoted as being amazed that, faced with the loss of their parents amidst burning buildings, the German children cried just like their Russian counterparts had done. The Soviet is amazed at this similarity, after having been indoctrinated about the savagery of their enemy on every level and at every age. The forest battles outside Berlin and the clash at the Seelow escarpment are the most vivid parts of this narrative. Beevor has done his homework, and has sprinkled into his military text of this general went here and this division came there the human accounts, but still, having finished Guy Sajer's "The Forgotten Soldier" (a French-German soldier on the Eastern Front, the end of which overlaps in the East Prussia campaign with Beevor's text), I missed more of the personal vividness of a memoir. I realize Beevor sets out to give an all-encompasssing account in a few hundred pages, and he does his job well, but I wish those he quotes so often, like Vasily Grossman for the Soviets, could be heard even more so. 11-13 million fled East Prussia, but even his research doesn't make their stories come alive enough, nor those of the Soviets who pursued the Germans into defeat. One element emerges clearly, however: Stalin's ability to hoodwink the Allies, especially FDR, and devour Poland and what would become the GDR. It's amazing to think how gullible the U.S. was, played for fools by the "liberating" Soviet armies. For this, Beevor deserves full credit for his analyses.
Rating: 
Summary: Even Better than Stalingrad.
Review: It's one ugly story indeed but it is one which must be told. January of 1945 brought a firestorm of mythic proportions onto the German Reich and effectively turned the dreams of Hitler inside out as Germany, at least half of it, became the vassal state of Russia. Anthony Beevor, in my opinion, is the strongest historian writing today. He colors this narrative with geographical fact, poignant memories, and a steady, consistent pace. I was so impressed with him after Stalingrad that I bought a signed edition of The Fall of Berlin for a few bucks more. I notice that it's available along with Stalingrad for 23 bucks, and, if you're not familiar with any of his work, it'll be the best 23 bucks you'll ever spend to buy them both.
Rating: 
Summary: Gotterdammerung: decline and fall of the Nazi empire...
Review: As the author notes in the opening pages, this volume is best read in conjunction with his earlier work "Stalingrad", and perhaps even his earlier work on the Spanish Civil War. These three volumes trace the conflict between opposing totalitarian regimes. Spain allowed Hitler and Stalin to fight a proxy war in Spain, while Barbarossa brought the conflict very much into the open. Thus "The Fall of Berlin" documents the culmination of a struggle that was as much ideological as military. The books opens in late 1944 just as Hitler's Ardennes offensive was winding down and assumes the reader has a reasonable understanding of the military and political situation at the time: the crumbling Nazi empire and internecine politics of the regime, the uneasy tension between the Allies and the enormous scale forces marshalled by the combatants. Without this prior knowledge it may take the reader a few chapters to familiarise themselves with the litany of names, dates and locations. However it is here the author excels in describing the complexity of the situation and making it accessible to the general reader. The authors prose is clear and understandable: I've read this text twice and have been gripped on both occasions. Perhaps Anthony Beevor's greatest achievement is his rendering of the human costs of the conflict. One not only feels pity for German civilians who bore the burnt of the Soviet rage in East Prussia, but also for the ordinary Russian soldiers whose expectations that "things would be different after the war" where manipulated by Stalin. Without the Soviet victories in such decisive battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk the Anglo-American forces would have had a much harder time of it. Hitler may not have been beaten. However the author doesn't sugar coat what the Soviets did. Some of the details about the mass rapes are particularly harrowing. Clearly the Nazi's had to be defeated, and the Russians can lay claim to be the main architects of their defeat. However the general reader should bear in mind the crimes perpetrated in the name of the Soviet regime (one that was still in existence until 1989!). Goya or Bosch couldn't paint a hell as convincing as the one Beevor documents. At times events appeared to be outside the control of almost everyone in "authority" as both soldier and civilian where trapped between rampaging Soviet soldiers and German military police indiscriminately hanging "deserters" by the thousands. Some reviewers have criticised the author for generalising or failing to take into account other incidents. The intention of the author not to analyse why the Russians "won" and the Germans "lost", but to document a part of the Second World War not generally understood outside specialist circles. The reader may forget the exact dates when certain battles take place, or which general was in command of which front, in the end it's the small vignettes of personal suffering and tragedy that haunt the reader after finishing the book: Hitler Youth strapping Panzerfuasts to bicycles to ride out and stop Soviet tanks, Berliners locking their daughters up at night to protect them from pack rape or the Soviet soldiers who died not long after celebrating the fall of Berlin by drinking industrial solvents.
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.
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