The Fall of Berlin 1945

Rating:
Summary: Good racy read - doesn't add much to our knowledge
Review: This is a racy read - partly because the subject matter is compelling - but also because Beevor is better at writing about the to and fro of military formations than most historians. Berlin is not just a dry account of troop movements but has a human dimension. The detailed accounts of the battle from both sides and the explanations of what happened to the main protagonists make the book interesting.

If one needs further confirmation that war is hell for most involved then this is the book to read.

Unlike some other reviewers I thought that Beevor gave a balanced account. I don't think that he comes across as either pro- or anti-German.

The war on the Eastern front was generally much more savage than on the Western front. If one can measure these things the Red Army in Germany was no worse on the whole (and certainly less systematic) than the Wehrmacht and the SS in Russia. The desire for revenge must have been strong. For example, numerous accounts of Western Allied PoWs in German camps testify to how much worse the treatment of Russians was. German women paid the price for earlier Nazi brutality and miscalculation.

It is a sad fact of war that the people who suffer most are the civilians and ordinary people. Bad leaders create hell for their people and often escape the consequences (e.g. the story of Nazi leaders forcing defenders to fight to the last man and threaening them with execution for cowardice and then escaping themselves).

The accounts of the incompetent Nazi leadership and the toadies and psychophants at "court" trying to curry favour reminded of the management of an investment bank I used to work for. War is just human behaviour carried to an extreme. This book should make us realise how important it is to defend freedom and to prevent bad leaders from gaining power.

Rating:
Summary: Aw those poor innocent Germans....
Review: All Soviet soldiers are rapists, murderers, and looters. That is exactly the tone one will get from this book. Beevor makes his sympathis obvious from the beginning of the book. He lists the various 'atrocities' by the Russians but does not explain why they would want to do them. Many historical inaccuracies are in this book and Beevor is nothing but a second class journalists. In his previous book "Stalingrad" he seemed obsessed by the misery of the "innocent" German 6th Army soldiers and the fact that a few Soviets intentionally betrayed or were forced into the German side. In this book, he retains his sympathy for the Germans but this time he focuses on the sexual preferences of the Russian soldiers also. In fact a huge part of this book is focused on this. Very little, infact no attention is given to the sacrifice, the loss of one's comrades and in many cases their families, the high casualty rates sometimes forced upon them by suicidal assaults of the common Red Army soldiers. These guys were heroes that liberated much of Europe from the cancer of National Socialism and should be honored like their American brethren. Except for their "crimes" little is mentioned of these aspects.

Rating:
Summary: A good account of a dreadful battle
Review: Beevor's new book is a worthwhile, accurate and, I think, well balanced description of the campaign leading up to the battle of Berlin and the battle itself. It confirms many suppositions, destroys some myths, and adds a fair amount of information gleaned from sources not available before the break-up of the Soviet Union. I found particularly interesting the confirmation of the imperatives of Stalin's need to take Berlin before the Americans got there, and while I knew about the atomic research conducted in Berlin, I was not aware of the development of Sarin and other poison gases in laboratories there. Also I was not aware that so many of the German units defending Berlin were in fact third country nationals, including fascist French units. The Soviet Union's terrible treatment of their own soldiers and citizens and those of their allies, released from camps and slave labor factories, is well described, as is the abysmal stupidity of the leadership on both the German and Soviet sides. And a significant proportion of the combatants, especially in the Red Army, were drunk out of their skulls on liberated wine and booze most of the time. Mr. Beevor implicitly destroys the myth that Stalin withdrew front line units from the battle and replaced them with barbarians from central Asia to do as much damage to the population as possible: the Red Army units were already well filled with Asiatic replacements, but they certainly had no monopoly on committing atrocities. Arguments among armchair generals about the U.S. Army stopping at the Elbe will undoubtedly go on forever - personally, I think Beevor's interpretation of the event is correct, and Eisenhower's strategy, based on military intelligence and political perceptions current at the time, can't be faulted.

As a serious military history buff, during various stints in Germany and Eastern Europe over the last 40 years I got to know many veterans on both sides of the battle who were surprisingly willing to talk about it (I speak German, Polish and Russian), although their memories tended to be somewhat selective. I visited most of the cities, and hiked and drove over almost all of the ground described in the book, from Courland in Latvia to Silesia, East Prussia and Pomerania (now mostly in Poland), and the Berlin region. Couldn't get to Kaliningrad, ex-Koenigsburg, though - it was (and still is) a closed military enclave. In any case, I can personally vouch for the accuracy of Mr. Beevor's geography, including the fact that skeletons and other remains are still turning up in northern Poland and the woods around Berlin. And the Seelow heights dominating the Oder crossings east of Berlin are indeed a formidable military barrier.

I expect there will be a good deal of moaning and carping about minor inaccuracies, such as misspelled Russian names, times of day, unit movements, and the like. Some of the narrative is complicated and hard to follow, just like the campaign and battle itself, and record keeping under the circumstances of total collapse was haphazard at best. Much of the story will be considered loaded with upsetting opinions and political angles by those with particular axes to grind - some very strong feelings still prevail. But these minor points don't really matter - Mr. Beevor basically got it right. I really have only one significant criticism: why, oh why, is it so difficult for publishers to get decent maps? They would do better to copy gas station road maps than use the obscure dots on white expanses that are seen so often in military history books.

"The Fall of Berlin" is a good book, well worth reading. But frankly, it's not as good a read as Cornelius Ryan's "The Last Battle," published in 1966, which is, on the whole, equally accurate. While many of Mr. Beevor's sources were not available to Mr. Ryan, the actual events were fresher in the minds of combatants and civilians in the 1960s. I would suggest that the serious reader read both books, in chronological order, to get a fair, complete picture.

Rating:
Summary: Hard to digest....
Review: A historian needs to check his dates. Even misquotes might be forgiven (and there are plenty here), but Beevor gives the wrong year or time frame for many of the battles and events he references (Pg. 16 - the Korsun rout occurred in 1943, not 1944, and I'm not even a history major). He is also far more loyal to conventional opinion than historical fact (Pg. 66 - "the Western Allies might well have reached Berlin first" - the Allies never raced to Berlin, and their decision to sit on the Elbe was correct but obviously too complicated for this work).

To hear Beevor tell it, the poor, peace-loving Germans were minding their own business when the dirty, louse-infested Russians decided to take time off from raping German women and spying on themselves to conquer every major city and fortress in Eastern Europe. Beevor's obsession with the sex habits of Russian soldiers is creepy, and he won't let it go even for a few pages. The liberation of Lauenburg concentration camp and the service of Russian doctors in treating the victims, is given exactly 2 sentences on pg. 116, but we get 4 pages - including quoted documents and interviews - for every attack on a women's dormitory (pgs. 107-110, as an example). Surely, somewhere within the Red Army, there was strategy, tactics, training, weaponry, bravery, sacrifices, or even the desire get the job done and go home. You certainly wouldn't know it from this book. The Red Army soldier, it appears, was only there for the women.

Even modern Germany doesn't make excuses for the slaughter their fathers inflicted on the world... why does Beevor feel the need? This pro-German account is [garbage]. The worse, because it masquerades as a pop historical work, and readers might believe it.

Rating:
Summary: Not "Stalingrad' but better than most
Review: Having read a great deal of Russian history, both pre and post Revolution, I can say Beevor is a dedicated and educated historian. Fall of Berlin doesn't quite measure up to his first monumental "Stalingrad", but it is an honest and heartfelt work.
Compared with some of the nonsense that is on the market trying to pass for good research and discipline, Beevor's book can do nothing but add to what we have learned about the Russian incursion into Berlin, and its aftermath.Some may find it slanted or overly curious about the sexual behavior of Russian troops, but who is there to say he is wrong?

Rating:
Summary: A Clash of Evils
Review: Anthony Beevor's latest opus is without question one of the best treatments of an often overlooked, yet critical, epsiode in the second world war - the final destruction of the Nazi regeime through the soviet conquest of Berlin. Beevor manages to tell a strikingly human story (from the suffering of German civilians to the trevails of the individual soviet soldier) while at the same time presenting a technically accurate and understandable accounting of the "nuts and bolts" of the military action (from grand strategic planning to critical details of german and soviet tactics).

Perhaps Beevor's greatest strength as a historian of the eastern front is that he manages to avoid becoming partisan. The most common shortcomming of east front writers is that they often seem to end up either as apologists for the germans (entranced, perhaps, by the technical professioncy of german arms combined with the nearness they came to victory) or soviet partisans (attracted by the human drama of the peasant army pushed to the edge of defeat yet inevitably triumphant). Beevor avoids this pitfall and instead presents us with the good, the bad and the ugly of German and Soviet conduct of in war. He does not shrink from the details of the Nazi holocaust or of the Red Army habit of rape and pillage. He presents, as much as is possible, a complete view of the final convulsions of the nazi-communist struggle and invites the reader to draw what conclusions he will.

In the end, Beevor demonstrates that the war in the east was fundamentally different from that in the west. We see our war as having been a "good war" pitting liberal democracy against repressive totalitarianism. In the east, however, the war was one of evil against evil. Of two paranoid and oppresive totalitarian nations bent on nothing less then the absolute destruction of the other. Writing at his best Beevor tells us the story of ordinary human beings struggling to understand and survive total war between two great evils.

I recommend this highly as a detailed and accurate presentation of the closing days of WWII, the opening days of the Cold War and the struggle of individual humans to survive and overcome.

Rating:
Summary: The Fall of Berlin, and the fall of some myths
Review: This is an excellent and enlightening look about what happened on the Eastern Front of World War II. Being an American, I'm often exposed to the Western slant about what happened in the war, so this was quite refreshing. I have a natural inclination to question whatever I read - I don't just automatically believe anything. But, from what I have read, and I've done a fair amount of reading on the European theater, this book seems to confirm and expand on what is well documented - the German butchers' behavior was atrocious and indefensible when they invaded in the east (and wherever they conquered peoples and nations), and the Red Army doled out severe retribution when they conquered German territory. Two wrongs don't make a right, but war is ugly, brutal and deadly, and one can at least understand WITHOUT CONDONING the Red Army's actions. Most Red Army soldiers had lost comrades and were eager to settle the score.

Beevor's writing gets bogged down at times, but in the middle of the book, when one can almost see the Red Army's brutal advance, the pace, quality and descriptions of the fighting gain fine form. The reader can almost sense the death, smell, brutality and desperation that defined Berlin in the spring of 1945. Beevor doesn't describe Berlin, he transports the reader there.

This is a fine addition to any World War II library, and a great tome that describes the bitter closing days of the war in Europe.

Rating:
Summary: I hated this....trash!
Review: This idiotic shamelessly pro-German/Nazi account of the closing months of war in 1945 is a disgrace to historical works. In fact, Beevor is nothing but a journalist who should not dare to write a book as ridiculous as this again. The Soviet regime was evil yes...but to brand that evil on to the brave soldiers of the Red Army men who fought not for an ideology but for a motherland which they loved more than their own lives is stupid. They should be treated as the hero's they were...did you ever think that all armies rape in every war...

Rating:
Summary: Deceitful and patronizing
Review: The entire book is based on memoirs, interviews and other such folklore, which for a serious historian is about just as valuable as yesteryear's snow. Time and time again the reader is subjected to a barrage of curious but uninformative personal recollections expertly served under the author's own sauce.

Ilya Ehrenburg - a Jewish Soviet journalist and a writer is mentioned on numerous occasions by Beevor as the principal instigator of the alleged atrocities committed by the Soviet troops in Germany. Being a journalist himself, Anthony Beevor seriously believes that a freelance journalist was responsible for the Red Army attitude toward the Germans.

On top of that Beevor is quoting what he believes to be Ehrenburg's articles from wartime Soviet newspapers. Anthony Beevor incorrectly attributes the following quote to Ilya Ehrenburg: "Do not count days; do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill." [p. 169] Without giving specific sources (a common problem with his book), Beevor insists that this is a quote from an article published by Ehrenburg in 1942.

This is an apparent reference to the article by Ehrenburg entitled "About Hatred" and published in the "Red Star" newspaper in 1942. (Without providing a source, it seems that Mr. Beevor expects his reader to deduce this information on his own. This is the same so-called quote Beevor used in his "Stalingrad".) However, if one would to look at the original article (and not just one of many "imitation" Ehrenburg articles prepared by Goebbels and his propaganda ministry), one would be hard pressed to find anything even remotely similar to the text quoted by Beevor.

In fact, Ehrenburg's article is completely opposite in word and spirit to what Mr. Beevor would like his readers to believe: "We do not dream of revenge: can revenge really quench our indignation? Soviet people will never fall to the level of fascists, they will never torture children and wounded. We are looking for something different: only justice can lessen our pain. Nobody can bring back to life the children of Kerch. Nobody can erase from our memory things we lived through. We decided to destroy the fascists: justice demands this. Our understanding of kindness, brotherhood and humanity demands this."

In the same article Ehrenburg writes: "If the German soldier puts down his weapon and surrenders we won't lay a finger on him - he will live. Perhaps the future Germany will reeducate him, turn a mindless killer into a worker and a human being. Let German teachers think about this. We are thinking about other things: our land, our work, our families. We have learned to hate because we know how to love." Understandably, these passages knock the wind out of Beevor's neat little theory about hordes of unwashed Ivans rampaging through countryside Rhineland in search of things to steal, rape and burn. Beevor did not bother to check his sources because he liked them just as they came to him.

This is just one of many examples. The quotes offered by Anthony Beevor in his book are of questionable origins. Sometimes, as we can see, these quotes are not just grossly inaccurate but are completely bogus. The author did not go through the trouble to verify his sources because the information he thought he had nicely supported his distorted view of the Soviet people and the Red Army. In his book Beevor presented this biased view to his readers to be swallowed whole without any questions. Not this time, thank you very much.

Rating:
Summary: The Greater of Two Evils?
Review: The Fall of Berlin: 1945 is an incredible comprehensive book about the end of WWII. Beginning at the end of 1944 into the New Year 1945, finishing in the final triumph and victory parade in Moscow this book moves quickly and keeps you entralled right to the end. So many significant and tragic things happened at the end of the war, along with very bad decisions by leaders on both sides that it accounts for some very sad stories that just lead you to shake your head in disbelief. Nevertheless, it has been said that war is essentially Hell on Earth, by giving us so many details Mr. Beevor doesn't hide why war has been characterized that way.

This book's focus is decidedly from a German/Russian point of view. So much is known about the events on the western front, it is nice to see a different view solely from the eastern front. I learned so much that I didn't know from this focus on the east. Therefore, anyone reading this book for more than a minimal American perspective might be greatly disappointed.

The research that seems to have gone into putting this book together is incredible, not only does he know which army group or division was located where during what time, but exactly how they moved, what they planned to achieve, what slowed them down, and even the feelings of the generals or regular soldiers where documented accounts are known. He really brings these people back to life as he shows the essence of their personalities, and how they deal with these extreme situations. One of the most recurring themes are Hitler's criminal insanity along with his explosive rage. His arch enemy Stalin whose paranoia about EVERYTHING seemingly leads you to question his sanity also. He clearly shows how the decisions of these madmen have terrible consequences for millions in the civilian population. However, Mr. Beevor does an awefully good job making you feel as if you are right there among the group when hopes are realized or the effects of bad decisions come to pass.

The other theme of the book is the incredible suffering, dislocation, and death of the civilians, and others on the eastern front at the hands of the Soviet Army in their relentless march west. As the war turned back towards Germany Stalin's bloodlust for revenge is self-evident. Stalin tries to translate this lust for revenge all the way down to the common soldier from central Asia with tragically successful results. One of the most horrific things that happened repeatedly wherever the Red Army went was the mass rape of women and girls mainly German, but not always. Stalin and his generals emphasis on revenge seemed to know no bounds. It wasn't just about winning a war, but to totally decimate an entire people; nothing was safe as the rapes indicate, refugees were killed, property was looted on a massive scale, so much undisciplined behavior made you wonder if the term liberators could be remotely applied to the Red Army. Mr. Beevor didn't paint a flattering picture of them in any way, although there are rare accounts of individual honor and civility among a few soldiers, for the most part you get a sense that it is just one evil army replacing another one.

This can be a very depressing book for the reader, even with the few touching stories of survival and human compassion, but dark times like these need to be shown in their raw reality as Mr. Beevor does so well, so as to learn and help prevent history repeating itself. If you have any interest in WWII at all, this is a can't miss.