LAST BATTLE : THE CLASSIC HISTORY OF THE BATTLE FOR BERLIN

Rating:
Summary: A must for WWII fans
Review: A great read encompassing many angles or the war and the people invloved. I would have liked a few more maps, however. I came away with a much better understanding of the end of the war.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Book
Review: An excellent mixture of military history and personal accounts about both Allied fronts closing in on Berlin. His telling of the last days in the Fuhrerbunker are amazing with regard to the utter denial that was happening. The book is interspersed with some sets of relevant photos, as well as a layout of the bunker itself. I recommend this book without hesitation.

Rating:
Summary: Another Ryan WWII classic
Review: Before Stephen Ambrose took center stage as the best current historian of WWII, there was Cornelius Ryan. Mr. Ryan wrote a trio of classic books about WWII: The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, and this book. The first two were made into movies, and are commonly known. They cover two of the most important European theatre campaigns that involved the US and British forces. If you have not read either one of those books, I highly recommend both of them.

The Last Battle is the least known book of the trio. None the less, it is a classic. In it, Ryan gives a gripping account of the battle for Berlin. He does an excellent job of introducing the scenario that lead to this truly horrifying and desperate battle. Just like his other books, he weaves a captivating narrative that takes the reader from the planning sessions of the Red Army, to Hitler's bunker, on to the streets of Berlin where the battle was actually fought. He covers this conflict from many angles (Generals, soldiers, civilians, Germans, Soviets, etc.) and gives the reader an accurate account of what happened during this battle. As always, the amount of research and personal interviews he did for this book are quite impressive.

Mr. Ryan does an excellent job of building the battle drama into the fury that erupted when the Soviets finally rolled into the city of Berlin. The payback that the Red Army gives the Wehrmacht, the city, and the civilian population of Berlin is a real eye-opener. If you have never read anything about this battle (like myself), you may be shocked when you learn the details. As Ryan points out, the Soviets saw this campaign as the one opportunity to avenge their losses on the Eastern Front (especially in places like Stalingrad), and they took full advantage of the situation (to include many heinous acts against innocent civilians). Just like when the British and Americans bombed Dresden, the Soviets wanted to teach the Nazis, and the German people, a lesson they would never forget.

I first bought this book because of the author. I had some interest about the battle because I visited Berlin as a young man back when the wall was still in place. Once I started this book I became totally engrossed with it, and finished in a few days. I highly recommend it to any Cornelius Ryan fan. If you liked his other books, you will definitely enjoy this one also. Also, this book is great for anyone wanting to learn about the battle that sealed the fate of the Nazi regime.

Rating:
Summary: Another Ryan WWII classic
Review: Before Stephen Ambrose took center stage as the best current historian of WWII, there was Cornelius Ryan. Mr. Ryan wrote a trio of classic books about WWII: The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, and this book. The first two were made into movies, and are commonly known. They cover two of the most important European theatre campaigns that involved the US and British forces. If you have not read either one of those books, I highly recommend both of them.

The Last Battle is the least known book of the trio. None the less, it is a classic. In it, Ryan gives a gripping account of the battle for Berlin. He does an excellent job of introducing the scenario that lead to this truly horrifying and desperate battle. Just like his other books, he weaves a captivating narrative that takes the reader from the planning sessions of the Red Army, to Hitler's bunker, on to the streets of Berlin where the battle was actually fought. He covers this conflict from many angles (Generals, soldiers, civilians, Germans, Soviets, etc.) and gives the reader an accurate account of what happened during this battle. As always, the amount of research and personal interviews he did for this book are quite impressive.

Mr. Ryan does an excellent job of building the battle drama into the fury that erupted when the Soviets finally rolled into the city of Berlin. The payback that the Red Army gives the Wehrmacht, the city, and the civilian population of Berlin is a real eye-opener. If you have never read anything about this battle (like myself), you may be shocked when you learn the details. As Ryan points out, the Soviets saw this campaign as the one opportunity to avenge their losses on the Eastern Front (especially in places like Stalingrad), and they took full advantage of the situation (to include many heinous acts against innocent civilians). Just like when the British and Americans bombed Dresden, the Soviets wanted to teach the Nazis, and the German people, a lesson they would never forget.

I first bought this book because of the author. I had some interest about the battle because I visited Berlin as a young man back when the wall was still in place. Once I started this book I became totally engrossed with it, and finished in a few days. I highly recommend it to any Cornelius Ryan fan. If you liked his other books, you will definitely enjoy this one also. Also, this book is great for anyone wanting to learn about the battle that sealed the fate of the Nazi regime.

Rating:
Summary: Nobel Laureate of WWII
Review: Corneilus Ryan is the Nobel Laureate of World War II. I strongly encourage any Stephen Ambrose fan to pick up any of Ryan's three seminal works: "The Last Battle," "A Bridge Too Far" or "The Longest Day." Ryan, a WWII correspondent who died in 1976, has a style similar to Ambrose's: first person accounts woven into rich history. All his books are eminently readable.

"The Last Battle" is the captivating story of the downfall of Berlin, the concluding battle of the war in the European theater. Ryan brings events to life through the eyes of the residents of Berlin, the German commanders who planned its defense and the Soviet attackers who ultimately overwhelmed the city.

This is a powerful book that, like all Ryan's works, reads like a novel.

Rating:
Summary: Historical Masterpiece
Review: Cornelies Ryan ceases to amaze me with his meaningful and destinct historical details of some the 20th century's most important events. This book achieves what most histories fail to do. It gives great amounts of information without becoming dry and repititious.

Ryan drags you through the last days of the third reich, through the good the bad and the ugly. This non-partisan view is an achievemewnt in itself. If you have any remote interest in history you will find Ryans books fasinating and the sources of his information astounding. Modern historians write books based mostly on second hand knowledge but all of what Ryan puts down on paper is straight from the horses mouth and is verified.

The cliched phrase "The movie doesnt do the book justice" Applies in every sence. Read it today!

Rating:
Summary: This is the way Berlin fell
Review: Cornelius Ryan is one of the best World War Two historians. "The Last Battle" is every bit as compelling as "The Longest Day," his classic account of D-Day. Ryan looks at the capture of Berlin from both the Russian and German point of view. He focusses on the few heros on the German side (including Albert Speer) who did their duty while attempting to save their country from Hitler's mad scheme of total destruction. Ryan vividly recounts the battle scenes through the eyes of eyewitnesses. Through it all is a mood of the utter hopelessness of a people who knew they were beaten but were unable to make themselves stop fighting. Freed from the Cold War controversy of whether the U.S. forces should have tried to beat the Russians to Berlin, this story can now be enjoyed as a classic, and tragic, tale of an epic battle.

Rating:
Summary: An Astonishing, Factual Account of How World War II Ended
Review: Cornelius Ryan sets the stage for the last few months of World War II invoking Adolph Hilter's military order forbididding his losing troops to retreat from battle: "Starre Verteidigung! (Stand Fast!)."

The drama unfolds as told by the people who were there, in accounts taken from a diverse sampling of players -- German, American/British and Russian. From conferences between Generals to the fearful whisperings of townspeople to the manic military briefings in the subterranean Fuhrerbunker led by a drugged-out, decompensating Adolph Hitler, the reader is lead through a compelling labyrinth of facts and details underlying the death throes of a World War, and of Nazi Germany.

Along the way we're reminded that this could have been prevented; there was a failed assasination attempt of Hitler led by Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944, and even months before the end, Hitler's trused architect, Albert Speer, sought to use poison gas on Hitler and Co. by feeding it into the air filtration system of the Fuhrerbunker -- but, no! In March, 1945, just as Speer had conjoured a way to prevent the inevitable mass loss of life (including most of animals at the Berlin Zoo, as Ryan poignantly reminds us), a chimney is built above the bunker and SS guards are stationed to protect it, and we are drawn into the fray of a World War as it plays out in the bitter battle for Berlin.

Soldiers become autonomous from polititicians, the Americans halt on the Elbe, chaos and order intertwine as Stalin pits his Generals, Koniev and Zhukov, against one another to take the German capital as the ferocious Nazi regime is whittled into compliance through sheer brutality of waves of assaults, and finally, street to street fighting in the city of Berlin.

This is an amazing reminder for all of us how war engenders colossal waste of life, and that all that remains in the aftermath of the will to conquer is ashes, rubble, rape, insanity and death.

Stalin's prize for taking Berlin is the charred, remains of Hitler's body and jaw, identified by dental technician Kathe Hausermann. Her reward? Hausermann is placed in solitary confinement in a Soviet prison for over ten years as the Cold War warms up.

This book is a grim reminder of how hideous war is, and how foolish an act it would be to repeat it -- out of boredom, nationalism, quest for resources or lack of direction. It is a primer for considering prevention that anything like WWII will ever happen again, and stopping dangerous world leaders from rising to power in the first place.

Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Read About The Final Battle For Berlin!
Review: Few battles in history have been waged with greater ferocity, desperation, bravery, and atrocity than the battle for Berlin at the end of the Second World War. No one can tell a story better than Ryan, and he is at his very best here. In this book Cornelius Ryan brings his masterful powers of description and discerning eye for extraordinary detail to bear with force and elegance. This is a wonderful book, immensely informative, densely packed with facts and figures, and told in a compelling way by a best-selling author who can vividly recount seemingly countless tales of the most ordinary of individuals caught in the unforgiving and often deadly embrace of total war.

By this stage Hitler had begun to withdraw farther into the recesses of the fabled German Chancellery complex, while around and above him raged an endless barrage by Soviet artillery, British, American and Canadian bombs, and the clashes of German and Russian tanks and armor. This then, is the final epic struggle amid the ashes and ruins of a once proud and great metropolis, the chaotic and blood-curdling death throes of the Nazi regime. Fearing the terrible wrath and ritual rape and murder of rampaging Russians, German forces tended to withdraw from the western front in an attempt to either surrender outright to the Americans or British, or to let these more "civilized" western forces take Berlin before capitulating the hated Russians. Hitler had expressly forbidden any kind of surrender, intending this to be a fight to the death. Indeed, the stage was set for some of the most horrific excesses of the war.

This, then, is a riveting and well-told story told down to the final exciting detail of how this battle of titans was fought, with an amazing degree of description of the "on the ground, as it is happening" kind of story telling. Of course, Ryan excels at this, as proven with not only this book but by his other best sellers, as well. Written with compassion, it recognizes and empathizes with a sensitivity for the terrible ordeal faced by individual civilians who through bad luck and circumstance happened to be standing in the path of an oncoming maelstrom. The pages are filled with the struggle of all to survive, sometimes quite against the odds, and the pages gleam with example after example of single acts of defiance and courage, acts to help to save someone else, often at great personal risk.

The narrative of the book dramatizes the catastrophic and irreversible consequences of war, for both combatants and noncombatants alike, and helps the reader to appreciate the ways in which the events as they unfolded in the battle for Berlin, the stage of European and world history were both positively and negatively affected. This is a book all students of modern history should read, and one I highly recommend for your bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book!!!
Review: I am not a "war buff" but enjoy a good history book now and then. I haven't read much WWII history, but this book enthralled me from the start. Ryan is an exceptional writer who shows balance in reporting the human, everyday aspects of the citizens of Berlin living amoungst neglect, death and destruction, as well as actual war-time experiences of soldiers and the Generals of both sides of the war. I would highly recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in WWII Germany, Hitler and his top echelon, as well as the Allies and their struggles of take Berlin. A great read!

Jeff
Stockholm