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: 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: Familiar Story with Fascinating Details
Review: Antony Beevor's last book recounts the familiar but still fascinating story of the success of Russian arms and political wiles in taking Berlin and thus cementing the focal point of the Cold War. Potential readers should understand that this is not a "war college" type of military history where troop movements are traced on a minute-by-minute basis, though their basic thrusts and counterthrusts are there for any one who cares to try to follow them. Rather, it is a much broader story emphasizing the resiliance of the German Army in the face of inevitable defeat, the indifference of Russian military and political leadership to the wholesale loss of troops, the revenge exacted on the German civilian population by the Red Army for the Wehrmacht's predations in the course of invading the Motherland, and, perhaps most importantly, a stimulating portrayal of Stalin's delicious duplicity as he hoodwinked the Allies time and time again as his Army unrelentingly surged on to their objective. Given that most WW II histories understandably tend to treat with the fall of Berlin almost as an afterthought, Beevor's book makes a solid contribution to the scholarship of the period and is well worth the read.

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: Apocalypse Now...
Review: Beevor is a well-repsected historian and author. This is a very recent book, so he can draw on some new research, opened archives, and interviews with participants. It is thoroughly researched, and sheds light on a surprisingly unknown phase of the second world war.
The tale is grim. He starts his narrative with the Soviet reinvading Poland. The Red army, intent on revenge, embarks on an orgy of destruction, pillage, murder, ethnic cleansing, and rape. The suffering of the civilians, especially the women, is one of the main themes of this book. And an important theme it is. The other main themes are how Stalin manipulated the western Allies, especially the US, and the total collapse of leadership in the Third Reich. The latter two themes are better known than the first, but it is always good to be reminded. Espcially now when so many of our leaders demand unquestioning faith from us.
I do not think any other history of the second world war has told the story of the ethnic cleansing of Poland and the eastern parts of Germany. Again we find out that history repeats itself. Rwanda, or the Balkans are nothing new.
The only drawback to the book, as I see it, is that it ends quite abruptly. I wonder what happened to the remnats of the German Ninth Army south of Berlin, or the pockets left in Koningsberg and Kurland, or to the international SS units defending the Reichstag. We only get hints at what happened to the returning Red army soldiers that had been 'contaminated' by exposure to the west. We are only told about what happened to marshall Zjukov, and he did not fare well. Otherwise an excellent book.

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: 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: A savage retribution from the East
Review: In a novelization of the World War II capture of Berlin, THE END OF WAR by David Robbins, the author paints a powerful word picture of the hatred between German troops and the Red Army when he describes a fictional band of German POWs being escorted to the rear by Russian guards commanded by one Ilya:

"The guards hurl more names at the Germans. Names of prison camps, Rovno, Ternopol, Zitomir; names of occupied villages, Braslav, Balvi, Vigala; names of death camps, Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka; names of dead comrades ...; names of fathers and mothers, brothers, women. The Red soldiers vent themselves on the Germans ... They have debts to collect ... One of the Germans mutters in Russian, `Bastards' ... All of these men hate. Back and forth, volleys of loathing ... One of the Russians raises his rifle to his cheek, ridiculous, as though he needs to aim this close to his targets ... Ilya's mouth is bone dry. He could speak ... He could say, what? ...Another crow dispatches his voice from the trees ... Ilya turns his back."

Debts. Oh, yes. THE FALL OF BERLIN 1945 by Antony Beevor is the true account of the savage retribution visited on the Third Reich and its capital by avenging armies from the East.

At 431 paperbacked pages, THE FALL OF BERLIN 1945 hasn't the length to be overly detailed. Rather, as Beevor might put it, it's "the tidy version of events - the staff officer's summary." The narrative could arbitrarily be divided into five sections: the Red Army's assault across the Vistula River into western Poland to the German border at the Oder River, the defeat of the Nazi armies along the Baltic in East Prussia and Pomerania, the final drive across the Oder to Berlin by the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukranian Fronts, the fighting within the city itself, and the immediate aftermath of the German surrender. Relatively little is said of the conflict on the Western Europe except as it contributed to Stalin's paranoia about a separate peace treaty between Germany and the Western Allies and/or the possibility that the Anglo-American forces might reach Berlin first. Stalin needn't have worried about the latter. Eisenhower's political and strategic naiveté, and a misplaced desire to keep Uncle Joe a happy camper, assured a halt of the western armies on the Elbe River.

The bare bones of the narrative are fleshed out with details derived from a multitude of other written sources and the author's interviews with survivors, especially evident in those sections relating to events in Hitler's Reich Chancellery bunker both before and after his suicide.

The book includes a number of maps that are perfectly adequate, and three photo sections. My only complaint is that there are no pictures of certain individuals. While Hitler, Goebbels, Eva Braun, Himmler, Keitel, Zhukov and Stalin appear, key players such as Konev, Rokossovsky, Chuikov, Vlasov, Weidling, Guderian and Heinrici do not. And where's that famous photo of Soviet soldiers planting the Red Banner on the Reichstag - an image just as famous to Russians as that of the Iwo Jima flag raising is to Americans?

A subtitle to the book might as well be "The Red Army and Rape". Beevor is particularly struck by the horrific record of the Soviet forces in that regard. The author reports the estimate that 95,000 to 130,000 Berlin women were sexually assaulted, and another 1.4 million German women in Pomerania, East Prussia and Silesia - many, if not most, multiple times.

THE FALL OF BERLIN 1945 is a superlative overview of the last four months of fighting on the Eastern Front, and is a must-read for any casual student of the European Theater of WWII.


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: The Fall of the Nazi Fascists
Review: The Fall of Berlin 1945 is obviously about the last series of battles in World War II. It not only covers the final battle for the German capital, but it actually starts in January 1945. The Russians are sitting on the Vistula river, just outside Warsaw, and waiting to launch one of the final attacks that will finally collapse the Nazi regime. Beevor has done lots of research, and it shows. This is a completely compelling book. You do, however, have to have an interest in the subject and you should probably not be in a really bad mood when you read it. It is kind of a downer.

For the most part, Beevor concentrates on the Russian front as the Germans face off against the Soviet army. He does have a chapter or two about the other allies, but most of the time that he is talking about them, it is in relation to the Eastern Front and how some of the remaining Germans were trying to retreat to the American and British lines so that they could surrender and hopefully not get killed by the invading Soviet hordes. Beevor also details the Yalta conference and how Stalin completely hoodwinked Churchill and Roosevelt (Roosevelt himself was very ill at this time and certainly wasn't at his best) in regards to his intentions for Poland and for Berlin. Other than this, however, Beevor is completely devoted to action in Poland and in eastern Germany. This isn't surprising, as most of the action in this period of the war was centred here. Not to say there wasn't any fighting in the West, but once the Americans crossed the Rhine river, the Germans seemed more intent on making sure they didn't surrender to the Russians.

Beevor does a good job with the subject. He writes in an interesting manner that doesn't contain the dryness that is prevalent in some history texts. However, he does go deep enough into the subject that it's obviously not intended for light reading. This is a history book, and it certainly feels like one. It's not history-lite for somebody with just a mild interest in the subject. Not being a historian, I can't speak to the accuracy of the research, but he does have a lot of sources, all of which are detailed in the back. He uses archives, interviews, unpublished diaries (including three sources that he insists must remain anonymous, so presumably they are Russian), mostly primary sources. The notes, unfortunately, are in my least favourite format: instead of end or footnotes, the notes are listed by page number and then a brief snippet of a quote to state which section he is referencing. I find this incredibly annoying and hard to follow, so much so that I don't even bother after awhile.

The maps are outstanding as well. Unfortunately, they are all at the front of the book, so you do find yourself flipping back and forth a little bit. It would have been nice to have a couple of full strategic maps at the beginning of the book, but to have the tactical maps begin the section in which they are described. Still, the maps themselves are very well done and definitely worth the time it takes to look at them before reading about the specific operation. They detail every attack, even the attacks on the Western Front. Since the Western Front is not talked about very much, this shows how complete they are.

This is a truly powerful book, especially where Beevor describes the utter devastation that affected Poland and eastern Germany. Berlin was nothing but a pile of rubble with bombs going off everywhere and hardly any buildings without any bomb damage. I think it affected me even more because of the time I was reading it (i.e during the Iraq war). Here I was seeing so little (relatively speaking of course) city and civilian damage, and then I'm reading this book where cities were being bombed into oblivion. It was very disheartening. You certainly should not be reading this book if you're depressed. Beevor details the horrors of war, as German citizens flee from the onrushing Soviets, victorious soldiers rape and pillage to their hearts' content, and there is so much human suffering. Even the Polish and the captured Soviet troops were not spared any of this. It is truly amazing sometimes what the human race is capable of, and Beevor tells us all about it.

That is another small fault with this book, though. While I certainly understand the concentration on the devastation that was inflicted on the Germans, Beevor really seems to centre on the subject of rape. Time and time again he comes back to the subject, and it became a bit annoying after awhile. This is not necessarily because he kept coming back to it, but because every time he did come back to it, he'd go on for a couple of pages about it. It started to get monotonous. I realize that this happened, and that it shouldn't be white-washed, but after the first few times he could surely just briefly cover the fact that more rapes happened at this time. Either that, or he should have just had a chapter detailing the horrors that happened and then not really talked about them again.

Ultimately, though, this is a very worthy book, with just enough minor quibbles to bring it down to four stars. If you like military history, this is definitely the book for you. This period of World War II is not well-documented in book form, at least not that I've seen. Beevor does a great job of covering the subject and I think you'll like it. You certainly won't enjoy it, but you will find it compelling. And isn't that what a history book should be?

David Roy