If you want to read about atrocities, look no further. What we have here is the chaotic and violent end to the War in Europe. Berlin was the nerve centre of the Nazi empire and the capturing of the capital was regarded as the end goal of the entire Allied war effort. The Fall of Berlin 1945 was the moment when the horrors of the Eastern front were finally brought to roost on the Germans in their last stronghold. The USSR had suffered more than any other nation during the war, the Germans had set out to literally destroy them as a nation and a race, and after 4 brutal years and 27 million Soviet dead, it was the Russians who made their deliberate and final advance on the German capital to bring all of that brutality home.

Eisenhower and the Americans held back at the River Elba for fear of accidentally setting off another war if the two armies were to mistakenly engage each other in the field, so they left the invasion of Berlin entirely to the Russians. The Americans were well aware of how thoroughly the Russians would destroy the capital, but they were not in any position to interfere.

What followed was one of the most horrifying chapters of WW2, which is not a statement to be taken lightly. The combined Soviet forces engaged in the most abominable acts imaginable, including but not limited to; gang rape, mass execution, torture, destruction of every kind, violation in every way possible happening everywhere all at once. All but a few in the Soviet upper command participated or were complicit in some way. The rage felt and directed toward the German people is hard to fully comprehend, but this book does its best to convey the full extent of the terror.
With all of that said, as a book, I didn't find this nearly as fascinating as Beevor's other military history works. There isn't enough substance in terms of the logistical, political and strategic elements to make these events interesting. This book reads like the epilogue of the entire war, and the details of this final outburst leaves you feeling hollowed out and exhausted.

Brilliantly researched and written. Not just the story of Hitlers bunker, but the humanity trapped in a shell blasted hell, with the resistance by youths on cycles facing Russian tanks.

Excellent! Probably the best book I've read this year. First, the author interlaces facts with excerpts from diaries, letters, and legal depositions. I learned and FELT what was happening. No wonder his books have won so many awards. Second, I've not read as much about the war on the eastern front. The book takes you into Hitler's bunker and covers the lasts days of all those were there. While the book focuses on Berlin, there's a lot about the battles leading up to it, the desperation felt on all sides, and why the Germans and Russians despise one another. I learned a lot about Stalin and the millions of his own people he starved, killed, imprisoned, and silenced. I thought about Putin and can see many parallels. I learned more about Poland and Ukraine, both before and after the war, and how it impacts the present day tensions between those countries and Russia. I'll be reading more by Sir Anthony Beevor!

Interesting but ponderous. A LOT of detail about Soviet troop movements. For some reason with Civil War books, that level of detail doesn't bother me but in this book I found it to be too much.

Flaga biało-czerwona na szczycie Bramy Brandenburskiej to (wstyd się przyznać) migawka, która kojarzy mi się niezmiennie z końcem drugiej wojny światowej i upadkiem III Rzeszy. Dzień chwały, radości, ulgi, zasłużonej kary i sprawiedliwości. "Berlin 1945. Upadek" burzy te skojarzenia i pokazuje wydarzenia prowadzące do 8 maja 1945 w perspektywie dużo szerszej.
Brytyjski historyk rozpoczyna książkę od opisu stanu ducha i sytuacji, w jakiej znajdowali się berlińczycy na przełomie roku 44' i 45'. W mieście jeszcze nie było głodu i strachu, ale tłuste lata triumfu militarnego Niemcy mieli już za sobą, a przed sobą widmo nalotów, zbliżające się oba fronty alianckie, przy jednoczesnym usilnym zaklinaniu rzeczywistości w wykonaniu propagandy goebbelsowskiej, narastaniu paranoi Hitlera oraz terroru sianego przez SS. Beevor pokazuje wojnę z kilku stron. Po pierwsze poprzez pryzmat działań wojennych, przede wszystkim na froncie wschodnim, poczynając od ofensywy styczniowej i 'wyzwalania' kolejnych polskich miast. Tutaj mamy przyczółki, flanki, przesunięcia wojsk po obu stronach linii frontu. Drugim elementem, dla mnie najciekawszym, były opisy ewakuacji ludności cywilnej i/lub funkcjonowania w bunkrach przeciwlotniczych i innych kryjówkach, sposoby radzenia sobie z bestialstwem radzieckich żołnierzy i strachem, nie tylko Niemców. Również pokazanie tarć pomiędzy aliantami, wśród radzieckich generałów, a wreszcie w otoczeniu samego Hitlera, pozwalało mi zobaczyć złożoność sytuacji.
To, co było dla mnie najtrudniejsze do przełknięcia podczas lektury, to powtarzające się opisy gwałtów ze szczególnym okrucieństwem. Wiem, że były powszechne, ale ich skala dopiero teraz do mnie dotarła. Ogrom krzywdy zadawanej kobietom jest niewyobrażalny. Dodatkowo, rozsierdziło mnie czytanie o niemieckich mężczyznach, którzy mieli za złe swoim żonom i ukochanym, że uległy przemocy seksualnej.

Podsumowując, mimo, że nie jestem fanką historii XX wieku, z wielkim zainteresowaniem czytałam o upadku Berlina. Polecam książkę, szczególnie osobom z mglistą wizją, jak wyglądała końcówka II wojny światowej.

This is my sixth book by Antony Beevor and it's arguably the best. The book opens (as usual in Beevor books) with some precise context. It then begins the main narrative with the Vistula–Oder Offensive in January 1945. The book stays detailed throughout the fall of Berlin and then widens back out in the summer of 1945. Beevor does not spend too much time discussing the general aftermath of WWII, choosing mostly to tie up loose ends regarding Berlin citizens, daily life, and the Nazi party leadership's total collapse.

The book paints a bleak picture of the Eastern front. Endless rape, startling chaotic and violent behavior by everyone involved, and a hellish landscape without order or respect. This is what makes his books so great - the attention to detail in all different aspects of the impacted. Propagandized Red Army soldiers, shocked and envious of the sheer wealth of the average German citizen, destroying property out of pure malice. NKVD operatives tasked with acquiring scientific assets without Marshal Zhukov's knowledge. Worse, Zhukov never knew that the NKVD found and acquired Adolph Hitler's remains until many years later.

The book focuses mainly on this Eastern front, and generally only discusses western allies as they pertain to Joseph Stalin's paranoia concerning Berlin's assets and its political control/fallout. As the book progresses the suffocating atmosphere within Hitler's bunker in Berlin becomes the main focus, and the loosely competitive atmosphere Hitler sowed at the onset of the war is replaced entirely with a micro-managing brand of extreme paranoia. Hitler's military command suffers massive turnover as Hitler becomes more inflexible and demanding in the face of defeat. German resentment and confusion, especially among civilians, is heart-breakingly described in scenes of starvation, desperation, and pure humiliation. Women with frozen breasts trying to feed their babies. Negotiations over breaks from gang rape. Executions of prisoners - especially Russian executions of Russian prisoners of war - deemed suspicious and failed.

This book - even without any discussion of the horrific WWII concentration camps - describes complete hell on earth. Ideological authority gone completely rampant in conflicting directions. Here we have a clear representation of the high cost of war, brought to life on many levels, and not taught in any history book.

This is a deep dive into how WWII ended in Europe. And by deep dive I mean a lot of detail about troop movements, political and military policy, and the effects they had on civilians. Not surprisingly then, I learned a ton - frankly much of which was horrifying - but the first paragraph in the preface (below) convinced me at the start that learning about the Fall of Berlin is actually learning about the war and its participants more generally. I now have a new appreciation for and understanding of VE Day (8 March 1945) and what caused Nazi Germany’s downfall.

“‘History always emphasizes terminal events,’ Albert Speer observed bitterly to his American interrogators just after the end of the war. He hated the idea that the early achievements of Hitler’s regime would be obscured by its final collapse. Yet Speer, like other prominent Nazis, refused to recognize that few things reveal more about political leaders and their systems than the manner of their downfall. This is why the subject of National Socialism’s final defeat is so fascinating, and also so important at a time when teenagers, especially in Germany, are finding much to admire in the Third Reich.”

I listened to this and was very glad I did as I’m not sure I could have digested all the German and Russian names had I been reading them.

Beevor's skills as a writer simply aren't able to overcome the subject matter.

He does an admirable job of making an interesting read out of a rather excruciatingly boring topic. The clumsiness of the Soviets, the megalomania of Stalin, the naivety of the Americans, the irrelevance of the British, all play out against the pathetic condition of the German people. There are interesting stories to be told, and he presents several, but in the end there's simply not enough to support a book of this length. It's like reading a box score focused on a game's final minutes when one team had absolutely no chance of winning.

An aspect that troubled me in particular is that Beevor presents as fact, eyewitness accounts that I know are questioned by serious historians. Such discoveries make me question other 'facts' presented by an author.

Not for the squeamish.

Es un libro que explica al máximo detalle el derrumbamiento del régimen nazi y la ofensiva soviética a las regiones orientales de alemania y a la propia Berlín en los últimos meses de la guerra. También explica, en menor medida, el avance del frente occidental.
No me parece un libro de fácil lectura, resultará denso y extremadamente detallado para una persona que lo coja con ánimo de leer una novela y no de un potente libro de historia.
Lo que más me han gustado han sido las anécdotas contadas por las personas corrientes, que suponen un baño de realismo y tristeza con las que resulta difícil no empatizar.

I read this as background for a blog post I’m writing, part of which takes place during the fall of the Third Reich. I’d already read Beevor’s Stalingrad and loved it. Going into this, all I knew about the fall of Berlin was that the Allied and Soviet armies were basically in a race to see who could get there first. I couldn’t wait to find out more…

**

Okay, so my preconceived idea about the race between the Allies and the Soviets wasn’t quite right. Diplomatic wrangling behind the scenes had already made the physical race somewhat moot - the Allies had divided Germany up into future occupation zones. And because the Allies knew Berlin would be in the Soviet zone, they weren't keen on provoking conflict by racing the Red Army to its prize. Beevor expects you to know this already - and you won't hear anything from the Allied side until at least a quarter of the way through the book. As a casual reader, I would have appreciated a teensy bit more background to correct my preconceived notion before diving into this.

What I Liked

*Beevor didn’t shy away from the topic of rape. You can’t, not with this subject matter. World War II showed us the most dark and dismal parts of humanity. Talking about rape is a painful necessity when you’re covering the German armies that invaded Russia in 1941 and 42, and the Red Army as it repaid the favor in 1944 and 45. There was enough coverage of the subject to make you aware of how systemic rape on the eastern front was, but at the same time, Beevor didn’t let it take over the book. Not all reviewers feel this way, however- the Atlantic reviewer, Norman Stone, specifically mentioned how Beevor “goes on and on about this.” Imagine how the women raped multiple times felt about it, dude. All you have to do is read about it. They lived it.

*I liked the glimpses we got into the flawed Nazi leadership. We see Hitler’s insane orders to treat cities like Breslau as “fortresses” – i.e., defend them to the death, no matter how impractical, no matter how much loss of life such an order entailed. We see how utterly unrealistic Nazi expectations were in terms of evacuating civilians. We see the Nazis forming last-ditch defense squads, the Volkssturm, which included mostly teenage boys and old men. It’s heartbreaking to read how many lives the Nazis threw away in a last-ditch effort to win an unwinnable war.

*I also liked the glimpses of rivalry Beevor showed us between the Soviet generals – Zhukov, Maslov, Klochkov, Rokossovsky, and others. But it was a little unclear whether that rivalry was all competition for Stalin’s approval, or whether there was genuine dislike or bad blood there. I wish we had a bit of biography on these leading generals to add a bit of depth to the story. For example, Maslov – who apparently thought all Germans were total monsters – was surprised that German kids cry the same way Russian kids cry. How was Maslov so unaware of, oh, humanity? Or was he being facetious? This is where even a paragraph of backstory would be helpful in evaluating character.

*Beevor does drop in a few moments of black humor, which were much appreciated. For example, the book opens during the Christmas season of 1944/45. Beevor tells us Berliners joked, “Be practical: give a coffin.” Another humorous moment came late in the book, when the Soviets were already in Berlin. An officer held up a map, trying to orient himself. He told another officer that the Reich Chancellery was dead ahead, but he couldn’t see where because of this big stupid building in the way. That is the Reich Chancellery, the other officer said. The first officer simply didn’t believe they’d advanced so quickly as to already be there.

What I Didn’t Like

*At times, the book felt like a laundry list of troop movements. In certain sections, like the Soviet approach to the heights outside Berlin, it was sentence after sentence of so-and-so moved troops here under this commander, so-and-so moved elsewhere, so-and-so flanked so-and-so, etc. And without a map, those updates are relatively meaningless for the average reader. I was hoping for more of a narrative. What you get is a flat summary. It made my eyes glaze over and I started skimming.

*To truly understand what’s going on in most of this book, you need frequently updated maps alongside the text. This book doesn’t have that.

*I wish Beevor had fleshed this out as a narrative. A narrative needs characters, but not once is there any sort of character sketch given for the Soviet generals. I don’t need the life story of people who make brief appearances. And most of us know enough about Hitler and Himmler and Göring and Goebbels to not need more background on them. But how many readers are going to know a damn thing about any of the Soviet generals, like Zhukov? The rivalry between officers would mean more if we knew a little more about these men.

*There are lots of topics Beevor references and expects you to know about. Poland, for example – he makes many references to Soviet hostility for the Polish militia that heroically resisted the Nazis. It’s a big topic, I know, but we’re never given even a one-paragraph summary of the fraught relationship between the Poles and the Soviets. Little pauses like this would make his casual references much more meaningful for the average reader.

*As I read this, I found myself wishing it were a different kind of book – a social history instead of a military history. There are so many moments and incidents he flies by with a one-sentence mention that beg for more coverage. Many of these moments come during the civilian evacuation of Berlin. The Nazis delayed it as long as possible, and then when they finally allowed it, millions of civilians fled all at once. Many tried to flee aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, which the Soviets sank, killing 7,000 innocent civilians. But something so tragic just gets a simple mention, and Beevor moves on. Did the Soviets know it was full of refugees? Did they care? Did anyone argue against the need to sink it? We don’t know because this is a fly-by reference in the narrative; it simply didn’t impact the larger military strategy of either side. There are lots of missed opportunities like that to create a more impactful story here; granted, Beevor didn’t set out to write that kind of book, but those inclusions would have made this book stronger.

These points make it seem like I had more dislikes than likes. That’s not necessarily true. This is still a very valuable resource – I just think Beevor missed an opportunity to present a true narrative instead of a summary.

Originally posted as part of the 2020 Royal Reading List on https://girlinthetiara.com/2020-royal....

Interesting insights into attitude of civilian German population but not enough of this. Written at a level of detail appropriate to military history but not to a non-fiction book for a casual reader. You really need a battle map of the Eastern front to follow this book. Also rather heavy on the brutal side of the war. While this is no doubt representative, one can only take so much description of rape, murder and summary execution. If you can stand all the battle detail, however, there are many interesting insights here including German sixteen year olds manning anti-aircraft guns and German anti-tank troop going into battle on bicycles. The losses in the battle for Selow Heights also provide an interesting insight – the Germans had 12,000 casualties, the Russian had 30,000. In any other war, this would have been a German victory but no one on the Russian side cared about casualties so they just kept coming until the Germans were overrun.