The Fall of Berlin 1945
by Antony Beevor
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Book Summary Information
Author: Antony BeevorEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-04-29
ISBN: 0142002801
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of The Fall of Berlin 1945
Book Review: Shocking Insight into Banality and Mendacity
Summary: 5 Stars
Anthony Beevor's "The Fall of Berlin 1945" is hard to read because it's so gray and depressing, about two of the monstrous empires the world has ever known (Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union), and never really ascends and descends -- it's just banality and mendacity constantly streaming along.
There is mad raving Hitler who is determined to see all his people die for and with him -- he demands loyalty, and in the final days he equates loyalty with death (he first kills his loyal dog before killing himself and his new wife). Then there are the useless, cynical Nazi commanders such as Goring and Himmler, who driven mad by their absolute power and their imminent defeat, try to save themselves. They are probably the more sane of the Nazis -- others such as Martin Bormann (Hitler's secretary) are too busy jockeying for power, and playing court politics to concern themselves with reality, with the death of millions of German civilians, and the destruction of a once great civilization.
On the Soviet side, there is all too cynical Stalin, who is determined to capture Berlin before the Allies, and who is already contemplating destroying Soviet heroes such as Zhukov even as he depends on Zhukov to destroy the Nazis. Stalin plays his generals off each other, and Zhukov and his rival generals needlessly expend tens of thousands of soldiers in the rush to grab Berlin. The Soviets are "liberators," but it seems that they're just changing Nazi shackles for Soviet shackles -- they more fanatically liquidate the Polish resistance than they do the German army. All the while, the feared NKVD (the precursor to the KGB) and SMERSH (basically, Soviet military intelligence) are prowling about, looking for any heretics and deviants, punishing Soviet prisoners of war who've already been punished enough and scaring Soviet soldiers who've known nothing but fear ever since the German invasion.
And then there are the German civilians who try to find normality in the Soviet invasion. They focus on finding clean water to distract them from all the rape and pillaging going on. Ironically, it's probably after the war when the rape has stopped that it has its greatest effects. During the war, the men are out on the front fighting, and the women need to somehow feed their children and survive -- and eventually rape just achieves its own banal normality. But when the war is over and the German men return to find their wives and fiances raped constantly the men refuse to permit the women to discuss it, and allows rape to hang ever visibly in the air.
Finally, there are the Americans, who basically turned a blind eye to all the madness. Eisenhower didn't want to risk a confrontation with Stalin by advancing into Berlin. (The author maintains that the Americans were just naive, but I think they were just indifferent.)
Everyday in war, there are heroics that defines people, and reminds us that in war there will always be heroes and villains on both sides. The German army eventually disobeyed Hitler's mad orders of defending Berlin to the last man, and instead focused on breaking out the civilian population in order to surrender to the Americans rather than the Soviets. Then there were the German soldiers who defiantly fought against the SS, who knew that surrender was not an option for them. (It was the foreign SS members who fought the bravest and the hardest, knowing that even if they survived the war there was no home that they could return to.) Then there were the Jewish Red Army officers who tried to protect German civilians from rape and pillage.
"The Fall of Berlin" is an immensely detailed and complex work, offering brilliant insight into the working of man at his most elemental.
Summary of The Fall of Berlin 1945
The Red Army's invasion of Berlin in January 1945 was one of the most terrifying examples of fire and sword in history. Frenzied by terrible memories of Wehrmacht and SS brutality, the Russians wreaked havoc, leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and millions more fleeing westward. Drawing upon newly available material from former Soviet files, as well as from German, American, British, French, and Swedish archives, bestselling author Antony Beevor vividly recounts the experiences of the millions of civilians and soldiers caught up in the nightmare of the Third Reich's final collapse. The Fall of Berlin 1945 is a heartrending story of pride, stupidity, fanaticism, revenge, and savagery, yet it is also one of astonishing human endurance, self-sacrifice, and survival against all odds.By December 1944, many of the 3 million citizens of Berlin had stopped giving the Nazi salute, and jokes circulated that the most practical Christmas gift of the season was a coffin. And for good reason, military historian Antony Beevor writes in this richly detailed reconstruction of events in the final days of Adolf Hitler's Berlin. Following savage years of campaigns in Russia, the Nazi regime had not only failed to crush Bolshevism, it had brought the Soviet army to the very gates of the capital. That army, ill-fed and hungry for vengeance, unloosed its fury on Berlin just a month later in a long siege that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides. But as Beevor recounts, the siege was also marked by remarkable acts of courage and even compassion. Drawing on unexplored Soviet and German archives and dozens of eyewitness accounts, Beevor brings us a harrowing portrait of the battle and its terrible aftermath, which would color world history for years to follow. --Gregory McNamee
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