The Fall of Berlin 1945

With strict (but secret) orders from Hitler to quickly annihilate what he and the Nazi leadership considered to be the "subhuman Slavs" in order to make "liebenstraum" (living room) for future German colonization, the Germans had conducted a campaign of such staggering and unparalleled brutality, of such senseless slaughter during their sweep east toward Stalingrad and Moscow that afterward the Russians literally seethed with a profound bloodlust, aching for a chance at revenge. Now that the tide had turned and the Soviet army was flooding over the eastern borders of the fatherland, their chance had arrived, and the day of reckoning was fast approaching.

Beevor's treatment of the story of the fall of Berlin in 1945 is rich with detail and anecdotal information, which helps bring the story to life, putting a human face on the horrific specifics of life in a city under siege. While Hitler cowered deep beneath the city in his bunker, fantasizing about his imminent rescue, Zhukov's Russian shock troops were encircling the city. Yet, it never deteriorated into a situation of "every man for himself'. The author's narrative is filled with examples of individual bravery and personal sacrifice for the benefit of others. Amid the savagery and carnage that surrounded them, ordinary men and women went about their ruined lives, just trying as best they could to survive. Yet hundreds of thousands perished, succumbing to the numbing effect of shelling, bombs, fires, gun-battles and random rape, victims of a half-starved and hate-filled foe hell-bent on bloody revenge.

The author masterfully employs previously unavailable Soviet and German archives to thread a storyline very well told. In so doing, Beevor delivers a very compelling vision of the people and events that shaped the progressive collapse of Berlin under the constant bombardment and attacks of the Russian army, and the horror that awaited ordinary Berliners in the line of fire. What he gives us is an indelibly colored portrait of a time of great pitch and moment in the history of the modern world, a snapshot of two titans, the Germans and Russians, locked in mortal combat in one of the great cities of Europe. The aftermath of that struggle was felt for decades afterward. This is a well-written and very carefully researched book, one that added to my personal knowledge of the history of the Second World War. I heartily recommend it. Enjoy!


The locusts descend and devour what's left   May 22, 2002
51 out of 60 found this review helpful

The facts of the story only hint at the carnage. By the beginning of 1945 the allied armies had halted after crossing the Rhine in western Germany. There they waited for a move from the Red Army in the east. It was not long in coming and was preceeded by a wave of millions of fleeing German civilians, who abandoning the occupied territories of Prussia and Silesia, had only one panicked and fearful expression on their lips: "Der Ivan Kommt!" Indeed the Russians were coming and in a massive way. They had assembled "the largest army the world had ever seen" comprising 2.5 million soldiers, over 40,000 artillery guns, 6,000 tanks and four air armies, all for the purpose of a rapid attack and capture of the capital of the Third Reich. Berlin in contrast was defended by 45,000 Wehrmacht troops and about 40,000 militia. The militia comprised the young (mostly 14 year old Hitler Youth), the old (Volkssturm), and also foreign fascist volunteers (mostly French and Latvians) who still believed in the fight against Bolshevism.

This last point is well developed by Beevor. He mentions the Nazi and fascist antipathy towards the Russian peasant army and the Soviet form of totalitarianism. The Russians in turn hated all things German. This had been building since Stalingrad and Stalin himself had deliberately stoken the flames of revenge. When unleashed on Berlin this unquenchable fire took the form of drunken violence, looting, and gang-raping of German women by vast numbers of Red Army soldiers. Here is where Beevor's book differs from the many previous descriptions of this battle. THE FALL OF BERLIN 1945 is much too dull a title for the gruesome, disturbing, and emotionally wrenching descriptions of the inhumanity of both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. Beevor says that besides revenge, what drove the Red Army was Stalin's desire to acquire German A-bomb secrets and Soviet commanders concern that the Allies might take Berlin. This could not be allowed to happen, as "Berlin belonged to the Soviet Union by right of suffering as well as by right of conquest."

The Soviets were in such a hurry to seize the city that many Red Army units entering Berlin were shelled by their own artillery. Add to the confusion the fact that Hitler refused to evacuate civilians and you can see that the convergence of drunken indiscipline and revenge on the part of the invaders, and hatred, fear, and a "strange mixture of supressed hysteria and fatalism" on the part of Berliners, could only lead to what Beevor calls "the apocalypse of totalitarian corruption." Berlin was already a ruin from allied bombers but as April arrived and the Soviets entered, any semblance of normality evaporated and "a sense of nightmare unreality pervaded the city as it awaited its doom." When women were not suffering gang-rapes - "of approximately 100,000 women raped...10,000 died...mostly from suicide" - they were acting like automatons or zombies. Beevor tells of an incident where a Soviet artillery shell exploded on women waiting in a food line. The survivors merely shuffled to fill in the spaces created by the fallen. The Berlin Philharmonic gave its last performance on April 12 and guests helped themselves to cyanide pills as they departed. Beevor desribes the unreal scene outside Hitler's Bunker where as he and Eva Braun burned, an SS guard ran downstairs and said 'the chief's on fire, do you want to come and look?'. There were no takers as people were otherwise occupied as Beevor says "an erotic fever" seemed to have gripped everyone.

Beevor does not ignore the strategic big picture of this chaotic battle that consumed some 350,000 lives and left more than a quarter million Russians wounded. But it is at the level of the individual soldier and the women city dwellers that Beevor's story is at its most compelling. Here the descriptions of the irrationality, inhumanity, and insanity that was Berlin in 1945 provide the only means of getting a grip on the totality of the carnage. This is an unremittingly grim account of humanity at war but it's a useful reminder of what WWII was fought for and it's well worth reading.


An excellent account of the fall of Berlin.   June 26, 2002
Sean Judge (Jacksonville, AR USA)
46 out of 50 found this review helpful

This is a well researched and written account of the fall of Berlin. It fills a void somewhere between Cornelius Ryan's "The Last Battle" (excellent for the casual historian) and Read and Fisher's "The Fall of Berlin" (a more detailed and lengthy account). It's a good mesh of historical background and personal experiences from the battle. Most of the criticisms I have read about the book seem more motivated by a "Politically Correct" approach to history than by the truth. German atrocities throughout the war are well documented and are not the focus of this book. The Red Army DID(by all accounts save their own) engage in widespread rape and looting in eastern Germany and Berlin. Beevor gives a balanced account - he does not glorify German resistance, Nazism, or the Soviet advance. He simply tells what happened. Rape is a predominant theme in the book, but it was a predominant concern of the German women, and a fact of the war. This is a solid piece of work on one of the greatest human dramas in history. Don't let those with a hidden agenda steer you away from this book.


Long Ignored Picture of the the German Civilian Experience   May 30, 2002
36 out of 57 found this review helpful

After 57 years, an author finally comes along with the courage to break the silence in the West concerning our alliance with Stalin and the Eisenhower/Churchill policy of turning a blind eye to the Soviet Army's actions. Definitely flies in the face of 50 years of Soviet propaganda (and most "cookie cutter" western histories of the war) - and makes a mockery of the various Soviet "heroic saviors" statues which still litter eastern Germany.
As the son of East Prussian refugees I have known from first hand accounts the long ignored aspects of the Soviet assault on the German east. Beevor's work provides long overdue, mainstream recognition to this period.
My main criticism and disappointment with the book and Mr. Beevor is his failure to fully address and acknowledge the British and American roles in facilitating the Soviet actions - particularly Mr. Beevor's ridiculing the German view of the British/American saturation-incendary bombing of their civilian population centers as "Terrorangriffe" (Terror Assaults). At the end of his work, Mr. Beevor belittles this expression as Goebbel's inspired propaganda. 40,000 incinerated in Hamburg, 20,000 + at Pforzheim, 100,000 + killed at Dresden, 98% of Konigsberg (a city the size of Cleveland) leveled in a 1 night British air raid, and Churchill himself calling for the annihilation of as many civilians a possible (through aeral bombing) in the Silisian capitial Breslau before it was taken by the Soviets, terror WAS VIEWED BY ALL THE ALLIES as a legitimate weapon against Germany (Japan also) in the effort to crush facism. The West has long ignored this truth, and the Germans through 50 years of relentless barage of guilt have had to quietly try forget this history.
Mr. Beevor's work is a brave FIRST STEP, esp. in the face of official Russian protest at the publishing of this long overdue history.