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90 of 96 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent account of the fall of Berlin., June 26, 2002
This review is from: The Fall of Berlin 1945 (Hardcover)
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.
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120 of 137 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
the dark side of the Noble Fury, July 4, 2002
This review is from: The Fall of Berlin 1945 (Hardcover)
The preponderance of space in the Central Armed Forces Museum of Moscow is devoted to the Great Patriotic War. You will see memorials to fire-scorched Byelorussia and Ukraine, bomb-devastated Stalingrad, and famine-besieged Leningrad. You'll see an entire hall dedicated to the Holocaust, with grisly displays of Nazi barbarism, including products made from the bodies of concentration-camp victims. You'll see photos of emaciated Jews as well as Czechs, Bulgarians, and Hungarians showering flowers and kisses on Red Army tanks and troops. You'll see tributes to American Lend-Lease convoys, and snapshots of Western and Soviet Allies embracing on the Elbe. Your guide will tell you how only in recent years can the truth be told about the paranoid cruelty of Stalin, Beria, and the NKVD toward "liberated" Europe and the Soviet people. But while documenting the suffering and sacrifices of the USSR, there is little mention, even today, of crimes committed by Red Army occupiers of Berlin. I disagree with the detractors of Antony Beevor that in addressing these atrocities his book negates the heroism of the Soviet soldier. On every page, the author emphasizes the appalling conditions in which the Red Army had to wrest its victory, and the terrible cost in Soviet lives. Under-nourished, under-supplied, poorly-trained soldiers were motivated not only by the brutality of SMERSH and NKVD forces. Their "Noble Fury" was incited not only by relentless propaganda from Political Instructors or incendiary front-line correspondents such as the popular Ilya Ehrenburg. Every Soviet family had suffered personal loss during the German invasion and occupation, and every soldier was driven by hatred of the Fascist Beast. It is the mass rape perpetrated by the Red Army which comprises the controversy of Beevor's book. But Beevor is hardly the first to document that atrocity. It was early exploited for pulp-novels such as James Burke's luridly-titled "The Big Rape." And it has not been ignored by historians. Neither Cornelius Ryan in "The Last Battle" nor Andrew Tully in his Soviet-sympathetic "Berlin: Story of a Battle" flinch from describing the orgy of looting and rape which often followed the most desperate fighting and hard-won victories. Only Beevor makes the effort to analyze (although never justify) the reasons for this conduct. As he reiterates, many Soviet frontoviki comported themselves "with utmost correctness", and the ones who partook in debauchery were emboldened to do so only after much imbibing of alcohol. Beevor delves into the still-prevailing rape psychology of conquering armies (indeed, to large groupings of males in general), assigning four distinct phases to the culture of wartime abuse of women. The first phase is vengeful, which accounted for the extreme ferocity toward victims in Prussia and eastern Germany. The second phase is purely sexual, and accounted for the celebratory riot in Berlin. Regarding the time period, Beevor cites the total "unenlightenment" of attitudes about sex, revealed in one Soviet officer's jovial anecdote about the "gratitude" of man-starved grandmothers for soldiers' attentions. And also in a widely repeated quip of Berlin women, trapped in the city enduring Allied air-raids and awaiting the Asiatic Horde, which went: "Better a Russki on the belly than an Ami [American, a reference to B-17 bombs] on the head!" The third phase involves women's "willing" participation, usually in exchange for food or "protection". Feminists nowadays refute any theory of rape being a sexual, as opposed to purely violent, crime. But it should be remembered, up until the 70's, women facing rape -- even gang-rape -- were routinely advised not to resist but to "relax and enjoy it". The fourth phase is prostitution. According to Beevor, by the time Americans entered Berlin, a "cigarette-economy" was in full-swing, and American servicemen "did not have to rape". While Beevor's sensationalism of Red Army brutality may antagonize Russian readers, he contrastingly portrays honorable Soviets in a positive light. There are numerous mentions of traditional Slavic sentimentality toward children, and the compassion of soldiers who shared their meager rations with refugees and civilians. As one sapper noted: "How should one treat them? Just think of it. They were well off, well fed, had livestock, vegetable gardens, and apple trees. And they invaded us! For this, we should strangle them. I'm sorry for the children. Even though they are Fritz kids." And there are quotes from idealistic Communists distressed by drunken violence and concerned about its effect on the world image of the USSR. If you read this book, keep in mind the extraordinary circumstances of the War. Beevor is neither anti-Slavic nor anti-German. He is properly condemnatory of Stalin. He is even more unforgiving of the Reich, its coldness toward its own people and utter contempt for non-Aryans. He documents a conflict between two insane despots of two totalitarian regimes, and the horror endured by everyone caught up in it.
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38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good account of a dreadful battle, December 14, 2002
This review is from: The Fall of Berlin 1945 (Hardcover)
Beevor's new book is a worthwhile, accurate and, I think, well balanced description of the campaign leading up to the battle of Berlin and the battle itself. It confirms many suppositions, destroys some myths, and adds a fair amount of information gleaned from sources not available before the break-up of the Soviet Union. I found particularly interesting the confirmation of the imperatives of Stalin's need to take Berlin before the Americans got there, and while I knew about the atomic research conducted in Berlin, I was not aware of the development of Sarin and other poison gases in laboratories there. Also I was not aware that so many of the German units defending Berlin were in fact third country nationals, including fascist French units. The Soviet Union's terrible treatment of their own soldiers and citizens and those of their allies, released from camps and slave labor factories, is well described, as is the abysmal stupidity of the leadership on both the German and Soviet sides. And a significant proportion of the combatants, especially in the Red Army, were drunk out of their skulls on liberated wine and booze most of the time. Mr. Beevor implicitly destroys the myth that Stalin withdrew front line units from the battle and replaced them with barbarians from central Asia to do as much damage to the population as possible: the Red Army units were already well filled with Asiatic replacements, but they certainly had no monopoly on committing atrocities. Arguments among armchair generals about the U.S. Army stopping at the Elbe will undoubtedly go on forever - personally, I think Beevor's interpretation of the event is correct, and Eisenhower's strategy, based on military intelligence and political perceptions current at the time, can't be faulted. As a serious military history buff, during various stints in Germany and Eastern Europe over the last 40 years I got to know many veterans on both sides of the battle who were surprisingly willing to talk about it (I speak German, Polish and Russian), although their memories tended to be somewhat selective. I visited most of the cities, and hiked and drove over almost all of the ground described in the book, from Courland in Latvia to Silesia, East Prussia and Pomerania (now mostly in Poland), and the Berlin region. Couldn't get to Kaliningrad, ex-Koenigsburg, though - it was (and still is) a closed military enclave. In any case, I can personally vouch for the accuracy of Mr. Beevor's geography, including the fact that skeletons and other remains are still turning up in northern Poland and the woods around Berlin. And the Seelow heights dominating the Oder crossings east of Berlin are indeed a formidable military barrier. I expect there will be a good deal of moaning and carping about minor inaccuracies, such as misspelled Russian names, times of day, unit movements, and the like. Some of the narrative is complicated and hard to follow, just like the campaign and battle itself, and record keeping under the circumstances of total collapse was haphazard at best. Much of the story will be considered loaded with upsetting opinions and political angles by those with particular axes to grind - some very strong feelings still prevail. But these minor points don't really matter - Mr. Beevor basically got it right. I really have only one significant criticism: why, oh why, is it so difficult for publishers to get decent maps? They would do better to copy gas station road maps than use the obscure dots on white expanses that are seen so often in military history books. "The Fall of Berlin" is a good book, well worth reading. But frankly, it's not as good a read as Cornelius Ryan's "The Last Battle," published in 1966, which is, on the whole, equally accurate. While many of Mr. Beevor's sources were not available to Mr. Ryan, the actual events were fresher in the minds of combatants and civilians in the 1960s. I would suggest that the serious reader read both books, in chronological order, to get a fair, complete picture.
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