Berlin: the Downfall, 1945

by Antony Beevor (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $4.17

  The advance on Berlin - which was to be the largest battle in history - began at exactly 4am on 16 April, 1945. Along the Oder Neisse front, two and a half million Soviet troops attacked one million Germans. The panic induced in the German civilian population is easy to imagine. Hitler had sworn that Germany would never be invaded, yet now overwhelming Soviet armies were advancing on Berlin. The utterly deranged Hitler ensconced deep in his concrete bunker, could only scream at his military staff. Denouncing the cowardice of the Wehrmacht, he had become convinced that Germany's defeat proved that its people were not worthy of him - that they deserved to die. This book reconstitutes the experience of those millions caught up in the nightmare crescendo of the Third Reich's final defeat - a story encompassing the realities of those who suffered to the end from folly, cruelty and the exercise of naked power. The battle for Berlin is revealed as a terrifying example of fire and sword, pillage, mass rape, and murder.

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $4.17

  'Fascinating, extraordinary, gripping' - Jeremy Paxman. The Storming of Berlin had been the Red Army's dream of vengeance ever since the German's invasion of Russia in the summer of 1941. Antony Beevor has reconstituted the experience of those millions caught up in the nightmare crescendo of the Third Reich's final defeat.

• New

  paperback
  

  $14.00

  Berlin: The Downfall 19145 is Antony Beevor's brilliant account of the fall of the Third Reich. The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Reich in January 1945. Political instructors rammed home the message of Wehrmacht and SS brutality. The result was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known, with tanks crushing refugee columns under their tracks, mass rape, pillage and destruction. Hundreds of thousands of women and children froze to death or were massacred because Nazi Party chiefs, refusing to face defeat, had forbidden the evacuation of civilians. Over seven million fled westwards from the terror of the Red Army. Antony Beevor reconstructs the experiences of those millions caught up in the nightmare of the Third Reich's final collapse, telling a terrible story of pride, stupidity, fanatacism, revenge and savagery, but also one of astonishing endurance, self-sacrifice and survival against all odds.