From Amazon.co.uk
Military history, even at its best, can be a cold art. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that wars involve individuals, each with their own hopes, fears and desires.
Berlin: the Downfall, 1945, is Antony Beevor's account of the bloody
Götterdämmerung that brought the Second World War in Europe to an end, and in which he has fused the large and the small scale effects of war. Beevor paints the broad picture of Marshals Zhukov and Konev, competing for glory and Stalin's attention, as they race their armies towards Berlin. He gives the reader a gripping account of the brutal street-by-street fighting in the German capital and provides an unforgettable portrait of the last, insane days of Hitler and his entourage in the bunker.
His attention to emotional detail is what made his previous book Stalingrad such a magnificent work, combining a sweeping hisorical narrative with a remarkable sensitivity to human drama. Yet he also highlights the small details of ordinary people caught in the nightmare of history--the sick children evacuated at the last minute from a Potsdam hospital; the Soviet soldiers shaving themselves for the first time in weeks so that they would make appropriately presentable conquerors; and the Nazi Youth teenagers peddling their bikes in despairing, last-ditch attacks against the Red Army's tanks.
The story Beevor tells is an almost unremittingly terrible one--one of death, rape, hunger and human misery--but he tells it with both an epic sweep and an alertness to individuality. The result is a masterpiece of narrative history that is as powerful as Stalingrad. --Nick Rennison
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
With lean military precision, the author describes the Russian rape of the Nazi capital in all its gory detail. Drawing on eye-witness accounts, official documents, and new additions to the historical record released after the Soviet breakup, he analyzes the whys, wherefores, and ramifications of events that ended the Third Reich and ushered in the Cold War. Sean Barrett does a fine job presenting this material, smoothly nailing the numerous foreign words and phrases with seeming effortlessness. While the author's style is journalistically unemotional, the narrator's is unremittingly grim. One listens with perverse fascination. Y.R. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine--
Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
--This text refers to the
Audio CD
edition.
