"Berlin: The Downfall" - A Review

Curse project deliverables! Been unable/unwilling to write for the last month as I'm desperately making sure that the project goes live (which it has, thank goodness).

I've always browsed Anthony Beevor's books every time I go to Borders, and find his mix of reporting the military strategy against the everyday experiences of the local population quite a refreshing read as opposed to the strictly numbers books of other war novels. In this book, he documents how the USSR invades and concludes the 2nd World War in Europe. It is amazing the quickness of the collapse of Germany in 1945, and horriying the brutality of the Red Army in its revenge against the "facist beasts".

I was thoroughly confused as to where all the armies were going, with frequent consultations to the fairly vague maps at the front. The other thing that I probably did not appreciate were the numbers of people involved in all these armies. Marshalling 2 million men to invade Germany must have been a logistical nightmare. And maybe this confusion I had rightly reflects the confusion of the actual military operations on the ground.
I liked the references to the personas of the individual Russian and German army commanders, as well as the insight into the weakness and cruelty of the Nazi leadership as the walls crumbled around them.

The frequent references to the rape and casualties of the civilian population reared its ugly head time and time again, and emphasised more than anything else that the suffering always hits hardest those most unable to defend themselves. It saddened me greatly to think that there is such a "dark aura of male sexuality that is so easily shown, whenever the shackles of discipline and responsibility are removed".

Overall a very recommended book. I will have to read "Stalingrad" (as from the same author) as well.