Berlin: The Downfall 1945

‘The outstanding piece of non-fiction this year. His last book, Stalingrad was, I thought, as good as it gets. But Berlin is even better. If you ever needed reminding of why war is something we should move heaven and earth to avoid, this will do it’.

Jeremy Paxman, Guardian

‘Once you’ve read it, it’ll stay with you forever. What a book!’

Barbara Trapido, Observer

‘Beevor tells the savage, gripping story of the fall of the city with brilliance and a humane attention to the impact of an epic battle on fragile, individual lives. His powerful account lays bare the nightmarish sordidness of German fascism, with its back to the wall, buying a few more days at the expense of thousands of lives’.

Helen Dunmore, The Times

‘Antony Beevor has become justly celebrated for Stalingrad, and his new book, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, lives up to all his fans’ expectations. Beevor has explored Russian and German sources with his customary industry, to produce a gripping and harrowing narrative of the city’s fall to the Red Army in 1945’.

Max Hastings, Sunday Telegraph

‘Essential reading’.

Michael Howard, The Times Literary Supplement

‘This is a brilliantly researched book, all the more effective because of Beevor’s spare and unemotional style’.

Sue McGregor, Daily Telegraph

‘The narrative onslaught of Beevor’s book is tremendous’.

Iain Finlayson, The Times

‘An appalling and gripping story’.

Margaret Macmillan, Sunday Telegraph

‘I read it like a novel… it does make you feel as if you know what it might have been like to be there’.

Anne Applebaum, Evening Standard

‘The style contributes to the account itself, a masterful mixture of narrative finesse and scrupulousness towards the facts. In both categories we are witnessing an author at the height of his art’.

Thomas Kielinger, Die Welt

‘The best of five exemplary works of history is Beevor’s Berlin. The story has been told many times, but Beevor brings a distinctive combination of gifts to it. Not merely is he a lucid chronicler of military tactics, strategy and maneuvers, but he has a sympathetic eye for the ordinary people who became war’s innocent victims — in this case the uncountable thousands of women who were raped and brutalized by the Red Army as it raced to the prize that was Berlin’.

Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

‘Riveting, magnificent — masterly but shocking. It simply makes [all previous histories] obsolete at a stroke’.

Independent

‘Beevor gives an exceptionally clear account of complicated military movements and the reasoning of the commanders responsible for them. But he is also sensitive to the real casualties of war. Boys whose anxious faces disappeared within man-sized helmets; women who managed to feed their babies between multiple gang rapes; and elderly folk who found themselves in the midst of hell because they were loath to leave a family farm or a spouse’s grave. The result is a masterpiece of modern historical writing’.

Michael Burleigh, Guardian

‘Beevor, a British historian of great distinction and range, once more demonstrates his mastery of his sources, including newly discovered material from Soviet archives’.

Gordon Craig, New York Review of Books

‘Quite splendid. Combines a calm and scholarly narrative with an unrelenting moral indignation at what he has uncovered. Berlin stands as a superbly lucid examination of one of the most dreadful battles in world history’.

Irish Times

‘A compelling piece of historical description and assessment, the more important because some of Beevor’s Russian archival sources may not be available in future’.

Alan Judd, Daily Telegraph

‘Superlative. The days and events leading to the final collapse of Berlin are recreated vividly and faithfully. It is an education’.

Independent on Sunday

‘Magisterial. This is an epic story, epically told: chilling, insightful, analytical, desperately moving. From the past at its worst, Antony Beevor has fashioned history at its best’.

Scotsman

‘A clear window into that dark, awful past for those in Europe — or anywhere else — who have not known war’s horrors’.

Time

‘Reading Berlin is like viewing some enormous, latter-day Hieronymous Bosch painting of the human race in total meltdown. You can’t comprehend its entirety at first glance, because each of the fascinating details compels your attention’.

Boston Herald

‘A devastating account’.

New Statesman

‘Chilling, authoritative… Beevor magnificently captures the true pity of war’.

Daily Mail

‘Digging deep into Soviet files, personal diaries and memoirs… Beevor brings vividly alive the final days of the doomed metropolis. It’s in his eye for the chilling detail about ordinary people and soldiers caught up in the maelstrom of defeat that Beevor so magnificently captures the true pity of war. Compelling, admirably readable and fresh’.

David Stafford, Evening Standard

‘Immaculately assembled, meticulous exposition. With an epic sweep worthy of Tolstoy, Beevor has produced a superlative sequel to Stalingrad’.

The Times

‘A horrifyingly vivid account of the Fall of Berlin in 1945. Beevor handles his subject sensitively and wisely’.

Daily Telegraph

‘Hugely impressive. Beevor is a superb writer, a diligent researcher and a master of detail’.

Chicago Tribune

‘Beevor has created haunting images of the war’s final days… the best account yet written’.

Carlo D’Este, New York Times