Berlin: The Downfall 1945 - Antony Beevor

Berlin: The Downfall 1945 was first published in 2002 and written by the acclaimed historian Antony Beevor. It tells the grim story of the last months of World War 2 in Europe and the bloody battle for Berlin. My paperback copy is 431 pages long and includes a large number of maps and a useful glossary. It begins at Christmas 1944. Berlin is being bombed by the Americans during the day and by the RAF during the night. The city is being reduced to rubble as the 3 million inhabitants struggle to find enough air raid shelters and realise that Hitler has led the country to ruin. But the thing that scares people most of all is the Red Army. The Soviet Union has 6.7 million soldiers on a front from the Baltic to the Adriatic and thousands of tanks, planes, heavy guns and the terrifying ‘katyusha’ rockets. They are 40 miles from Berlin at their most advanced point and the only thing that stands between them and the capital are the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel; foreign SS volunteers, Hitler Youth, Luftwaffe pilots organised into army divisions because there are so few planes left to fly, what is left of the Waffen SS and Wehrmacht, and the Volkssturm (Germany’s hastily cobbled together version of the Home Guard). The surreal and ruthless nature of Germany’s pointless resistance – orchestrated by an increasingly isolated and mad Hitler in a damp bunker – is shatteringly conveyed by Beevor who never forgets the human element to the battles and carnage.

The war is nearly over but SS squads still manically roam around the crumbling fronts hanging what they consider to be traitors and retreating soldiers from trees to harden resistance. The brutality of the SS is only matched by the bestial behaviour of the Red Army who loot, rape and pillage on an unprecedented scale. ‘Domination and humiliation permeated most soldiers’ treatment of women in East Prussia. By the time the Red Army reached Berlin its soldiers tended to regard German women more as a casual right of conquest rather than a target of hate.’ Beevor highlights and uncovers the terrible behaviour by sections of the Soviet forces in harrowing detail. He says there were kind Russian officers and soldiers who handed out food to German children and women and behaved themselves but the more undisciplined units of the Red Army were terrifying when they drunkenly descended on a German town or village. This huge uncontrollable machine churning its way into Germany and whipped up into a frenzy of hate by Soviet propaganda and the brutal SS actions in their own country just a few years before. Children, nuns, nurses, even liberated Soviet and Polish female prisoners and slave labourers are treated as the spoils of war by the Red Army. The blind eye turned to this by Stalin and the NKVD is shockingly exposed in the book. ‘Official complaints of rape to a senior officer were worse than useless.’

One of Beevor’s most interesting themes is Stalin’s manipulation of his two most famous and important front commanders – Zhukov and Konev. Stalin deliberately pits them against one another in a race to capture Berlin first. The Soviet leader is mortified by the thought that the Americans and British will reach the capital first. He obviously knew he would have to share Berlin and Germany with them but he knew if the Red Army was firmly entrenched in Poland there was nothing Churchill or Roosevelt could do about it. In addition to geopolitical post-war considerations, his main motivation is the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics – the German atomic research facility. Known as the ‘Virus House’ it contained a cyclotron capable of generating 1.5 million volts and seven tons of uranium oxide. Beevor explains that the Soviets were way behind on atomic research and had no uranium supplies. The institute and its secrets are vital and Stalin and his front Commanders happily sacrifice hundreds of thousands of soldiers in ill thought out and often suicidal attacks to get there as quickly as possible. Beevor tells us that Rokossovsky, another famous Soviet front commander, is held back and diverted by Stalin when it looks like he might reach Berlin first himself just because he happens to have a Polish background.

The book, in harrowing detail, details how millions of people died attempting to flee the Red Army. The Nazis had made no plans for evacuations simply because they couldn’t bring themselves to admit that defeat was at the door. When the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) desperately attempts to take out refugees by sea, Soviet submarines mercilessly sink anything in sight killing thousands. The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff is the greatest maritime disaster in history. Beevor also lays bare the total lack of compassion in the decision to send ‘Hitler Youth’ into battle. Boys as young as thirteen with steel hats that they can barely see under are used as cannon fodder just to buy Hitler and his circle a few more days. ‘Some did not shrink from openly calling it infanticide, whether it was exploiting the fanaticism of deluded Hitler Youth or forcing frightened boys into uniform through threat of execution.’ Hitler is described as having a ‘mental sickness that consisted of a hypertrophic identification with the German people.’

Much of this is familiar of course through other books and documentaries but Beevor brings a fresh slant to much of the material not least because of his extensive research in Russia. The book – understandably – didn’t go down very well there. The accounts of the last battles here are very vivid. On the 16th of April, 1945, over 20,000 Red Army heavy guns and katusya rocket batteries open fire on General Heinrici’s battered Army Group Vistula - the last German force of any note that stands between the Soviets and Berlin. Marshal Zhukov, Beevor tells us, is very proud of his new idea – huge searchlights that will blind the German troops as battle commences. ‘Thousands of flares of many colours shot up into the air... this was the signal to the young women soldiers operating the 143 searchlights – one every 2000 metres. Along the whole length it was as bright as daylight. On the German side, everything was covered with smoke and thick fountains of earth in clumps flying up. There were flocks of scared birds, a constant humming, thunder, explosions.’ I have read accounts of this battle before but Beevor tells us that the immense light from the huge searchlights, intended to dazzle and terrify the Germans, actually disorientates the Red Army instead when the light reflects back off the smoke and dust from the bombardment. The Red Army soldiers found they couldn't turn around or look back for fear of being blinded and they even suspected (wrongly as it as it turned out although you couldn't blame them) it was some fiendish tactic by their own often heartless side to make desertion or retreat impossible. Little insights like this make the book fascinating.

Beevor does a good job in not too forensically detailing events that have been covered extensively in other books, like test pilot Hanna Reitsch landing amongst the carnage of Berlin to visit Hitler (and indeed the last days of Hitler) but instead gives the reader new insights while still giving us the complete picture. He also makes good use of Soviet and German propaganda and journalism from the era and his analysis is always interesting. Beevor makes it fairly clear that in his opinion Stalin outwitted Eisenhower and Roosevelt in pretending Berlin wasn’t that important to him. The question of why the Germans continued to resist to the bitter end is a reccurring theme in the book. Beevor explores the ruthless treatment handed out to anyone suspected of being a deserter and writes a lot about propaganda and blatant lies. The Germans were told that new 'wonder weapons' were on the way that would turn the course of the war and that the Americans and British would eventually link up with them and throw the Red Army back to the east. It was all nonsense but many officers and soldiers were fed instructions that if they held on for just a few more days the 'political situation' would change.

It is fascinating in the book to gradually reach the tipping point for the German commanders in charge of the remaining coherent armies at the end of the war. Heinrici, Wenck and Busse eventually ignore Hitler’s orders to come and save him in Berlin and instead concentrate on opening corridors for civilians to escape the Russians and reach the Western Allies. In the last days of the war incidents of Wehrmacht soldiers opening fire on the SS are reported. The carnage in a forest near Halbe as General Busse’s battered and exhausted Ninth German Army and thousands of refugees attempt to reach safe lines is extraordinary to read about. Beevor tells us each year bodies are still found there and that in 1999 the Ninth Army’s Enigma machine was discovered in a shallow grave near the autobahn.

There are many incredible incidents and passages in this book that are very atmospheric to read about. A striking passage details how the advancing Red Army discovered a vast and abandoned German command post at Zossen with two huge complexes known as Maybach I and Maybach II. Papers and documents flutter on the breeze and the command posts are hidden by trees and huge camouflage nets. In the empty bunkers below are teleprinters, maps, and countless telephones. Most incredible of all is a (then) state of the art telephone exchange that had linked the two supreme headquarters when the Third Reich stretched from North Africa to the Volga. Only a caretaker and a couple of drunk German soldiers remain when the Soviets unearth this secret base. The actual battle for Berlin – a bloody and completely pointless one – is conveyed in its full horror by the author. A German Colonel who stood on top of the huge flak tower at Berlin Zoo recalls the shock of the sight that greeted him. ‘One had a panoramic view of the burning, smouldering and smoking great city, a scene which again and again shook one to the core.’

Berlin: The Downfall 1945 is chilling, vivid, educational and very compelling. Stalingrad will probably always be Beevor's masterpiece but this is certainly not far behind at all. I should mention in closing that this book also contains two sections of black and white photographs and these are certainly very interesting.