Berlin: The Downfall 1945

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Antony Beevor was educated at Winchester and Sandhurst. A regular officer in the 11th Hussars, he served in Germany and England. He has published several novels, while his works of non-fiction include The Spanish Civil War, Crete: The Battle and the Resistance, which won the 1993 Runciman Award, Stalingrad and Berlin: The Downfall 1945. With his wife, Artemis Cooper, he wrote Paris After the Liberation: 1944–1949. Stalingrad was awarded the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction, the Wolfson History Prize and the Hawthornden Prize in 1999. It became a number-one bestseller both in hardback and paperback, the UK edition alone selling over half a million copies. It is being published around the world in twenty-four translations. Berlin: The Downfall 1945 was also a number-one bestseller and is being translated into twenty-four languages. Most of his titles are published by Penguin.

Antony Beevor is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. In 2003, he received the first Longman-History Today Trustees’ Award. He was the 2002–2003 Lees-Knowles lecturer at Cambridge and is a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London.

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