 | |
| Author | Antony Beevor |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Battle of Berlin |
| Publisher | Viking Press,Penguin Books |
Publication date | 2002 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | 501 |
| ISBN | 978-0-14-103239-9 |
| OCLC | 156890868 |
Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (also known asThe Fall of Berlin 1945 in the US) is a narrative history byAntony Beevor of theBattle of Berlin duringWorld War II. It was published byViking Press in 2002, then later byPenguin Books in 2003. The book achieved both critical and commercial success. It has been a number-one best seller in seven countries apart from Britain, and in the top five in another nine countries. Together this book and Beevor'sStalingrad, first published in 1998, have sold nearly three million copies.[1]
The book revisits the events of theBattle of Berlin in 1945 and narrates how theRed Army defeated theWehrmacht and brought an end toHitler'sThird Reich as well as anend to the war in Europe. The book was accompanied by aBBCTimewatch programme on Beevor's research into the subject.[1][2]
Beevor received the firstTrustees' Award of theLongman-History Today Awards in 2003.[1][3]
The book was published in the United States under the title ofThe Fall of Berlin 1945, and has been translated into 24 languages. The Britishpaperback version was published byPenguin Books in 2003.
Scottish newspaperThe Herald, after summarizing the novel's warm critical reception in other publications, called it "a gripping narrative which brings vividly to life the confusion, cruelty, courage and madness of the time, illustrated by eye-witness accounts and vignettes from diaries".[4]
The book encountered criticism, especially inRussia,[5] centering on the book's discussion of atrocitiescommitted by the Red Army against German civilians. In particular, the book describes widespreadrape of German women and female Soviet forced labourers, both before and after the war. TheRussian ambassador to the UK denounced the book as "lies" and "slander against the people who saved the world from Nazism".[6]
Oleg Rzheshevsky, a professor and the president of the Russian Association of World War II Historians, has stated that Beevor is merely resurrecting the discredited and racist views ofNeo-Nazi historians, who depicted Soviet troops as subhuman "Asiatic hordes".[7] He argues that Beevor's use of phrases such as "Berliners remember" and "the experiences of the raped German women" were better suited "for pulp fiction, than scientific research". Rzheshevsky also stated that the Germans could have expected an "avalanche of revenge" after what they did in the Soviet Union, but "that did not happen".[8]
Beevor responded by stating that he used excerpts from the report of General Tsigankov, the chief of thepolitical department of the1st Ukrainian Front, as a source. He wrote: "the bulk of the evidence on the subject came from Soviet sources, especially the NKVD reports in GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation), and a wide range of reliable personal accounts".[9] Beevor also stated that he hopes Russian historians will "take a more objective approach to material in their own archives which are at odds to the heroic myth of the Red Army as 'liberators' in 1945".[10]
UK historianRichard Overy, from theUniversity of Exeter, has criticized Russian reaction to the book and defended Beevor. Overy accused the Russians of refusing to acknowledgeSoviet war crimes, "Partly this is because they felt that much of it was justified vengeance against an enemy who committed much worse, and partly it was because they were writing the victors' history".[8]