Berlin

Anthony Beevor

As Beevor himself says, this book is the logical companion to his masterful earlier book on Stalingrad. Stalingrad is the famous turning point of WWII and one of the things Beevor's earlier book is excellent at is explaining how the USSR was able, slowly and surely, to turn the tables on the German army (see also Richard Overy's Why the Allies Won).

But the Berlin book doesn't pack quite the same punch. It's perhaps because the story of Berlin's downfall is better known and has been written about many times (Beevor's book and Anthony Read & David Fisher's The Fall of Berlin are very similar). Or perhaps the Beevor style (mixture of conventional HQ history and the personal stories of ordinary soldiers) better suits the drama and tragedy of the Stalingrad story with its gigantic reversal of fortunes. The Berlin battle was truly a grim, relentless, one-way affair from start to finish and with little doubt at any stage (except in the minds of a few Nazi fantasists) as to its eventual outcome.