Berlin: The Downfall 1945
 | |
| 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 as The Fall of Berlin 1945 in the US) is a narrative history by Antony Beevor of the Battle of Berlin during World War II. It was published by Viking Press in 2002, then later by Penguin Books in 2003. The book achieved both critical and commercial success. It has been a number-one best seller in seven countries and in the top five in another nine countries. Together this book and Beevor's Stalingrad, first published in 1998, have sold nearly three million copies.[1]
Contents
[edit]The book revisits the events of the Battle of Berlin in 1945 and narrates how the Red Army defeated the Wehrmacht and brought an end to Hitler's Third Reich as well as an end to the war in Europe. The book was accompanied by a BBC Timewatch programme on Beevor's research into the subject.[1][2]
Prizes
[edit]Beevor received the first Trustees' Award of the Longman-History Today Awards in 2003.[1][3]
Publication notes
[edit]The book was published in the United States under the title of The Fall of Berlin 1945, and has been translated into 24 languages. The British paperback version was published by Penguin Books in 2003.
Reception
[edit]Scottish newspaper The Herald, after summarizing the book'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]
Historian Jonathan House, writing for The Journal of Military History praised The Fall of Berlin, 1945 as "a fascinating, richly detailed account" and concluded that the book was a "well-researched and superbly written study." He noted that the depiction of Soviet sexual violence was out of "not prurient curiosity, but rather an attempt to understand the nature of this horror for both the rapists and their victims".[5] Writing for Economy and Society, Kirsten Campbell described the book as a "magisterial narrative" and praised Beevor's account as "vivid and compelling", adding that its "evocative prose is one of the strengths of the book".[6]
Siegfried Schwarz, writing for H-Soz-Kult gave the book a more mixed assessment. Schwarz praised Beevor's illustrations of the cruelty and inhumanity of the final phase of the war. However, he criticized the book's structure as it attempted to cover too many events in a single narrative, including details he considered trivial or unnecessary. He also felt that the book gave too much prominence to Soviet sexual assaults in relation to the overall history of the war, while acknowledging that those atrocities did occur.[7]
Controversy in Russia
[edit]The book proved hugely controversial in Russia,[8] because it contained information on atrocities committed by the Red Army against German civilians. In particular, among other Soviet war crimes, the book describes widespread rape of German women and female Soviet forced labourers, both before and after the war. The Russian ambassador to the UK denounced the book as "lies", "slander against the people who saved the world from Nazism" and an "act of blasphemy".[9][10] Kremlin-supporting media described Beevor as "the chief slanderer of the Red Army".[11] Numerous Russian academic theses and books have been published that dispute his claim as exaggerations, misattributions, or direct citations of propaganda used by Joseph Goebbels, including The Red Army “Rape of Germany” was Invented by Goebbels by the Russian author Anatoly Karlin.[12] A local education ministry in Russia claimed that his books were published by George Soros' Open Society Foundations (George Soros conspiracy theories),[13] another government spokesperson in Yekaterinburg said that his books were "imbued with the propagandistic stereotypes of Nazism."[13]
Oleg Rzheshevsky, a professor and the president of the Russian Association of World War II Historians, has claimed that Beevor is merely resurrecting the discredited and racist views of Neo-Nazi historians, who depicted Soviet troops as subhuman "Asiatic hordes".[14] 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".[15]
Beevor responded by stating that he used excerpts from the report of General Tsigankov, the chief of the political department of the 1st 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".[16] 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".[17]
In August 2015, the Yekaterinburg region considered a ban on John Keegan and Beevor's books, accusing Beevor of Nazi sympathies and citing his lack of Russian sources when writing about Russia, and claiming he had promoted false stereotypes introduced by Nazi Germany during the war.[18][13][19] Beevor responded by calling the banning "a government trying to impose its own version of history", comparing it to other "attempts to dictate a truth", such as denial of the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide.[20] Russian historian Aleksandr Dyukov was critical of the ban, although he accused Beevor of being "anti-Soviet", he also said "there is no glorifying of Nazism in his books. I think banning history books is a bad idea."[13]
UK historian Richard Overy, from the University of Exeter, has criticized Russian reactions to the book and defended Beevor. Overy accused the Russians of refusing to acknowledge Soviet war crimes. He said: "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".[15]
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 "Antony Beevor Biography". Literary Festivals. 31 May 2011. Archived from the original on 23 September 2019. Retrieved 27 March 2012.
- ↑ Remme, Tilman (15 March 2014), Battle for Berlin, retrieved 10 December 2017
- ↑ "Awards Winners". History Today. Archived from the original on 16 September 2011. Retrieved 27 March 2012.
- ↑ "The Reviewers Reviewed: The weekly round-up of critical reaction to the major arts events of the past week". The Herald. 28 November 2003. Retrieved 19 July 2024.
- ↑ House, Jonathan M. (Jonathan Mallory) (2003). "The Fall of Berlin, 1945 (review)". The Journal of Military History. 67 (2): 617–618. doi:10.1353/jmh.2003.0127. ISSN 1543-7795.
- ↑ Campbell, Kirsten (1 August 2005). "The spoils of war". Economy and Society. 34 (3): 495–507. doi:10.1080/03085140500112095. ISSN 0308-5147.
- ↑ Schwarz, Siegfried. "Rezension zu: A. Beevor: Berlin 1945". H-Soz-Kult. Kommunikation und Fachinformation für die Geschichtswissenschaften (in German). Archived from the original on 10 August 2025. Retrieved 27 June 2026.
- ↑ Johnson, Daniel (25 January 2002). "Russians angry at war rape claims". Telegraph. Archived from the original on 24 January 2003. Retrieved 4 March 2009.
- ↑ Grigory, Karasin (25 January 2002). "Lies and insinuations". London: Telegraph. Retrieved 10 July 2014.
- ↑ "Russians angry at war rape claims". The Daily Telegraph. London. 25 January 2002. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
- ↑ "Writer of the month: Stalingrad and Berlin - researching the reality of war". The National Archives. 25 March 2013. Retrieved 13 August 2025.
- ↑ "Миф об "изнасилованной Германии" сочинил Геббельс". 26 December 2019.
- 1 2 3 4 Walker, Shaun. 2015. Russian Region Bans British Historians' Books from Schools. The Guardian (5 August).
- ↑ Rzheshevsky, Oleg A. (2002). Берлинская операция 1945 г.: дискуссия продолжается [The Berlin Operation of 1945: Discussion Continues]. Мир истории [World of History] (in Russian) (4).
- 1 2 Summers, Chris (29 April 2002). "Red Army rapists exposed". BBC News Online. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
- ↑ Cragg quotes Beevor (Beevor, Antony (11 November 2010). "Chatting Up A Storm - Remembrance (Veterans') Day II - Professor Antony Beevor, 'D Day - The Battle for Normandy'". ChatChat - Claudia Cragg (Interview). Interviewed by Claudia Cragg.).
- ↑ Von Maier, Robert; Glantz, David M. (1 November 2008). "Questions and Answers: Antony Beevor" (PDF). World War II Quarterly. 5 (1): 50. ISSN 1559-8012. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 March 2012.
- ↑ Ignacio Villarreal. "Russia orders libraries to ditch 'Nazi' books by British historians".
- ↑ Spiro, Zachary. 2015. Russia Bans Books on Nazi Defeat by British Historians. The Times (6 August).
- ↑ Beevor, Antony (5 August 2015). "By banning my book, Russia is deluding itself about its past". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 June 2025.
- Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945 - Viking 2002 - ISBN 978-0-14-103239-9
