false<![CDATA[The Fall of Berlin 1945]]>http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169882499m/42661.jpg4266118The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Reich in January 1945. Frenzied by their terrible experiences with Wehrmacht and SS brutality, they wreaked havoc--tanks crushing refugee columns under their tracks, mass rape, pillage and destruction. Hundreds of thousands of women and children froze to death or were massacred because Nazi Party chiefs, refusing to face defeat, had forbidden the evacuation of civilians. More than seven million fled westward from the terror of the Red Army. It was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known.
Within the trapped mass, individuals faced an arbitrary fate. Some suffered appallingly, others were saved by extraordinary chance. Soviet soldiers showed both spontaneous generosity and inhuman cruelty to German women and children. The Nazis sent fourteen-year-old boys on bicycles on suicidal attacks against Soviet tanks, and as the Red Army encircled Berlin, SS squads roamed the city, shooting or hanging any man not at his post.
The personal moral chaos that determined the lives of many Germans was a result of a titanic conflict between the most tyrannical egos of the twentieth century. Hitler, half crazed in his bunker, issued wild orders in the monstrous vanity of a personal Gotterdammerung, determined to bring down the Reich capital. Stallin, meanwhile, was prepared to risk any number of his men to seize Berlin before the Americans. New documents from a Russian archive show for the first time that the Soviet leader had a particularly powerful motive.
Antony Beevor, using often devastating new material from former Soviet files, as well as from German, American, British, French and Swedish archives, has reconstructed the experiences of those millions caught up in the nightmare of the Third Reich's final collapse. <i>The Fall of Berlin 1945</i> is a terrible story of pride, stupidity, fanaticism, revenge and savagery, yet it is also one of astonishing endurance, self-sacrifice and survival against all odds.
<i>From the original hardback edition.</i>3003282002The Fall of Berlin 1945total:381|5:143|4:167|3:64|2:6|1:1|38115885745840falsefalseSat Aug 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009Mon Aug 24 11:33:52 -0700 2009Mon Aug 24 11:46:43 -0700 2009
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40falsefalseThu Jan 15 00:00:00 -0800 2009Sat Jan 10 06:54:36 -0800 2009Thu Jan 15 15:20:53 -0800 2009 Beevor employs...more...]]>
40falsefalseSun May 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009Thu Jun 11 08:10:08 -0700 2009Tue Jun 16 10:42:22 -0700 2009 I was attracted by the book's promise of new accounts and insights to this battle. It turned out that a lot of what peop...more...]]>
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Stalingrad pokazał się jako dobry historyk sprawnie operujący źródłami i przedstawiający dwie strony konfliktu - nazistowskie Niemcy w momencie upadku i Związek Radziecki z czasów Stalina. Przedstawił zarówno wysokie szczeble dowództwa, gdzie dom...more...]]>
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51falsefalseWed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003Wed Nov 28 12:24:12 -0800 2007Wed Nov 28 12:24:50 -0800 200750falsefalseTue Jun 17 14:13:07 -0700 2008Tue Jun 17 14:13:14 -0700 2008 I found this book more ...more...]]>
50falsefalseSun Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004Fri Feb 22 15:11:40 -0800 2008Wed Feb 27 08:50:40 -0800 2008 This is an excellent and enlightening look about what happened on the Eastern Front of World War II. This book also destroys some myths about the end of the war. Being an American, I'm often exposed to the Western slant about what happened in the war, so this read was quite refreshing. I...more...]]>
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Anton B...more...]]>
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1. The War would have been o...more...]]>
40falsefalseSat Dec 08 05:23:29 -0800 2007Sat Dec 08 05:32:07 -0800 2007 Berlin: The Downfall 19...more...]]>
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00falsefalseTue Jul 15 15:14:33 -0700 2008Tue Jul 15 15:14:33 -0700 2008
A new revelation is the Russian quest for Ge...more...]]>
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Both a documentary as well as an account of human suffering that should not be forgotten.]]>
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50falsefalseWed Sep 02 20:54:18 -0700 2009Wed Sep 30 19:33:49 -0700 2009 I am looking forward to his D-Day book coming out this fall, it will be interesting to have read them all i...more...]]>
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