History

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Berlin, The Downfall 1945 – Antony Beevor,
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28 Oct. 2003 - 1:46:00 AM

Beevor starts the book at the New Year of 1945, with a review of the state of Berlin and of the military situation at the beginning of 1945.  The Ardennes Campaign started in December 1944, but the German General Staff feared that this would weaken the Eastern Front.  The rulers of German were losing their grip on reality, Himmler told people that the Russians were bluffing about attacking, and the German Army was largely fighting to protect their own people from the Russians, and ultimately from fear of capture by the Russians. 

Even at this stage armaments production continued, over 200,000 rifles were made in Germany in December 1944, but the factories relied on slave labor, worked to death, and the tremendous defeats on the Eastern Front had lost the Germans vast amounts of material.  Four million men in the Russian armies massed in Poland, ready to attack, part of the nearly 7 million strong Red Army.

The stage was thus set for a terrible tragedy, death and destruction on an heroic scale, as Hitlerite Germany dragged all into a maelstrom of death.  The Germans fought hard and long, but lacking resources, overwhelmed and knowing that defeat was certain they were overcome step by step.  The Russians triumphed, as the Germans had in 1941, looting and raping their way across Eastern Germany – revenge was full and bitter.

The Allies agreed to let the Russians take Berlin, and Stalin made certain that the Western Powers had no direct involvement in the final battles.  Stalin was determined to keep Western troops out of Poland and the countries which he planned to retain as Soviet satellites

As they fought their way to the West the Russians freed huge numbers of their own men from prison camps and overran the concentration camps where the “final solution” had been enacted.

Fear of the Russians lead to mass migration of German civilians from Eastern Germany and the territories that the Germans had occupied.  Thousands died in the snow and in ocean liners sunk by Russian submarines. 

The SS and the fanatics undertook a wave of killings of Germans, prisoners and non-Nazis, retreating soldiers and even children.

Beevor says that Hitler refused to even look at his damaged capital and he had the air of a senile old man.

One of the aspects of this book which has caused the most comment from Russian sources has been Beevor’s insistence that the Red Army raped not only German women, but Russian women who were prisoners of war in Germany; he writes of one occasion where Russian soldiers, “started their mass rape of the [Russian] women who had just been liberated by the Red Army.”  Wives were often raped by large groups of Russian soldiers in a continuous process.  The Nazi leadership showed little interest in the plight of German civilians in occupied areas, in many cases they stopped evacuation of women and children until it was too late.

The Nazi Party slowly feel apart, some senior Party Members like Bormann sought safely in the west of Germany, or in Austria, planning their escape. The officials who remained distrusted the German Army and the organization of the defence of Berlin was poorly planned and badly executed.  Fantasies were the response of many Nazis.  Dr Ley, the chief of Nazi Party organization, appeared at Fuhrer headquarters with a plan to raise a Freikorps Adolf Hitler with “40,000 fanatical volunteers.”  The food depots remained on the outside of Berlin and nothing was done to relocate the supplies.  The Nazis had no attempt to evacuate women and children from Berlin.  But the Germans never abandoned the need to obtain official paperwork for any action, there was a case of a German Army unit denied supplies in the middle of the Battle for Berlin because they lacked the correct paperwork, the depot was then destroyed by Russian fire.

Russian casualties were high, over a million men were taken from the Gulag to fill the ranks, Russian prisoners of war were thrown back into the front line.

On Hitler’s last birthday, 20^th April 1945, the RAF and USAAF staged a heavy bombing raid.

Beevor describes Hitler’s final days and the killing of the Goebbels children in the Fuhrer bunker.  After Hitler’s suicide the battle for Berlin was an uncoordinated and desperate mess, foreign SS soldiers fought hardiest as they had no where to go.  He says that the worst mistake of the German military authorities had been their refusal to destroy alcohol stocks in the path of the Red Army’s advance, this only served to encourage the Russians to rape.

Beevor says that, “the incompetence, the frenzied refusal to accept reality and the inhumanity of the Nazi regime were revealed all too clearly in its passing.”

This is a well-written and well-researched book that describes in graphic detail what happens when a country destroys itself, and how chaos can take over from order.  I strongly recommend it.