Few battles in history have been waged with greater ferocity, desperation, bravery, and atrocity than the battle for Berlin at the end of the Second World War. No one can tell a story better than Ryan, and he is at his very best here. In this book Cornelius Ryan brings his masterful powers of description and discerning eye for extraordinary detail to bear with force and elegance. This is a wonderful book, immensely informative, densely packed with facts and figures, and told in a compelling way by a best-selling author who can vividly recount seemingly countless tales of the most ordinary of individuals caught in the unforgiving and often deadly embrace of total war.
By this stage Hitler had begun to withdraw farther into the recesses of the fabled German Chancellery complex, while around and above him raged an endless barrage by Soviet artillery, British, American and Canadian bombs, and the clashes of German and Russian tanks and armor. This then, is the final epic struggle amid the ashes and ruins of a once proud and great metropolis, the chaotic and blood-curdling death throes of the Nazi regime. Fearing the terrible wrath and ritual rape and murder of rampaging Russians, German forces tended to withdraw from the western front in an attempt to either surrender outright to the Americans or British, or to let these more "civilized" western forces take Berlin before capitulating the hated Russians. Hitler had expressly forbidden any kind of surrender, intending this to be a fight to the death. Indeed, the stage was set for some of the most horrific excesses of the war.
This, then, is a riveting and well-told story told down to the final exciting detail of how this battle of titans was fought, with an amazing degree of description of the "on the ground, as it is happening" kind of story telling. Of course, Ryan excels at this, as proven with not only this book but by his other best sellers, as well. Written with compassion, it recognizes and empathizes with a sensitivity for the terrible ordeal faced by individual civilians who through bad luck and circumstance happened to be standing in the path of an oncoming maelstrom. The pages are filled with the struggle of all to survive, sometimes quite against the odds, and the pages gleam with example after example of single acts of defiance and courage, acts to help to save someone else, often at great personal risk.
The narrative of the book dramatizes the catastrophic and irreversible consequences of war, for both combatants and noncombatants alike, and helps the reader to appreciate the ways in which the events as they unfolded in the battle for Berlin, the stage of European and world history were both positively and negatively affected. This is a book all students of modern history should read, and one I highly recommend for your bookshelf.
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Last Battle: The Classic History of the Battle for Berlin Taschenbuch – Illustriert, 1. Mai 1995
Englisch Ausgabe
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Cornelius Ryan
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The classic account of the final offensive against Hitler's Third Reich.
The Battle for Berlin was the culminating struggle of World War II in the European theater, the last offensive against Hitler's Third Reich, which devastated one of Europe's historic capitals and marked the final defeat of Nazi Germany. It was also one of the war's bloodiest and most pivotal battles, whose outcome would shape international politics for decades to come.
The Last Battle is Cornelius Ryan's compelling account of this final battle, a story of brutal extremes, of stunning military triumph alongside the stark conditions that the civilians of Berlin experienced in the face of the Allied assault. As always, Ryan delves beneath the military and political forces that were dictating events to explore the more immediate imperatives of survival, where, as the author describes it, “to eat had become more important than to love, to burrow more dignified than to fight, to exist more militarily correct than to win.”
The Last Battle is the story of ordinary people, both soldiers and civilians, caught up in the despair, frustration, and terror of defeat. It is history at its best, a masterful illumination of the effects of war on the lives of individuals, and one of the enduring works on World War II.
The Battle for Berlin was the culminating struggle of World War II in the European theater, the last offensive against Hitler's Third Reich, which devastated one of Europe's historic capitals and marked the final defeat of Nazi Germany. It was also one of the war's bloodiest and most pivotal battles, whose outcome would shape international politics for decades to come.
The Last Battle is Cornelius Ryan's compelling account of this final battle, a story of brutal extremes, of stunning military triumph alongside the stark conditions that the civilians of Berlin experienced in the face of the Allied assault. As always, Ryan delves beneath the military and political forces that were dictating events to explore the more immediate imperatives of survival, where, as the author describes it, “to eat had become more important than to love, to burrow more dignified than to fight, to exist more militarily correct than to win.”
The Last Battle is the story of ordinary people, both soldiers and civilians, caught up in the despair, frustration, and terror of defeat. It is history at its best, a masterful illumination of the effects of war on the lives of individuals, and one of the enduring works on World War II.
- Seitenzahl der Print-Ausgabe576 Seiten
- SpracheEnglisch
- Erscheinungstermin1. Mai 1995
- Abmessungen15.56 x 3.66 x 23.5 cm
- ISBN-100684803291
- ISBN-13978-0684803296
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"A rare accomplishment . . . will be of interest to generations to come." -- James A. Michener
Über den Autor und weitere Mitwirkende
Cornelius Ryan was born in 1920 in Dublin, Ireland, where he was raised. He became one of the preeminent war correspondents of his time, flying fourteen bombing missions with the Eighth and Ninth US Air Forces and covering the D-Day landings and the advance of General Patton’s Third Army across France and Germany. After the end of hostilities in Europe, he covered the Pacific War. In addition to his classic works The Longest Day, The Last Battle, and A Bridge Too Far, he is the author of numerous other books, which have appeared throughout the world in nineteen languages. Awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government in 1973, Mr. Ryan was hailed at that time by Malcolm Muggeridge as “perhaps the most brilliant reporter now alive.” He died in 1976.
Leseprobe. Abdruck erfolgt mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Chapter 1
In the northern latitudes the dawn comes early. Even as the bombers were turning away from the city, the first rays of light were coming up in the east. In the stillness of the morning, great pillars of black smoke towered over the districts of Pankow, Weissensee and Lichtenberg. On the low clouds it was difficult to separate the soft glow of daylight from the reflections of the fires that blazed in bomb-battered Berlin.
As the smoke drifted slowly across the ruins, Germany's most bombed city stood out in stark, macabre splendor. It was blackened by soot, pockmarked by thousands of craters and laced by the twisted girders of ruined buildings. Whole blocks of apartment houses were gone, and in the very heart of the capital entire neighborhoods had vanished. In these wastelands what had once been broad roads and streets were now pitted trails that snaked through mountains of rubble. Everywhere, covering acre after acre, gutted, windowless, roofless buildings gaped up at the sky.
In the aftermath of the raid, a fine residue of soot and ash rained down, powdering the wreckage, and in the great canyons of smashed brick and tortured steel nothing moved but the eddying dust. It swirled along the broad expanse of the Unter den Linden, the famous trees bare now, the leaf buds seared on the branches. Few of the banks, libraries and elegant shops lining the renowned boulevard were undamaged. But at the western end of the avenue, Berlin's most famous landmark, the eight-story-high Brandenburg Gate, though gashed and chipped, still straddled the via triumphalis on its twelve massive Doric columns.
On the nearby Wilhelmstrasse, lined by government buildings and former palaces, shards of glass from thousands of windows glittered in the debris. At No. 73, the beautiful little palace that had been the official residence of German presidents in the days before the Third Reich had been gutted by a raging fire. Once it had been described as a miniature Versailles; now sea nymphs from the ornate fountain in the forecourt lay shattered against the colonnaded front entrance, and along the roof line, chipped and gouged by flying fragments, the twin statues of Rhine maidens leaned headless over the littered courtyard.
A block away, No. 77 was scarred but intact. Piles of rubble lay all around the three-story, L-shaped building. Its yellowish-brown exterior was scabrous, and the garish golden eagles above each entrance, garlanded swastikas in their claws, were pitted and deeply scored. Jutting out above was the imposing balcony from which the world had been harangued with many a frenzied speech. The Reichskanzlei, Chancellery of Adolf Hitler, still remained.
At the top of the battered Kurfürstendamm, Berlin's Fifth Avenue, bulked the deformed skeleton of the once fashionable Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church. The hands on the charred clock face were stopped at exactly 7:30; they had been that way since 1943 when bombs wiped out one thousand acres of the city on a single November evening.
One hundred yards away was the jungle of wreckage that had been the internationally famed Berlin Zoo. The aquarium was completely destroyed. The reptile, hippopotamus, kangaroo, tiger and elephant houses, along with scores of other buildings, were severely damaged. The surrounding Tiergarten, the renowned 630-acre park, was a no man's land of room-sized craters, rubble-filled lakes and partly demolished embassy buildings. Once the park had been a natural forest of luxuriant trees. Now most of them were burned and ugly stumps.
In the northeast corner of the Tiergarten stood Berlin's most spectacular ruin, destroyed not by Allied bombs but by German politics. The huge Reichstag, seat of parliament, had been deliberately set ablaze by the Nazis in 1933 -- and the fire had been blamed on the Communists, thus providing Hitler with an excuse to seize full dictatorial power. On the crumbling portico above its six-columned entrance, overlooking the sea of wreckage that almost engulfed the building, were the chiseled, blackened words, "Dem Deutschen Volke" -- To the German People.
A complex of statuary had once stood before the Reichstag. All had been destroyed except one piece -- a 200-foot-high, dark red granite-and-bronze column on a massive colonnaded base. After the 1933 burning Hitler had ordered it moved. Now it stood a mile away on the Charlottenburger Chaussée, close to the center of the East-West Axis -- the series of linked highways running across the city roughly from the river Havel on the west to the end of the Unter den Linden on the east. As the sun rose on this March morning its rays caught the golden figure at the top of the column: a winged statue bearing a laurel wreath in one hand, a standard adorned with the Iron Cross in the other. Rising up out of the wasteland, untouched by the bombing, was Berlin's slender, graceful memorial -- the Victory Column.
Across the tormented city sirens began wailing the All Clear. The 314th Allied raid on Berlin was over. In the first years of the war the attacks had been sporadic, but now the capital was under almost continuous bombardment -- the Americans bombed by day, the R.A.F. by night. The statistics of destruction had increased almost hourly; by now they were staggering. Explosives had laid waste more than ten square miles of built-up districts -- ten times the area destroyed in London by the Luftwaffe. Three billion cubic feet of debris lay in the streets -- enough rubble for a mountain more than a thousand feet high. Almost half of Berlin's 1,562,000 dwellings had sustained some kind of damage, and every third house was either completely destroyed or uninhabitable. Casualties were so high that a true accounting would never be possible, but at least 52,000 were dead and twice that number seriously injured -- five times the number killed and seriously injured in the bombing of London. Berlin had become a second Carthage -- and the final agony was still to come.
In this wilderness of devastation it was remarkable that people could survive at all -- but life went on with a kind of lunatic normality amid the ruins. Twelve thousand policemen were still on duty. Postmen delivered the mail; newspapers came out daily; telephone and telegraphic services continued. Garbage was collected. Some cinemas, theaters and even a part of the wrecked zoo were open. The Berlin Philharmonic was finishing its season. Department stores ran special sales. Food and bakery shops opened each morning, and laundries, dry-cleaning establishments and beauty salons did a brisk business. The underground and elevated railways functioned; the few fashionable bars and restaurants still intact drew capacity crowds. And on almost every street the strident calls of Berlin's famous flower vendors echoed as in the days of peace.
Perhaps most remarkable, more than 65 per cent of Berlin's great factories were in some kind of working condition. Almost 600,000 people had jobs -- but getting to them now was a major problem. It often took hours. Traffic was clogged, there were detours, slowdowns and breakdowns. As a consequence, Berliners had taken to rising early. Everyone wanted to get to work on time because the Americans, early risers themselves, were often at work over the city by 9 A.M.
On this bright morning in the city's sprawling twenty districts, Berliners came forth like neolithic cave dwellers. They emerged from the bowels of subways, from shelters beneath public buildings, from the cellars and basements of their shattered homes. Whatever their hopes or fears, whatever their loyalties or political beliefs, this much Berliners had in common: those who had survived another night were determined to live another day.
The same could be said for the nation itself. In this sixth year of World War II, Hitler's Germany was fighting desperately for...
In the northern latitudes the dawn comes early. Even as the bombers were turning away from the city, the first rays of light were coming up in the east. In the stillness of the morning, great pillars of black smoke towered over the districts of Pankow, Weissensee and Lichtenberg. On the low clouds it was difficult to separate the soft glow of daylight from the reflections of the fires that blazed in bomb-battered Berlin.
As the smoke drifted slowly across the ruins, Germany's most bombed city stood out in stark, macabre splendor. It was blackened by soot, pockmarked by thousands of craters and laced by the twisted girders of ruined buildings. Whole blocks of apartment houses were gone, and in the very heart of the capital entire neighborhoods had vanished. In these wastelands what had once been broad roads and streets were now pitted trails that snaked through mountains of rubble. Everywhere, covering acre after acre, gutted, windowless, roofless buildings gaped up at the sky.
In the aftermath of the raid, a fine residue of soot and ash rained down, powdering the wreckage, and in the great canyons of smashed brick and tortured steel nothing moved but the eddying dust. It swirled along the broad expanse of the Unter den Linden, the famous trees bare now, the leaf buds seared on the branches. Few of the banks, libraries and elegant shops lining the renowned boulevard were undamaged. But at the western end of the avenue, Berlin's most famous landmark, the eight-story-high Brandenburg Gate, though gashed and chipped, still straddled the via triumphalis on its twelve massive Doric columns.
On the nearby Wilhelmstrasse, lined by government buildings and former palaces, shards of glass from thousands of windows glittered in the debris. At No. 73, the beautiful little palace that had been the official residence of German presidents in the days before the Third Reich had been gutted by a raging fire. Once it had been described as a miniature Versailles; now sea nymphs from the ornate fountain in the forecourt lay shattered against the colonnaded front entrance, and along the roof line, chipped and gouged by flying fragments, the twin statues of Rhine maidens leaned headless over the littered courtyard.
A block away, No. 77 was scarred but intact. Piles of rubble lay all around the three-story, L-shaped building. Its yellowish-brown exterior was scabrous, and the garish golden eagles above each entrance, garlanded swastikas in their claws, were pitted and deeply scored. Jutting out above was the imposing balcony from which the world had been harangued with many a frenzied speech. The Reichskanzlei, Chancellery of Adolf Hitler, still remained.
At the top of the battered Kurfürstendamm, Berlin's Fifth Avenue, bulked the deformed skeleton of the once fashionable Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church. The hands on the charred clock face were stopped at exactly 7:30; they had been that way since 1943 when bombs wiped out one thousand acres of the city on a single November evening.
One hundred yards away was the jungle of wreckage that had been the internationally famed Berlin Zoo. The aquarium was completely destroyed. The reptile, hippopotamus, kangaroo, tiger and elephant houses, along with scores of other buildings, were severely damaged. The surrounding Tiergarten, the renowned 630-acre park, was a no man's land of room-sized craters, rubble-filled lakes and partly demolished embassy buildings. Once the park had been a natural forest of luxuriant trees. Now most of them were burned and ugly stumps.
In the northeast corner of the Tiergarten stood Berlin's most spectacular ruin, destroyed not by Allied bombs but by German politics. The huge Reichstag, seat of parliament, had been deliberately set ablaze by the Nazis in 1933 -- and the fire had been blamed on the Communists, thus providing Hitler with an excuse to seize full dictatorial power. On the crumbling portico above its six-columned entrance, overlooking the sea of wreckage that almost engulfed the building, were the chiseled, blackened words, "Dem Deutschen Volke" -- To the German People.
A complex of statuary had once stood before the Reichstag. All had been destroyed except one piece -- a 200-foot-high, dark red granite-and-bronze column on a massive colonnaded base. After the 1933 burning Hitler had ordered it moved. Now it stood a mile away on the Charlottenburger Chaussée, close to the center of the East-West Axis -- the series of linked highways running across the city roughly from the river Havel on the west to the end of the Unter den Linden on the east. As the sun rose on this March morning its rays caught the golden figure at the top of the column: a winged statue bearing a laurel wreath in one hand, a standard adorned with the Iron Cross in the other. Rising up out of the wasteland, untouched by the bombing, was Berlin's slender, graceful memorial -- the Victory Column.
Across the tormented city sirens began wailing the All Clear. The 314th Allied raid on Berlin was over. In the first years of the war the attacks had been sporadic, but now the capital was under almost continuous bombardment -- the Americans bombed by day, the R.A.F. by night. The statistics of destruction had increased almost hourly; by now they were staggering. Explosives had laid waste more than ten square miles of built-up districts -- ten times the area destroyed in London by the Luftwaffe. Three billion cubic feet of debris lay in the streets -- enough rubble for a mountain more than a thousand feet high. Almost half of Berlin's 1,562,000 dwellings had sustained some kind of damage, and every third house was either completely destroyed or uninhabitable. Casualties were so high that a true accounting would never be possible, but at least 52,000 were dead and twice that number seriously injured -- five times the number killed and seriously injured in the bombing of London. Berlin had become a second Carthage -- and the final agony was still to come.
In this wilderness of devastation it was remarkable that people could survive at all -- but life went on with a kind of lunatic normality amid the ruins. Twelve thousand policemen were still on duty. Postmen delivered the mail; newspapers came out daily; telephone and telegraphic services continued. Garbage was collected. Some cinemas, theaters and even a part of the wrecked zoo were open. The Berlin Philharmonic was finishing its season. Department stores ran special sales. Food and bakery shops opened each morning, and laundries, dry-cleaning establishments and beauty salons did a brisk business. The underground and elevated railways functioned; the few fashionable bars and restaurants still intact drew capacity crowds. And on almost every street the strident calls of Berlin's famous flower vendors echoed as in the days of peace.
Perhaps most remarkable, more than 65 per cent of Berlin's great factories were in some kind of working condition. Almost 600,000 people had jobs -- but getting to them now was a major problem. It often took hours. Traffic was clogged, there were detours, slowdowns and breakdowns. As a consequence, Berliners had taken to rising early. Everyone wanted to get to work on time because the Americans, early risers themselves, were often at work over the city by 9 A.M.
On this bright morning in the city's sprawling twenty districts, Berliners came forth like neolithic cave dwellers. They emerged from the bowels of subways, from shelters beneath public buildings, from the cellars and basements of their shattered homes. Whatever their hopes or fears, whatever their loyalties or political beliefs, this much Berliners had in common: those who had survived another night were determined to live another day.
The same could be said for the nation itself. In this sixth year of World War II, Hitler's Germany was fighting desperately for...
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Produktinformation
- Herausgeber : Simon & Schuster; Reprint Edition (1. Mai 1995)
- Sprache : Englisch
- Taschenbuch : 576 Seiten
- ISBN-10 : 0684803291
- ISBN-13 : 978-0684803296
- Abmessungen : 15.56 x 3.66 x 23.5 cm
- Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 1,636,928 in Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Bücher)
- Nr. 8,847 in Geschichte Deutschlands (Bücher)
- Nr. 9,661 in Geschichte der USA (Bücher)
- Nr. 19,469 in Militärgeschichte (Bücher)
- Kundenrezensionen:
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Rezension aus Deutschland vom 22. Juni 2000
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Rezension aus Deutschland vom 11. Februar 2000
The late Cornelius Ryan, author of the justifiably famous "A Bridge Too Far" and "The Longest Day", mastered the art of the historical narrative. Ryan combined the meticulous research of the historian, the nose for rooting out the story of a journalist, and the plot and pacing of a novelist into a package heretofore unequaled.
Having read both of the above works (and seen the movies, along with most of America), I prefer "The Last Battle." This account of the fall of Berlin shows Ryan at the top of his gain as he weaves together disparate tales of struggle amidst the ashes of the Thousand Year Reich into a sweeping narrative of survival.
Most of the work is told from the point of view of the encircled Germans, from the general charged with the impossible mission of defending the Nazi capitol with nothing more than teenagers and grit to the women who vowed to take cyanide rather than endure rape at the hands of the conquering Russians.
Through it all, Ryan succeeds in recreating the dense atmosphere of dread which descended over Berlin in the closing days of the war, making all the more poignant our realization of the terrible tidal wave of suffering unleashed by the Nazi madmen who initiated the conflict.
This is not merely a tale of good and evil, however, and the Allies do not come off very well. Aside from the plundering savages amidst the Soviet rank-and-file, readers may be surprised at the depiction of top American and British commanders' indifference to the fate of German civilians. (Although given the lingering shock at the Nazi atrocities uncovered mere weeks before at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and other death camps, one should not be too surprised).
Particularly damning is Ryan's assertion that, despite all the talk of the Allies' planning the partition of Germany and Berlin at Yalta, there was no agreement to any line of partition between the Allies at the time of this battle. No one had given much thought to the shape of the postwar world in the West; millions of people were sacrificed to the Soviets as an afterthought.
If you prefer your military history at the trench level, drenched in blood and chromite, this book is for you.
Having read both of the above works (and seen the movies, along with most of America), I prefer "The Last Battle." This account of the fall of Berlin shows Ryan at the top of his gain as he weaves together disparate tales of struggle amidst the ashes of the Thousand Year Reich into a sweeping narrative of survival.
Most of the work is told from the point of view of the encircled Germans, from the general charged with the impossible mission of defending the Nazi capitol with nothing more than teenagers and grit to the women who vowed to take cyanide rather than endure rape at the hands of the conquering Russians.
Through it all, Ryan succeeds in recreating the dense atmosphere of dread which descended over Berlin in the closing days of the war, making all the more poignant our realization of the terrible tidal wave of suffering unleashed by the Nazi madmen who initiated the conflict.
This is not merely a tale of good and evil, however, and the Allies do not come off very well. Aside from the plundering savages amidst the Soviet rank-and-file, readers may be surprised at the depiction of top American and British commanders' indifference to the fate of German civilians. (Although given the lingering shock at the Nazi atrocities uncovered mere weeks before at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and other death camps, one should not be too surprised).
Particularly damning is Ryan's assertion that, despite all the talk of the Allies' planning the partition of Germany and Berlin at Yalta, there was no agreement to any line of partition between the Allies at the time of this battle. No one had given much thought to the shape of the postwar world in the West; millions of people were sacrificed to the Soviets as an afterthought.
If you prefer your military history at the trench level, drenched in blood and chromite, this book is for you.
Rezension aus Deutschland vom 30. Juli 2000
Corneilus Ryan is the Noble Laureate of World War II. I strongly encourage any Stephen Ambrose fan to pick up any of Ryan's three seminal works: "The Last Battle," "A Bridge Too Far" or "The Longest Day." Ryan, a WWII correspondent who died in 1976, has a style similar to Ambrose's: first person accounts woven into rich history. All his books are eminently readble.
"The Last Battle" is the captivating story of the downfall of Berlin, the concluding battle of the war in the European theater. Ryan brings events to life through the eyes of the residents of Berlin, the German commanders who planned its defense and the Soviet attackers who ultimately overwhelmed the city.
This is a powerful book that, like all Ryan's works, reads like a novel.
"The Last Battle" is the captivating story of the downfall of Berlin, the concluding battle of the war in the European theater. Ryan brings events to life through the eyes of the residents of Berlin, the German commanders who planned its defense and the Soviet attackers who ultimately overwhelmed the city.
This is a powerful book that, like all Ryan's works, reads like a novel.
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One of the Greatest War Books Ever Written
Rezension aus dem Vereinigten Königreich vom 20. August 2017Verifizierter Kauf
Hard Copy. I have read this book several times over the years and I keep returning to it. Ryan was a master recorder and teller of war stories, which he combined in 3 great books of such. The Last Battle is in my opinion the best. (The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far being the other two). It is, like his other books broken down into several different areas and stories, which could seem segregated, but he writes so they are all joined up. Not once did I feel disconnect between what was happening. I think this is an important book; one that should be read by as many people as possible as it brings together the finale of that great crusade, (as Eisenhower put it), to liberate Europe from evil. What a great challenge this would be for the film making industry to put this on the silver screen. A mammoth task for a mammoth subject but one that could be done well with the right production team and actors. Finally - he did write one last book 'A Private Battle', which was his battle with prostate cancer following his diagnosis. It is a day after day record until he finally passed away. A moving story, which needed his wife to write about his final hours in this world.
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Sean Kelly
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Very good book - Highly recommend!
Rezension aus dem Vereinigten Königreich vom 1. Juni 2021Verifizierter Kauf
The Last Battle covers all perspectives for the battle for Berlin from the Anglo-Americans to the Russians to the German citizens. The book gives great insight to the daily life, politics, and strategy all were facing rather than focusing solely on the battle. Cornelius Ryan does a great job of detailing how the balance of politics between the British, American and Russian governments was critical to not only finish the war quicker but the importance of the aftermath. A highly recommended book for all.
Plus the book was in good condition and it arrived on time.
Plus the book was in good condition and it arrived on time.
Crimson Trousers
5,0 von 5 Sternen
Fascinating account of the fall of the Reich.
Rezension aus dem Vereinigten Königreich vom 27. November 2018Verifizierter Kauf
A fascinating account of the final days of the third reich, recounting recounted clearly and in all its horror, through the voices of he people who lived through it. With commentators form every walk of life and every rank, these first hand testimonys are woven together by a master story-teller with great effect; I found the account of the local milk-man as informative as General Heinrici’s personal recommendation.
This book is a must for anyone interested in this period of history and is a vital resource for anyone studying the subject, either as an interested amateur or as a serious military practitioner.
This book is a must for anyone interested in this period of history and is a vital resource for anyone studying the subject, either as an interested amateur or as a serious military practitioner.
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Peter Ibberson
5,0 von 5 Sternen
A must read for anyone interested in the history of WWII
Rezension aus dem Vereinigten Königreich vom 11. November 2015Verifizierter Kauf
Had he lived Cornelius Ryan would almost certainly have been acclaimed as one of the first modern historians.Although his trilogy of books, two of which were made into films, were written some fifteen to twenty years after the events he writes from the perspective and knowledge of a person who truly knew what it was like to take part in the Second World War. He flew on thirteen bombing missions with the USAF, a perilous undertaking, and was later attached to Patons Third Army.
I read these as a teenager when they were first published and with the passage of more than forty years they are equal to the works of Beevor and Hastings.
Lets hope 'The Longest Day' is added to Kindle soon.
I read these as a teenager when they were first published and with the passage of more than forty years they are equal to the works of Beevor and Hastings.
Lets hope 'The Longest Day' is added to Kindle soon.
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Speedbird707
5,0 von 5 Sternen
One of the best history books
Rezension aus dem Vereinigten Königreich vom 20. Mai 2014Verifizierter Kauf
Cornelius Ryan was a great journalist and war correspondent and the book is certainly one of the best history books on the subject of the final days of this once great city. Our mom and her mother arrived here in late 1944. They were blessed indeed to have survived the utter devastation living in cellars in the west of the city (Kaiserdam). Mom eventually got out during the Airlift in Dec 1948 to come to England. As a very young child I was taken back to West Berlin ten years after mom's first arrival in the city. Much had changed but much remained indifferent on the other side (East).
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