Summary of Antony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin 1945

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

#1 The mood in Germany had changed two years before, when rumors began to circulate that General Paulus’s Sixth Army had been encircled on the Volga by the Red Army. The Nazi regime found it difficult to admit that the largest formation in the Wehrmacht was doomed to annihilation in the ruins of Stalingrad.

#2 The air-raid shelters in Berlin were overcrowded, and the foreign workers who worked there were not allowed to enter them. The German population had a deep-seated fear of the Slavic invader from the east.

#3 The bombing of Berlin polarized opinion between the hardliners and the war-weary. The majority of Germans were ready to march behind Hitler, weapons in hand, in December 1944.

#4 The German Army’s high command did not share Hitler’s enthusiasm for the offensive in the west. They feared that the plan was over-ambitious and would never reach its objective of Antwerp, the Western Allies’ main supply base.

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Rafbók: 12 april 2022