The Battle of Berlin 1945

A critically-acclaimed impartial account of the twilight of the Third Reich. The Battle of Berlin was a conflict of unprecedented scale. The Soviets massed 1,600,000 troops for Operation Berlin, and but Marshal Zhukov’s his initial attack floundered and was so costly that he had to revise his plans for taking of the city when Stalin allowed his rival, Marshal Koniev, to intervene. The fight for Berlin thus became a contest for the prize of the Reichstag, fought in the sea of rubble left by Allied aerial bombardments, now reduced further by the mass of Soviet siege artillery. Meanwhile, Hitler and his courtiers sought to continue the struggle in the totally unrealistic atmosphere that prevailed in his bunker, while soldiers and civilians alike suffered and perished unheeded all around them. AUTHOR: Lt Col Tony le Tissier MBE served with the British Army’s Royal Corps of Military Police until 1977. He was British governor of the infamous Spandau Prison in Berlin from 1981 to 1987. Tony is the author of many books on the Second World War including ‘With Our Backs to Berlin’. 54 b/w illustrations