The Last Battle – Cornelius Ryan

Description

The Last Battle – Cornelius Ryan

On Monday, April 16, 1945, a stupefying artillery barrage signalled the opening of the Russian attack against the capital of the Thousand Year Reich. Russian troops were then less than thirty-eight miles from Berlin’s centre. In fourteen days the Fuhrer would he dead. In twenty-one days the war would he over.

Yet some forty-five miles to the west, and with the last great prize of the war within their grasp, advance units of the U.S. Ninth Army. were angrily and reluctantly turning back. `Berlin,’ the Allied Supreme Commander had declared, ‘is no longer a military objective.’ The Last Battle is the story of those three weeks in which the city of Berlin, gutted, smouldering, terrorized, yet still miraculously alive, was the focal point of millions of lives: the last obstacle of the triumphant Allies, the last defence for the Germans, the last refuge for the Fuhrer, and the setting for innumerable dramas of history and of ordinary lives.

The Last Battle is a monumental recreation of the climax of World War II, a sweeping record of what people saw, felt, thought, in those last three weeks. But beyond its incomparable narrative, it is also a work of prime historical importance. Cornelius Ryan makes public for the first time a wealth of new material that leads to a reassessment of the accepted story of the end of the war in Europe, and answers the questions still at the heart of the cold war: why were the Russians allowed to reach Berlin first? Why was the city isolated deep in their zone of occupation?

Cornelius Ryan, the first Westerner ever permitted to examine the files of the Soviet Defence Dept., has interviewed hundreds of participants in the great events of Berlin’s fall, including Russian Marshals Koniev, Rokossovskii and Chuikov.

The result is a masterfully integrated story, which takes the reader into the innermost councils of the war leaders, of the diplomats maneuvering for post-war advantage—and into the feelings of the soldiers and civilians who lived through the weeks, days, hours and moments of The Last Battle.