The Fall of Berlin

New York: W.W. Norton, 1993. First American Edition. Hardcover. very good/very good. 25 cm, 513 pages, illus., maps, bibliography, source notes, index, former owner's stamp on flyleaf. From the pomp and glitter of the 1936 Olympics to the apocalyptic battle to capture the ruined capital of the Nazi Empire, The Fall of Berlin presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of one of the world's greatest cities caught between the lunacy and cruelty of its leaders and the brutal determination of encircling Soviet armies.The authors have delved into archival research, diaries, and memoirs, and conducted numerous interviews to recreate through brilliantly detailed vignettes the story of Berlin and its resilient inhabitants: the soldiers and ordinary citizens pounded by Allied bombing but maintaining their gallows humor; the endless procession of refugees; the 5,000 Jews who foiled the Nazi's rabid attempt to "purify" the capital; people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who gave their lives in heroic anti-Nazi resistance while film stars and the well-connected lived in precarious luxury; the Third Reich's leaders jockeying for power in Hitler's underground bunker even as a ragged army of children, invalids, and old men confronted Soviet tanks in the rubble above; and of course, Hitler himself, trapped beneath a city he hated, waiting for the miracle promised him in horoscope readings. At the end of World War II, the great city of Berlin was nearly destroyed by bombing and by invading Soviet troops. Anthony "Tony" Read (21 April 1935 - 21 November 2015) was a British script editor, television writer and author. He was principally active in British television from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, although he occasionally contributed to televised productions until 1999. Beginning in the 1980s, he launched a second career as a print author, concentrating largely on World War II histories. During the 1980s, Read gradually began to replace his television work with a burgeoning career in print. In his second career as an author he continued his relationship with David Fisher into the world of non-fiction writing. While the majority of Read's books were solo works, he and Fisher combined a number of times, almost always to explore some aspect of World War II. Together they wrote The Fall of Berlin, Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939-1941, The Proudest Day: India's Long Road to Independence, Operation Lucy: The Most Secret Spy Ring of the Second World War, Berlin Rising: Biography of a City, Colonel Z: The Secret Life of a Master of Spies, and Kristallnacht: The Nazi Night of Terror.