Richly detailed, gracefully written: a wrenching reminder that evil wears a human face. (16 maps, 49 b&w illustrations,...
“Few things reveal more about political leaders and their systems than the manner of their downfall,” states military historian Beevor (Stalingrad, not reviewed, etc.), a sturdy thesis abundantly supported in his chronicle of the Third Reich’s last days.
Beevor musters a powerful array of evidence: documents, diaries, interviews, books in English, German, and Russian. He begins this riveting account during Christmas 1944. Berlin, experiencing round-the-clock bombing from American and RAF crews, was a city in ruin. Its leaders were hunkered down in bunkers, its people reduced to the most severe austerity. Beevor focuses much of his attention on the Soviets advancing from the east—after all, they were the first to enter the city—but moves easily from their forces to the Allied camps in the west to the Nazis. Along the way, he displays a dazzling command of fact and facility with detail, describing in one incredible sentence the motley Soviet forces advancing in tanks, on horseback, and in Lend-Lease Studebakers and Dodges. Beevor notes that the Soviets were interested not just in defeating but in harshly punishing the Nazis for their ferocious invasion of Russia four years earlier; they wanted, as well, to capture and whisk back to Moscow those German nuclear scientists and rocket experts who might help the USSR close the atomic-bomb gap. Terror was perpetrated by all the war’s participants, the author reminds us. He describes the Danzig Anatomical Medical Institute at which Nazi technicians made soap and leather from human beings, the liberation of Auschwitz, widespread looting and destruction by the advancing Americans, and—in compelling and excruciating detail—the brutal rape of tens of thousands of German women and girls by the Soviets. Nor does he neglect a thoughtful examination of the author of it all, Adolf Hitler, whose mad refusal to surrender cost countless lives on all sides.
Richly detailed, gracefully written: a wrenching reminder that evil wears a human face. (16 maps, 49 b&w illustrations, not seen)Pub Date: May 13, 2002
ISBN: 0-670-03041-4
Page Count: 475
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2002
An informed and gloomy appraisal of the prospects for democracy in Russia from the longtime Moscow corespondent of the (Manchester) Guardian, who concludes that the present political system may be one of the many revolutions from above in Russian history that end in failure. Steele (Andropov in Power, 1983, etc.) derives his conclusion both from Russian history and from his own experiences as a correspondent. He makes the telling observation that, when Yeltsin stood on a tank to proclaim his resistance to the attempted coup in 1991, the crowd that applauded him was fewer than 200 in number; only when the coup was safely over did huge crowds emerge. The coup failed, Steele says, not because of mass resistance but because the plotters lost their nerve and the Army commanders split. Nor is he impressed by the ability of Russians to run a democratic system. Yeltsin's contempt for the Supreme Soviet—the majority of which originally supported him—was such that he refused for almost a year to appear before it or to meet with its leaders. He believes that Yeltsin deliberately provoked the hard-line faction in the Parliament into an injudicious response, which gave him an excuse to use the Army. Yeltsin also manipulated the constitutional referendum held at the same time as the election in 1993 to prevent opposition to its approval and to increase his own power. Steele's conclusions are not entirely pessimistic: He believes that considerable freedom has already been established and that the gains that have been made cannot be entirely reversed. Overall, however, he sees Russia as a ``society without law'' and he questions whether the country will not take ``a long time to evolve towards genuine democracy, if ever.'' Steele is better on contemporary events than on history, and better on politics than on society at large, but his deep knowledge of Russia over the last three decades gives his conclusions great and worrisome authority.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-674-26837-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
In his first nonfiction work, noted Native American novelist Welch (The Indian Lawyer, 1990, etc.) stretches the boundaries of history. With the research assistance of Stekler, Welch offers a sweeping history of the American West based on work the pair did for their 1992 PBS documentary, The Last Stand. Though centered on the Battle of the Little Big Horn, in which warriors led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeated Custer's 7th Cavalry, the volume actually chronicles white/Indian contact and conflict from the voyage of Lewis and Clark in 1804 to the present—from the viewpoint of the Indians. Welch begins by describing the 1869 massacre of a band of his own Blackfeet people and his efforts to locate the forgotten site of the carnage. He then moves on to the story of Custer, a Civil War hero who was demoted following the war and sent to fight Indians on the Western frontier. His conduct at the Washita Massacre, during which he and his men wiped out Black Kettle's peaceful Cheyenne, called his abilities into question and demonstrated the character and leadership flaws that would help bring about his death eight years later. Brash, cavalier, and supremely confident, Custer embodied America's larger self-image. His death, in the worst military disaster of the Indian Wars, thus assumed mythic proportions, aided by a relentless publicity campaign by his widow. Welch traces the fates of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull following the famous battle and uses accounts of such other engagements as Sand Creek and the Fetterman Massacre to help put Little Big Horn in historical perspective. A late chapter personalizes the text, as Welch tells the story of his mother and his early desire to become a writer. An excellent Native version of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: a sad tale that, despite momentary triumphs like Little Big Horn, could not but end tragically for the Indians. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 24, 1994
ISBN: 0-393-03657-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
