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    The Last Battle
    Unavailable
    The Last Battle
    Unavailable
    The Last Battle
    Audiobook15 hours

    The Last Battle

    Written by Cornelius Ryan

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The Battle for Berlin was the culminating struggle of World War II in the European theater, the last offensive against the Third Reich. It was also one of the war’s bloodiest and most pivotal battles, whose outcome would shape international politics for decades.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBlackstone Audio
    Release dateApr 12, 2012
    ISBN9781455156740
    Unavailable
    The Last Battle
    Author

    Cornelius Ryan

    Cornelius Ryan was born in 1920 in Dublin, Ireland, where he was raised. He became one of the preeminent war correspondents of his time, flying fourteen bombing missions with the Eighth and Ninth US Air Forces and covering the D-Day landings and the advance of General Patton’s Third Army across France and Germany. After the end of hostilities in Europe, he covered the Pacific War. In addition to his classic works The Longest Day, The Last Battle, and A Bridge Too Far, he is the author of numerous other books, which have appeared throughout the world in nineteen languages. Awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government in 1973, Mr. Ryan was hailed at that time by Malcolm Muggeridge as “perhaps the most brilliant reporter now alive.” He died in 1976.

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    Reviews for The Last Battle

    4/5

    203 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      On of the best books about the final, desperate battle for Berlin. Like all of Ryan's book, its built around personal accounts of people who lived through it. The unlikely hero is General Gotthard Heinrici, the pragmatic soldier tasked by Hitler with doing the impossible and fending off the rampaging Soviet armies. With supreme military skill, Heinrici succeeds in delaying the Soviets for a few days and inflicts massive casualties on them, but eventually the inevitable happens and they break through. Heinrici then performs the bravest action of his military career. Rather than subject his crippled forces to a last-ditch suicidal defence of Berlin, he defies Hitler's orders and leads his men and as many civilians as he can to the west where they can surrender to the Americans and British. For this he is excoriated and sacked by Hitler, a meaningless gesture because the Fuhrer committs suicide a couple of days later. But Heinrici has saved thousands of his men from death or long captivity in Siberia. Woven through this heroic tale are the stories of many others involved in the desperate final days, German civilians, including women who endured being raped, sometimes many times, by Russian soldiers, soldiers from both sides who go through the horrors of the last crushing of nazi Germany, and westerners who are essentially spectators to this unbelievable chaos. A great book, gripping, breath-taking.
    • 4/5
      A masterpiece, a remarkable reconstruction of that immense and complicated battleground of ordinary people in the last days of a dead or dying city (Berlin). An extraordinary piece of work.
    • 4/5
      An extremely readable account of the death throes of the Third Reich. We get fairly balanced accounts from the British and american Armies, and even a kind word or two about the Soviet forces. But the main focus is on the Wehrmacht, doggedly trying to carry out impossible orders issuing from the madhouse of Hitler's Bunker. And we do get to follow the well drawn cast of this brutally ironic drama, down to the final bonfire in the garden. Not to be missed by the student of WWII.
    • 5/5
      Excellent! Ryan never disappoints...
    • 5/5
      Tremendous chronicle of the fall of Berlin. As usual, Ryan communicates the story of people living through chaos and disaster of war.