THE LAST BATTLE by Cornelius Ryan. 571 pages. Simon and Schuster. $7.50.
Everyone who saw him still remembers how calm Soviet Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov appeared. In a hillside bunker overlooking the Kustrin bridgehead, less than 38 miles from the stricken city, he rested both elbows on the concrete ledge and took a last look into the predawn darkness through his field glasses. Finally, he glanced at his watch and allowed a few more seconds to tick by before he said, "Now, comrades. Now."
Three red signal flares soared upward, bathing the Oder River in a garish crimson. Seconds later, 140 huge antiaircraft searchlights and the lights of hundreds of tanks, trucks and other vehicles flashed on and illuminated the German lines brighter than a midday sun. Then three green flares soared into the heavens, and more than 20,000 guns of all calibers erupted with an earsplitting, earth-shaking roar. The German countryside beyond the Kustrin bridgehead seemed to explode. Entire villages disintegrated. Earth, concrete, steel, bits of trees spewed into the air. The concussion from the thundering guns was so tremendous that troops and equipment alike shook uncontrollably. A hot wind suddenly sprang up and howled through the forests, bending saplings and whipping dust and debris into the air.
This mighty bombardment, never before equaled on the eastern front, began at precisely 4 a.m., Monday, April 16, 1945. History records it as the beginning of the battle for Berlin, the final assault against the capital of Hitler's Reich. As this thoroughly researched and often exciting book makes clear, Berlin was a fortress only in Hitler's fevered imagination. Incredibly, there was no plan to protect Berlin against attack, no defenses worth mentioning, and very few troops.
Run on Poison. Berlin had become virtually a city without men. Out of a civilian population of about 2,700,000—less than two-thirds of what it had been when the war began—roughly 2,000,000 were women. Small wonder that the fear of sexual attack raced through the city like a plague. Nazi propaganda had long painted Soviet troops as slant-eyed Mongols who butchered women and children on sight, raped nuns and burned clergymen to death with flamethrowers. As a result, doctors were besieged by patients seeking information about the quickest way to commit suicide, and poison was in great demand.
After the first Soviet troops fought their way into the city, however, the terrified populace began to relax somewhat. The soldiers sometimes seized watches and jewelry, and they dealt ruthlessly with any kind of resistance, but in general they ignored civilians. One fighting unit, bivouacking in Schwarze Grund Park, shared food and candy with neighborhood children. Other soldiers took it as a great joke when they saw how their presence petrified some Berliners. Still, more than a little prophetic was the comment of a polite young Soviet lieutenant who told a Roman Catholic mother superior: "These are good, disciplined and decent soldiers. But I must tell you. The men who are following us, the ones coming up behind, are pigs."
And so they were, writes Ryan. The later waves of Soviet soldiers went wild.