Hitler’s Last Days

Beevor’s masterly narrative is, however, as much about Hitler’s almost total divorce from reality in the final days as it is about the brutality in the final phase of the war, where all distinctions between right and wrong were almost completely obscured. For the Red Army, indoctrinated on accounts of Nazi Brutality, the collapse of Berlin was also an occasion to extract revenge. The result was, as Beevor puts it: the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known with tanks crushing refugee columns under their tracks, mass rape, pillage and destruction. While Nazi savagery was in a class by itself, the manner in which substantial sections of the Red Army acted, confirms that there was a very thin difference between good and evil during the last days of the war.

The last days of the Fuhrer, although extensively written about earlier as well, still make for fascinating reading. His marriage to Eva Braun, a day before they committed suicide, his last political and personal statement, the torching of their corpses and the discovery of their remains by the Soviets, makes for a compelling if frightening story.

Beevor’s story is a horrible tale of pride, stupidity, fanaticism, revenge and savagery although there are notable examples of astonishing endurance, self sacrifice and survival against all odds. Most important, Beevor’s book reminds us that all those who today preach the message of peace and civilised values to South Asians were acting, not so long ago, with a brutality that, in comparison, makes Indian and Pakistani wars appear like toy battles. In none of the wars that India and Pakistan have fought against each other, have civilian populations been targeted or population centres been bombed. In contrast, Nazi savagery has provided a veil over terrifying brutality by other states, including the victorious ones. That story is, fortunately, being now revealed.