Berlin. The Downfall, 1945 by Antony Beevor

The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Reich in January 1945. The result was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known, with tanks crushing refugee columns under their tracks, mass rape, pillage and destruction. Hundreds of thousands froze to death or were massacred because Nazi Party chiefs, refusing to face defeat, had forbidden the evacuation of civilians. More than seven million fled the terror. Antony Beevor, using devastating new material from former Soviet files and German, American, British, French and Swedish archives, has reconstructed the story of the nightmare that was the Third Reich’s final collapse.