The End of War
A Novel of the Race for Berlin
-
-
4.8 • 4 Ratings
-
-
- $7.99
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
Berlin, January 1945
The war draws to a close, but the fight for a vanquished city--and for history--is just beginning.
On the heels of the critically acclaimed War of the Rats , the new master of historical suspense, David L. Robbins, turns his compelling vision on the waning months of World War II, when world leaders engage in a dicey game of cat and mouse to ultimately determine the fate of the second half of the twentieth century.
The End of War
In the final months of the war in Europe, the last act of a five-year conflagration is about to be played out. Allied generals move their war-hardened armies around the mortally wounded Nazi military machine. But strategies are being formed on a greater scale than even generals can imagine. While Churchill fumes helplessly, Roosevelt makes crucial decisions that will cede Berlin to Stalin and the Russians.
The stakes are no less critical for ordinary men and women, fighting to live another day. On the ground are young Russian soldiers driven by vengeance into the teeth of the still-deadly Nazi army; American forces push forward under the political motives of a canny commander- in- chief; and the British, aloof, at odds with their Yankee counterparts, see in these last fateful moves a devastating betrayal by Washington and Moscow.
The End of War vividly animates the giants who shaped history and breathes life into the heartbreaking struggles of those who merely lived it. From the chaos of the trenches on the eastern front, to the desperation of a single Jewish man hidden in a Berlin basement by a terrified mother and daughter, to the burning ambition of an American photojournalist determined to capture on film the defining moment of the war, Robbins ushers us into the sweep of history and the drama of the human face of war.
An epic novel exploding with the urgency of battle and history in the making, here is The End of War.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sweeping in scope, this gripping, admirably researched historical novel resumes the account of WWII Robbins left off in War of the Rats. Picking up the narrative just before the stroke of midnight of New Year's Eve 1944, the saga moves skillfully back and forth between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill's cat-and-mouse games for postwar world control and the day-to-day hardships and terrors of ordinary figures caught up in the mortal conflict. Charley Bandy, a Tennessee tobacco farmer turned Life photographer, voluntarily returns to combat to be present for the German surrender. A pair of battle-hardened Russian soldiers, Misha Bakov and Ilya Shokhin, slog through the mud of Poland, pushing to take Berlin. And 26-year-old cellist Lottie (Charlota)--no last name given--the only female member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, lives in daily terror. Her mother is hiding a Jewish man in the cellar, and the Allied bombers are relentlessly pounding Berlin to rubble in an all-out effort to bring Hitler's Nazis to unconditional surrender. Eisenhower makes a cameo appearance, as do advisers to the Olympian triumvirate, architects of the history of the last half of the 20th century. Overwritten in places, the narrative frequently bogs down in trivia, and Robbins possesses a distracting proclivity for the random obscure (often ill-chosen) word. However, despite use of the third-person present tense, which essentially imposes the author as narrator/reporter and distances the reader from the full intensity of human experience, war buffs should find this an entertaining perspective on the end days of WWII.
