Taking Berlin: The Bloody Race to Defeat the Third Reich

Bestseller Dugard follows Taking Paris with a kaleidoscopic account of the Allies’ campaign to capture Berlin in the final months of WWII. Opening the narrative with Gen. George S. Patton’s famous May 1944 speech before the D-Day invasion (“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You win it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country”), Dugard interweaves the experiences of a colorful cast that includes Patton, Gen. James Gavin, Winston Churchill, journalist Martha Gellhorn, and German field marshal Erwin Rommel. Among the highlights: Gavin parachuting behind German troops guarding Omaha and Utah beaches on D-Day; Gellhorn stowing away on the hospital ship HMS Prague to observe the Normandy landings from offshore; and Patton’s rivalry with British general Bernard Montgomery. Documenting the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge, Rommel’s death, the taking of the Siegfried Line on the border of Germany and France, the Yalta Conference, and other turning points, Dugard enriches the account with colorful if shopworn gossip about Gellhorn’s romance with Gavin; Eisenhower’s rumored fling with his driver, Kay Summersby; and more. Dugard’s terse prose (“Engines cough. Catch.”) and use of present tense (“James Gavin is a dangerous man”) keeps the action humming, and he skillfully mines his subjects’ personal writings. This fast-paced history is well worth the read. (Nov.)