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Antony Beevor

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Antony James Beevor (born December 14 1946) is a controversial British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous historian of World War II, John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars, who has published several popular histories on the Second World War and 20th century in general.

Overview

He is a Visiting Professor at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. He is descended from a long line of women writers, being a son of Carinthia "Kinta" Beevor (1911- August 1995), herself the daughter of Lina Wakefield, and a descendant of Lucie Duff-Gordon (author of a travelogue on Egypt). Kinta Beevor wrote A Tuscan Childhood. Antony Beevor is married to Hon. Artemis Cooper, granddaughter of Lady Diana Cooper.

His best known works, the bestselling Stalingrad and Berlin - The Downfall 1945 recount the WWII battles between Russia and Germany. They have been praised for their vivid, compelling style, and the use of newly disclosed documents from Soviet archives. [1] [2] [3] His books discuss atrocities committed by both sides, but are especially notable for extensive coverage of the less-studied crimes committed by the Soviet Red Army in occupied German territory, including looting and the rape of several million women. Another one of his best known works is Crete: The Battle and the Resistance for which he won the Runciman award.

Criticism

Berlin - The Downfall 1945 has encountered strong criticism in Russia. [4] The Russian ambassador to the UK denounced the book as "lies" and "slander against the people who saved the world from Nazism."[5] O.A. Rzheshevsky, a professor and President of the Russian Association of WWII Historians, has charged that Beevor is merely resurrecting the discredited and racist views of neo-Nazi historians, who depicted Soviet troops as subhuman "Asiatic hordes"[6]:

The central themes of this book - not by volume, but by meaning - are really the brutal atrocities committed by Soviet soldiers and officers against the German population, the resurrection of the image of the "Asian hordes", which was being hammered into the the heads of Germans by Nazi propaganda, and later by a small group of neonazi historians, from whom [people] in Germany turned away from long ago. The key conclusion of the book, around which the author leads discussions of brutal atrocities by the Soviet military and especially the rapes of German women, is contained in the following passage: "The image of soldiers with burning torches above the faces of women hiding in a bunker, selecting victims, is characteristic of all the Soviet armies acting in the Berlin operation (p.326)"

Published works

He has had four novels published:

  • Violent Brink, (first published John Murray, London, 1975);
  • The Faustian Pact, (Jonathan Cape, London1983);
  • For Reasons of State, (Jonathan Cape London, 1980);
  • The enchantment of Christina von Retzen (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1989).

His works of published non-fiction include:

  • The Spanish Civil War (first published Orbis, London, 1982);
  • Inside the British Army (Chatto Windus, London, 1990);
  • Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (John Murray, London,1991);
  • Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949, co-authored with his wife, Artemis Cooper(1994);
  • Stalingrad (Viking, London, 1998)
  • Berlin:The Downfall 1945 (Penguin, London,2002); Published as The Fall of Berlin 1945 in the U.S.
  • The Mystery of Olga Chekhova, (2004). (See Olga Chekhova)
  • The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-39, Spanish edition 2005, UK edition 2006

The books he has edited include:

  • A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945 by Vasily Grossman.

He has also been contributed to several other books including:

  • The British Army, Manpower and Society into the Twenty-First Century, ed by Hew Strachan
  • What Ifs? of American History: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, by Robert Cowley (Editor), Antony Beevor and Caleb Carr. (2003)

Awards

Crete: The Battle and the Resistance

Runciman Prize

Stalingrad

Samuel Johnson Prize
Wolfson History Prize
Hawthornden Prize for Literature

Berlin:The Downfall 1945

Longman-History Today Trustees' Award

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-39 (Spanish Edition)

La Vanguardia Prize for Non-Fiction
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