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Antony Beevor's Berlin: The Downfall 1945 has been an international best-selling history of the fall of Berlin to Soviet troops in 1945. Now published in paperback, Beevor's magisterial narrative of Berlin's downfall has become a leading work of contemporary popular history. The public discussion of this book has been dominated by two themes: first, the 'normalization' of the suffering of German civilians and, second, the 'disclosure' of mass rapes by the liberating Soviet army in Germany: This review traces how key debates concerning the remembrance of the Second World War form these dominant readings of Berlin. In particular, it examines the formation of the re-remembering of the wartime rapes of Berlin women, and considers the implications of Beevor's account of the downfall of Berlin for how we understand sexual violence in armed conflict. Keywords: Beevor; Berlin; Soviet Army; rape in armed conflict; history; memory.

The Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodern Linda Nicholson, Open University Press, 1999, 14.99 £, xii+179pp. Linda Nicholson is perhaps best known for her influential work in [...]