These are two terrible books; terrible because their subject matter is so harrowing. Both are concerned with the last days of the Third Reich as seen, not from military headquarters, but from the wrecked streets and vile-smelling cellars where ordinary Germans waited for the end. They are very different works. Heinz Rein lived through the final fighting when Hitler, from his bunker, decreed that any German officer ordering a retreat was to be killed on the spot by his own men. Berlin Finale is a novel, first published in serial form shortly after the events it describes. Overlong, overwrought and overloaded with stilted debate, it is of interest now chiefly as valuable testimony from one who was there. Florian Huber, born 20 years after the war's end, is a historian.
