Antony Beevor

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Antony Beevor in Gothenburg 2015

Sir Antony James Beevor (born December 14, 1946 ) is a British historian who wrote various works on the Second World War , including the Battle of Stalingrad , the Airborne Battle of Crete , the Landing in Normandy and the Battle of Berlin , as well as a work on the Spanish Civil War .

Life

Beevor is the son of Kinta Beevor and John G. Beevor . He attended Winchester College and studied at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst , among others with the famous historian of the Second World War John Keegan . In 2002 he gave the Lees Knowles Lecture at the University of Cambridge . He is Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres , an honorary doctorate from the University of Kent and a member of the Royal Society of Literature . In 2017 Beevor was raised to the nobility as a Knight Bachelor . Before Beevor became a bestselling author, he served as a career officer in the British Army. He is married to the writer Artemis Cooper .

Reception of his works

The Fall of Berlin 1945

The BBC accompanied the research on the subject of his publication The Fall of Berlin 1945 ( Berlin 1945: Das Ende ), which appeared in 24 languages ​​in 2002 , and broadcast a documentary on BBC 2 . As a bestseller in Great Britain and in seven other countries, it reached the "top five" sales lists in a further eight countries.

The central topic of this book are acts of violence committed by Soviet soldiers against German and Soviet civilians after the Soviet occupation of Germany towards the end of the Second World War.

The publication met with sharp criticism in Russia. The Russian ambassador to Great Britain described the book as a "lie" and "defamation of the people who liberated the world from Nazism". OA Rscheschewski, chairman of the Association of Russian World War II Historians, accused Beevor of arguing in the manner of neo-Nazi historians who would have portrayed the Red Army as subhuman Asian hordes: “The central theme of this book, not in scope, but in importance clearly brutal atrocities committed by Soviet soldiers and officers against the German population, the revival of the image of Asian hordes hammered into the Germans by Nazi propaganda and later by a small group of neo-Nazi historians from whom [the people] in Germany had long since turned away Has. The central point of this book, around which the author has built his argument, is the brutal atrocities committed by the Soviet military, especially the rape of German women, is contained in the following sentence: 'The image of soldiers with flashlights among women in bomb cellars Choosing victims is characteristic of all Soviet armies in the battle for Berlin. '"

In an interview with BBC News Online , however, Rscheschewski admitted that he had read Beevor's book only in part and without citing the source. Judging by what the German army had done in the Soviet Union, the Germans could have expected an "avalanche of vengeance". However, this did not happen and "the majority of soldiers and officers of the Red Army [...] treated the civilian population humanely". In his answer, Beevor emphasized that he had obtained his results essentially from Soviet sources. Women had become the sexual prey of the Red Army and the Red Army did not stop at female Soviet prisoners of war and forced laborers, as Soviet archives have shown.

The second World War

Beevor's work The Second World War , published in English in 2012 and in German in 2014 , was received very positively overall. Rainer Blasius assesses Beevor's book as a “masterpiece”, especially with regard to the synopsis of the theaters of war and centers of power. The main responsibility of the Nazi leadership for the war is clear, but the active participation of the Wehrmacht, officials from almost all ministries, a large part of industry and the transport sector prevented a reappraisal of the events after 1945 in Germany for a long time. The Allied bombing was mainly due to Britain's inability to fight back any other way. The real mistake of the Western powers was to allow the division of Europe largely according to Stalin's ideas.

The British historian Richard J. Evans , leading on the history of National Socialism, emphasizes that Beevor not only succeeded in a comprehensive analysis of the military strategies and tactics in World War II, but also in an astute presentation and criticism of the political and military leaders. Rommel is overrated by the German generals above all others. The latter acted extremely recklessly and only gained a great reputation because the Allied propagandists had an interest in stylizing him as a capable military leader in order to conceal the incompetent actions of the British military leadership in North Africa. In addition to such individual analyzes, Beevor succeeded in showing that the European theaters of war and those in the Pacific region were closely related and that it was actually a contiguous war and not two largely separate conflicts. According to Evans, Beevors' work should be assessed critically because it consists too much of “numerous mini-narratives”, treats the causes and consequences of the Second World War rather superficially and, in particular, almost completely ignores the economic aspects of the war.

Awards

Works (selection)

Fiction

Non-fiction

  • The Mystery of Olga Chekhova . Oxford 2000.
  • Berlin. The Downfall 1945 . Viking, London 2002.
  • Crete. The Battle and the Resistance . John Murray, London 1991, ISBN 978-0-7195-4857-4 .
  • Inside the British Army . Corgi Books, London 1991, ISBN 0-552-13818-5 .
  • Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949 . Penguin Books, New York 1994, ISBN 0-14-101554-3 .
  • A writer in was. Vasily Grossman with the red Army 1941/45 . Pimlico, London 2006.
  • The Spanish Civil War . Orbis Books, London 1982.
  • Stalingrad. The fateful victories 1942/43 . Penguin, New York 1998.
    • German: Stalingrad . Translated from the English by Klaus Kochmann. Bertelsmann, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-570-00236-5 .
  • D-Day. The Battle for Normandy . Penguin, London 2009.
    • German: D-Day. The battle for Normandy . Translated from the English by Helmut Ettinger. Bertelsmann, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-570-10007-3 .
  • The Second World War . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2012.
    • German: The Second World War . Translated from the English by Helmut Ettinger. Bertelsmann, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-570-10065-3 .
  • Ardennes 1944. Hitler's Last Gamble . Viking, London 2015.
    • German: The Ardennes Offensive 1944. Hitler's last battle in the west . Translated from English by Helmut Ettinger. Bertelsmann, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-570-55374-9 .
  • Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944 . Ocito Ltd., London 2018.
    • German: Arnheim. The battle for the bridges over the Rhine in 1944 . Translated from the English by Helmut Ettinger. Bertelsmann, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-570-10373-9 .

literature

  • Achim Engelberg : Between Hitler and Stalin - Antony Beevor . In: Ders .: But where does Europe end? Crossing the border between London and Ankara (In the abysses of the 20th century). Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02132-0 , pp. 11-20.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The London Gazette (Supplement) no. 61803. p. N2
  2. ^ Richard Evans: Complete Incapacity. Antony Beevor subjects almost all military leaders of World War II to severe criticism . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 30, 2014, p. 15.
  3. ↑ Antony Beevor: The Second World War. From the English by Helmut Ettinger . Bertelsmann, Munich 2014, p. 894.
  4. ↑ 3sat Brutal Foray, January 10, 2003
  5. ↑ MDR Antony Beevor - consultant and author , September 15, 2003 ( Memento of October 18, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ MDR Interview 2003 ( Memento from May 9, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/01/25/wruss25.xml
  8. ↑ www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/01/25/dt2506.xml
  9. ↑ gpw.tellur.ru/page.html?r=books&s=beevor ( Memento from May 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Chris Summers: Red Army rapists exposed. BBC News, April 29, 2002, accessed November 3, 2013 .
  11. ↑ Rainer Blasius: The price of liberation. At the end of the Second World War, the Western powers had to surrender half of Europe to Stalinism . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 2, 2014.
  12. ^ Richard Evans: Complete Incapacity. Antony Beevor subjects almost all military leaders of World War II to severe criticism . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 30, 2014, p. 15.
  13. ^ OT The Spanish Civil War .
  14. ↑ Also that year, Julie McMahon won the Historical Picture Researcher of the Year for John Beevor's "Stalingrad"
  15. ↑ For the US domestic market, the title was changed to The Fall of Berlin 1945 .
  16. ↑ For the US domestic market, the title was changed to The Battle for Spain. The Spanish Civil War 1936-39 .

Web links

Commons : Antony Beevor  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Beevor, Antony
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beevor, Antony James (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 14, 1946