Taking Berlin: The Bloody Race to Defeat the Third Reich

From Martin Dugard, author of Taking Paris and the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series, comes a nonfiction thriller about the race between the Allies and Soviets to conquer the heart of Nazi Germany.

“Spectacular… Taking Berlin is certain to be a massive hit with fans of both history and thrillers alike.”—Mark Greaney, bestselling author of the Gray Man series • “With the precision of a smart bomb, Martin Dugard puts the reader directly into the campaign to destroy Hitler.”—Bill O’Reilly • “Gripping, popular history at its page-turning best.”—Alex Kershaw

Fall, 1944. Paris has been liberated, saved from destruction, but this diversion on the road to Berlin has given the Germans time to regroup. The American and British armies press on from the west, facing the enemy time and again in the Hurtgen Forest, during the Market-Garden invasion, and at the Battle of the Bulge, all while American general George Patton and British field marshal Bernard Montgomery vie for supremacy as the Allies’ top battlefield commander.

Meanwhile, the Soviets begin to squeeze Hitler’s crumbling Reich from the east. Led by Generals Zhukov and Konev, the Red Army launches millions of soldiers, backed by tanks, artillery, and warplanes, against the Germans, leaving death and scorched earth in their wake, pushing the Wehrmacht back toward their fatherland. As both the Anglo-American alliance and the Soviets set their sights on claiming the capital city of Nazi Germany, Churchill seeks to ensure Britain’s place in a new world divided by Roosevelt’s America and Stalin’s Soviet Union.

With a sweeping cast of historical figures, Taking Berlin is a pulse-pounding race into the final, desperate months of the Second World War and toward the fiery destruction of the Thousand-Year-Reich, chronicling a moment in history when allies become adversaries.