Tony Le Tissier’s Berlin Battlefield Guide is one of the most informative and interesting tours of the great city I have read. I have always been fascinated by Berlin, by the interwar years, the war years and the cold war and the new rebuilt Berlin. I supposed as the grandchild of a Polish soldier I should not be so drawn to that damn city but it is and always has been a City of Intrigue I just wish I had this book with me.

As the race to Berlin in World War 2 was taking place Greater Berlin was getting smaller, the defence forces less, the rumours more and the Russians far too close for liking. This book is broken down with maps and pictures starting outside of Berlin showing which Army Division was attempting to defend the city from invasion.

Throughout the book we are given directions to each battleground, colour pictures and maps with the defensive maps. More importantly we are given brief descriptions of the action as it took place sometimes using the words of the combatants. This at times can be desperate but required reading. You can feel the desperation of the defenders and at times their fears.

When you read through to the actual Introduction to Berlin Le Tissier you will find it packed with information for travelling round Berlin with the various transport links. He again he has broken it down so you can work out the street by street fighting and the pictures also show the utter devastation of the city. The is special mention of the Battle for the Reichstag where we have the iconic picture of the Soviet flag above it, when one looks at the Reichstag today it is hard to believe that there was total devastation and fighting taking place around the vicinity in April 1945.

Berlin Battlefield Guide is the best guide of that City I have read and will be taking with me when I next travel to Berlin. The more I read this book the more I want to be there looking at the buildings, the streets and can hear all those silent and long since dead voices of war fighting to the death. This is simply a stunning book.

Paul Diggett

Tony Le Tissier’s … encyclopedic knowledge of the battle and the subsequent Cold War aspects of the Soviet occupation of East Germany enables him to give a compelling and moving account. [His] account is highly impressive and it shows that he is a superb writer, a diligent researcher, and a master of battlefield detail

Lt. Colonel Robert A. Lynn

A visually exciting work whose contents match its appearance. There are pages and pages of fascinating pictures….Tony Le Tissier’s informative text and his descriptions of military actions and battlefield tours make it much more than that. It is a sensible and very entertaining piece of military history.

Warbooks

All of Tony Le Tissier’s knowledge is synthesised into this must-have book – and more….It can only be described as indispensable to anyone visiting the city and wishing to experience Zhukov’s triumph and Hitler’s Götterdämmerung ….Critical for understanding the battle….Le Tissier’s detailed, full-colour and scaled maps are … a joy to study.

Defenceweb

Whilst not having done the tours in these books it seems to me to be a very good resource.

It pulls material that he has already used in his other books on this subject, and the personal witness statements have unfortunately appeared in those volumes.

Many of those volumes have been from the "German side", and generally give a view that doesn't necessarily appear elsewhere.

He covers the Halbe escape, and also the final pieces across the Seelow Heights and the fighting in Berlin which saw the ultimate collapse of the Third Reich.

I would recommend buying the book because it would support Mr Le Tissier in writing other volumes. This volume allows the others to be put into context whilst also being a tool to allow further exploration in today's Berlin and its outskirts.

Michael Thompson