This was an interesting book to read, and very informative. I learned a lot from this book. I do recommend it if you want to know more about WWII. But it is a tough read, and that's a downside. It's very info-dumpy at times.

Author Martin W. Bowman published the book “Battle of Berlin: Bomber Command over the Third Reich, 1943–1945” in 2020. Mr. Bowman has published more than 70 books.

I categorize this book as ‘G'. The book looks at the many RAF missions that took bombers to Berlin. Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris had made the destruction of Berlin a high priority. During the period from mid-November 1943 until March of 1944 the RAF concentrated bombing raids on Berlin. More than 40 missions were flown, some with only a few bombers, but many with between 800 and 1000 aircraft.

This book tells the stories of many of the crews flying those missions, the Battle of Berlin. The RAF lost more than 7,000 crewmen and 1,047 bombers during this period. There are also stories of some of the Germans who flew against the RAF. Many of the stories are of aircraft and crewmen who did not return from their missions.

Many RAF and German Luftwaffe crewmen's names are mentioned in the book. German night fighters accounted for far more RAF planes than I had thought. There were also many mid-air collisions between RAF planes that caused losses.

I enjoyed the 22.5 hours I spent reading this 714-page history. I learned a lot about the RAF bombing missions over occupied Europe. I had not read before of USAF airmen serving aboard RAF planes. Nor had I been aware of the use of 'sky markers' and 'route markers'. I do like the selected cover art. I give this book a 4 out of 5.

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The Battle of Berlin rates as one of the finest books that I have read on RAF Bomber Command during WW2. It concentrates on the major bombing operations against Berlin and their impact on a wide spectrum of participants. .
I really appreciated the fact that the author covered the bombing raids from many perspectives, the RAF aircrew and groundcrew, German Luftwaffe pilots, civilians on the ground in Germany and the UK, a number of senior Nazi leaders, aircrew families etc. There are many powerful and emotional, individual stories covered in the book. Clearly the author has undertaken a vast amount of research.
The young aircrews endured terrifying missions on a regular basis, knowing full well that the odds were stacked against them to complete the required tour of 30 operations. Their life expectancy was appallingly short, the book mentions six weeks for novice crews. There were many ways of dying, all of them appallingly unpleasant. The stoic bravery they displayed must never be forgotten. We must also not forget the courageous role played by Stirling and Halifax aircrews, who had a much higher chance of being shot down than the Lancaster bombers.
I was previously unaware that the British regularly broadcasted fake messages, in perfect German, to confuse Luftwaffe night fighter crews. Long Hitler speeches were also read out over the frequencies used by the German pilots. British dirty-tricks at their best!
My only slight complaint about the book is that my parents weren’t mentioned! My Father flew on a number of these raids with 57 Squadron, one of which was almost his last. My Mother was a WAAF in the Intelligence section at RAF Scampton. Luckily, they both survived the war otherwise I would not be writing this review.

This is a most comprehensive and detailed account of the many attempts by Bomber Command in their ultimately unsuccessful efforts to assert such dominance over the capital city of the German Reich during World War 2 that Germany would not be prepared to continue the war. Many readers who are likely to be interested in this title will already have more than a passing knowledge of the role that Bomber Command played in the Second World War, and the evolution of public perception of those who played a part from heroes to something somewhat less glorious as the memory of war recedes. Wherever individual readers’ views lie on that continuum of opinion, this book does justice, at least, to the memory of the young airmen involved and their undoubted heroism in facing appalling odds and the likelihood of death, awful injury or capture and imprisonment. As always in accounts such as these it is difficult to capture in anything like equal terms the suffering of the citizens on the receiving end of the RAF’s bombing.

The research that underpinned this book was immense and provides an intensely personal and human examination of the typical experiences of Bomber Command crews. For many, it will be painful reading; indeed, it would be hard to write an authentic account of the experiences of those involved which would be anything but harrowing in many respects. Notwithstanding this, it is a book that adds to the history of this ‘battle’ that endured for so long and adds a dimension that is sometimes missing. My only reservations would be the limited exposure to the real experiences of the inhabitants of Berlin and the risk of the very many descriptions of the individual crews’ experiences almost numbing the feeling of the reader to the horrors experienced by these brave young men. As always, it is hard to read historical accounts of the experiences of RAF bomber crew without finding incredibly disappointing the decision not to award these brave young men the campaign medal they so richly deserved. Area bombing, carried out by all air forces in World War 2 was a savage and indiscriminate strategy. But the bravery required of the crews to climb aboard their aircraft, knowing full well the odds they faced, can not be denied. They were not to blame for the strategies devised by their senior commanders.

Bomber Harris was said to have liked destruction for its own sake. In his opinion, Germany entered the war with delusions they could bomb everyone, and no one would bomb them. They sowed the wind, now they would reap the whirlwind. The RAF gave them a heavy dose of their own medicine.
Bomber Command flew thirty-five missions from November 1943 to March 1944. 1,047 bombers failed to return from 35 raids. Harris felt the destruction of Berlin would cost Germany the war, but it didn’t quite work out like that.
The book covers far more than those four months. Much is devoted to the Lancaster bombers. Toward the end, there’s a lot about the Mosquitoes. I read an advance copy as an eBook; maybe that’s why the punctuation was atrocious. Without new paragraphs or headings, I’d suddenly be reading something else. “Wait a minute. What? Who?” Mostly this is about the RAF crewmen, but there’s the occasional German. It gets tedious as you read lists: On such a raid, seven bombers crashed. T for Tommy was skippered by Ralph Smith. All seven crewmen were killed. Smith left a widow Mary Smith of Oxford.
Skimming helped, but you have to read carefully to catch the little nuggets of personal glimpses or humorous anecdotes. A senior visiting officer ordered his driver to turn around so he could berate a group of airmen for not saluting him. He opened his door and heard, “Thank you very much for the lift, sir,” as they all piled in with him.
Overall, lots of interesting details for Americans who know little about the RAF’s activities.

If you are a patient person you will love this book. It has a lot of information I did not know, inside stories about the lives of both those in the sky and those on the ground. However, the layout is lest to be desired. It felt jumbled; the chronology was scattered, like one minute we are in 1943 and the next 1941. Long sections of a RAF’s serviceman’s life and then back into the cockpit. Don’t really need to know where he came from, only that he made it out okay. Despite that, I think it would make a good resource for those writing about the subject, whether fiction or non-fiction.

Martin Bowman has written a book on a topic in need of further study: Bomber Command's controversial raids against Berlin from 1943-1945. Commencing after the firestorm at Hamburg and on the eve of Big Week, the Berlin Raids continued intermittently until war's end. Unfortunately, Bowman's work adds little to our understanding of this subject. Full of page-length quotations, mainly from previously published works, the manuscript is nearly unreadable and the narrative impossible to follow, even for readers steeped in the subject matter. There is little analysis, and the author completely fails to keep readers abreast of the larger context. This is a book that will appeal to very few readers, which is unfortunate because the author has produced many illuminating quotations that provides a balanced perspective from those dropping the bombs as well as the civilians on the receiving end. If more work had been done to weave this material into a clear story centered on the operations and their place in the larger war, this book might have succeeded.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.