Between April 20th and June 22nd of 1945, the anonymous author of this stark and vivid diary wrote about life in Berlin as it was sacked by the Russian Army, fending off the boredom and deprivation of hiding by recording her experiences, observations, and meditations. Accounts of the bombing, the rapes, the rationing of food, and the overwhelming terror of death are rendered in the dispassionate, though determinedly optimistic prose of a woman fighting for survival amidst the horror and inhumanity of war. Republished many times in the intervening decades, this diary has always generated controversy, and here Anthony Beevor provides context for this remarkable document of the war's effect on civilians.