STILL THE FIRST DRAFT OF HISTORY? Yes, World War II ended sixty years, or eight tenure classes of historians, ago. The Soviet Union, however, kept many of the records of what it referred to as the Great Patriotic War classified. Anthony Beevor made use of those records in writing The Fall of Berlin 1945, which this Book Review No. 1415 suggests will make an excellent supplement to Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle in the library of anyone interested in World War II. Mr Beevor devotes most of the book to the Soviet forces, which took Berlin. Mr Ryan did not have as many Soviet sources to refer to, and he might have been writing with a Cold War era, Anglosphere audience in mind. The Soviet records illustrate more starkly how vicious the fighting on the Ostfront was, on both sides. The book also clears up a few mysteries about the disappeared Nazi leadership. Apparently the Red Army found some remains of Adolf Hitler and had them destroyed and scattered. They also found Martin Bormann, deceased.