Stalingrad

Jan 20, 2013 Steve aka Sckenda rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those Interested in the Eastern Front of WWII

Shelves: war, german, world-war-ii, military

The Battle of Stalingrad was the most catastrophic defeat in the history of Germany and reversed the Second World War. Hitler and Stalin fought a psychological duel by proxy at Stalin City on the banks of the Volga River. Human beings were of little consequence to either in this story of folly, pitilessness, and tragedy: Stalingrad became a City of the Dead, "which smelled of blood, smoke, and the stench of wounds."

The Russians paid any price for victory and coerced courage by executing 13,500...more The Battle of Stalingrad was the most catastrophic defeat in the history of Germany and reversed the Second World War. Hitler and Stalin fought a psychological duel by proxy at Stalin City on the banks of the Volga River. Human beings were of little consequence to either in this story of folly, pitilessness, and tragedy: Stalingrad became a City of the Dead, "which smelled of blood, smoke, and the stench of wounds."

The Russians paid any price for victory and coerced courage by executing 13,500 of their own soldiers at Stalingrad. Soviet NKVD patrols followed behind the Red Army to shoot any soldier who retreated, and they murdered any Russian child with the misfortune to be used as a human shield by the Germans.

The Luftwaffe (German Air Force) carpet-bombed Stalingrad in advance of invasion, and, though they managed to kill 40,000 civilians, they not only failed to destroy the enemy’s will, the Germans turned the ruined landscape into a perfect killing ground for the Russians to use to kill Germans. Stalingrad became an impassable wilderness of rubble, but Hitler, who avoided street-fighting in Moscow and Leningrad, became determined to seize this city at any price.

The Red Army hid in the rubble and waited for the confident Germans, who were unaware that they would refight the First World War. German soldiers called it “Rattenkrieg” (“war of the rats”), as opposed to their successful “blitzkrieg” (“lightening warfare”) that had previously terrorized the world. Instead of Napoleonic maneuvering of mechanized armies, Germans were forced into lethal street-fights with squads, submachine guns, grenades, and sniper rifles and had to fear Russians hiding in basements, walls, hidden bunkers, and factory ruins. The Russians brilliantly funneled and fragmented German mass assaults with “breakwaters”--strengthened buildings, manned by infantry with anti-tank rifles and machine guns, which would deflect the attacker into mined channels where camouflaged T-34 tanks and anti-tank guns awaited, hidden in the rubble.

The hunters became the hunted as the vast Red Army encircled the entire German Sixth Army that had surrounded Stalingrad—while Hitler, safe in Berlin, surrounded himself with maps and delusions. Eventually even Hitler knew defeat was inevitable but tried to exploit it to create a propaganda myth of fighting to the last man and to teach his general staff to never challenge him. Therefore, Hitler denied General Paulus permission to reorganize his forces to fight his way out of “the Kessel” (the trap). Unfortunately, the passive Paulus obeyed Hitler until it was too late to do anything. Then, Paulus reversed himself and defied Hitler by surrendering his army rather than shooting himself with his last bullet.

From encirclement to surrender, much misery befell human beings. Soldiers lived like troglodytes on roots and berries and on 100-200 grams of bread each day. With not enough fuel to melt snow, soldiers shot at drainpipes to extract a few drops of water. While rumors, rats, and lice thrived, men shivered uncontrollably. What little body heat they could muster did little more than “stir their lice into activity and drive them wild with itching.”

Survival defied expectation. The first to die were those who were large or powerfully built. In many cases, the lack of food led not to apathy but to crazed illusions, “like those of ancient mystics who heard voices through malnutrition”:

The sense of approaching death could also stimulate an intense awareness of all that they were about to lose. Tough men dreamed feverishly of home and wept silently at the idea of never seeing wife or children again. More reflective characters reexamined memories, or studied the world about them, especially their comrades with a new interest. Some even had enough emotion left to feel sorry for the starving horses gnawing desperately at a piece of wood. (338)

There seemed to be little reason left to fight for life. The prospect of seeing families again was remote. Death promised a release from suffering, and toward the end, drained of pain as well as strength, there was no more than a sense of gloating weightless. The ones most likely to survive seemed to be those who fought on, either through religious faith, or an obstinate refusal to die in such squalor, or out of a determination to live for their family’s sake. (410)

Despite the misery, there were several incidents of individuals trying to make art out of blood and ruins:

The commanding officer of the 16th Panzer Division shoved a piano inside his underground bunker, and, unheard above and muffled by the earth walls, he played Bach, Handel Mozart and Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. He played on, even when the walls trembled from bombardment and soil trickled down. He played on even as the Russians arrived. (283)

Dr. Kurt Reuber turned his bunker into an art studio and drew a masterpiece, “Fortress Madonna,” on the back of a captured Russian map. Battle-hardened killers, upon seeing the portrait, halted and stared-- many began to cry, and his bunker became something of a shrine. (312)

More Russians died (at least 450,000) in this one battle than did all the war dead of the United States for the entire Second World War. It is estimated that 850,000 Germans died at Stalingrad [or later in Soviet prisoner-of- war camps (only 6,000 Germans returned home)]. This was the beginning of the end for the Third Reich, and most German professionals recognized that it would be impossible to win the war, despite the delusions of Hitler--still convinced of his infallibility.

Antony Beevor, a respected British historian, recounts famous stories of fighting at Pavlov’s House; Univermage Department Store; Dzerzhinsky Tractor Works, and the Ferry Crossing. (Gamers will recognize these battles from the Call of Duty series.) Beevor appears to have advanced the story by discussing the large of number of Russians who defected to fight for the Germans, especially Ukraninans. There were almost 100,000 defectors and all of them died or were executed at the surrender.

Beevor leavens tragedy by sprinkling individual acts of beauty and kindness amidst the tale of industrial brutality. Men facing death became comrades of blood and iron. The squad became a surrogate family for the home they would never again see. I close by allowing the Red Army to sing for all the slain:

The fire is flickering in the narrow stove
Resin oozes from the log like a tear
And the concertina in the bunker
Sings to me of your smile and eyes.
The bushes whispered to me about you
In a snow-white field near Moscow
I want you above all to hear
How sad my living voice is.

You are now very far away
Expanses of snow lie between us
It is so hard for me to come to you
And here there are four steps to death.
Sing concertina, in defiance of the snowstorm.
Call out to that happiness which has lost its way.
I'm warm in the cold bunker,
Because of your inextinguishable love.

You are now very far away
Expanses of snow lie between us
It is so hard for me to come to you,
And here there are four steps to death.

(less)

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Nov 23, 2010 notgettingenough added it · review of another edition

Shelves: sociology

So, I'm watching a movie in German about the siege of Stalingrad last night while I'm knitting and my first thought was 'but I won't have a clue what is going on' and my second is 'fair enough....why should I have an unfair advantage over the poor fuckers who were there in the thick of it.' Just because I'm watching the movie, it shouldn't give me an edge.

Afterwards, explaining this to my mother, she asked, so did you get it? And I'm like 'nope, but neither did they.' Bunches of people being con...more

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Apr 19, 2010 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, wwi-wwii

This book was more from the 6th Army/German perspective, which wasn’t what I was expecting. But seeing as my background on this event comes more from the Russian perspective, so it was an interesting read. This book covers a lot of ground, starting with Operation Barbarossa (well, really even a little bit before that) and follows through some prison camps that extended into the 1950s! There is a part in this book that describes a German officer who gets flown out of the 6th Army encirclement (la...more

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Jun 26, 2008 John rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone interested in war

This book is an astounding piece of work. Beevor does not have the moral resonance of a Martin Gilbert or the sparkling language of a Dan Van Der Vat, but in his own stolid way he tells a damn good story. Painstakingly researched and grippingly told, the book begins with Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's ill-conceived and treacherous plan to invade the Soviet Union. As we all know, this attempt foundered after the Soviet counter-attacks around Stalingrad in the Northern winter of 1942-43. Beevor at...more

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Nov 28, 2009 'Aussie Rick' rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-military, ww2

This is an excellent account of the battle of Stalingrad, I'd place it next to 'Enemy at the Gates'. The author gives you an overview of the military situation on the Eastern Front prior to the German Offensive towards Stalingrad on the Volga. The author tells the story of this terrible battle through the accounts of those soldiers who endured this inferno and survived as well as using letters and diaries of those who didn't! This is a story of the fighting, not of the strategy and tactics behin...more

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May 18, 2013 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 3 of 5 stars

It was called as the Great War. It was great in all aspects of war, including in its stupidity. You know how it started. A minor potentate was assassinated and with this single death nations found reason enough to stage an orgy of bloodbaths across Europe which resulted to the death of millions, most of them young men in the prime of their lives. The manner this war was conducted even looked more foolish: the soldiers dug trenches, built fortifications and set up machine gun nests. They rain bom...more It was called as the Great War. It was great in all aspects of war, including in its stupidity. You know how it started. A minor potentate was assassinated and with this single death nations found reason enough to stage an orgy of bloodbaths across Europe which resulted to the death of millions, most of them young men in the prime of their lives. The manner this war was conducted even looked more foolish: the soldiers dug trenches, built fortifications and set up machine gun nests. They rain bombs on each other. On quieter days snipers shoot at those who make the mistake of peeping out of the trenches. One of these was the brilliant short story writer Hector Hugh Munro (aka "Saki") who, during that very dark morning of 14 November 1916 at the front was shot to death by a sniper after warning another soldier with his last words: "Put that bloody cigarette out."

And when these burrowing men of war wanted to have more deaths they charge en masse to their adversaries' position upon a long whistle while the other side mows them down with enthusiastic machine gun fire.

That was, of course, the first world war. The Battle of Stalingrad happened during the second, not the first, world war. But world war two's roots reach back to world war one where Germany was defeated, humiliated, and its people made to suffer so much economically that when a nutcase named Adolf Hitler presented himself as the Father of the Nation who will lead its people to their former glory they, who were tired of their hunger and poverty and of being kicked around lapped up the rhetorics of this madman and placed him and his murderous thugs into power.

This is the story of the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany. Hitler assembled an invasion force of 4 million troops (at Stalingrad around 50,000 Soviet soldiers even defected and fought against their former comrades), 7,000 field guns, over 2,000 planes, 3,350 tanks and 600,000 horses to tow guns, ambulances and ration wagons. Assembly point was a long line from Finland to the Black Sea.

It was a sight of breathtaking beauty, a sight to behold, that great force when it began to move forward to take the vast country led by another mass murderer, Josef Stalin. At first it looked like the Germans would emerge victorious. But then came Stalingrad, too far forward from Germany, cut off from a viable supply line, during that too cold a winter. Stalingrad, like the man it was named after, was death. Death by bullets and bombs, death by starvation and sickness, death delivered by the enemy, death delivered by one's own people, premeditated death, death by mistake, death standing up, death while lying down, death while awake, death while asleep, quick death, agonizing death, death with honors, insignificant, forgotten death, corpses, corpses, corpses by tens of thousands each one like a seeming line of exclamation points emphazing to a deaf world the utter pointlessness of war.(less)

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Mar 28, 2013 Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is an excellent introduction to the military history of the Eastern Front during World War II for the average reader like myself, who might be well acquainted with the general history of World War II but is nevertheless unable to distinguish between, say, a brigade and a battalion. (Beevor provides definitions of all the important military formations in his introductory pages.)

Beevor's book is also, I would argue, a truly gripping and exciting account of the Battle of Stalingrad, an a...more

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Mar 03, 2013 Roland Allnach rated it 5 of 5 stars

I ventured into Beevor's 'Stalingrad' on two motivations: one, my grandfather witnessed some of the battle, and two, the fact that this book was written with access to Soviet records and first person accounts previously unavailable. This is not just about the titanic battle of Stalingrad, but Beevor anchors his telling with a preliminary account of the invasion of Soviet Russia and some of the battles that ensued in the German charge to the east. The scale, numbers, and savagery of this phase of...more

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Feb 18, 2013 Sam Dye rated it 5 of 5 stars

An exceptional book that personalizes this clash of Hitler and Stalin with the experiences of soldiers and civilians gleaned from their letters and many interviews and other sources. The insights into all levels of both organizations are very revealing, such as "Hitler's ability to manipulate generals was uncanny". (page 58) The most amazing to me was the story of Capt Behr picked by General Paulus and General Manstein to go to Hitler's Wolfsschanze to give the message that the "Kessel" was doom...more An exceptional book that personalizes this clash of Hitler and Stalin with the experiences of soldiers and civilians gleaned from their letters and many interviews and other sources. The insights into all levels of both organizations are very revealing, such as "Hitler's ability to manipulate generals was uncanny". (page 58) The most amazing to me was the story of Capt Behr picked by General Paulus and General Manstein to go to Hitler's Wolfsschanze to give the message that the "Kessel" was doomed. "Paulus had an obvious condidate for this mission in the form of Captain Winrich Behr, whose black panzer uniform with the Knight's Cross was likely to produce the right effect on the Fuhrer. And Behr, responsible for updating not only the situation map, but also all the facts and figures in reports, was one of the best-briefed officers at Sixth Army headquarters." (p. 342) Behr described the famine and exhaustion of the troops and pitiful shortage of food, fuel and ammunition and the wounded lying in the snow and Mannstein told him to tell that exactly to Hitler. Behr was interrupted at the start of his presentation by Hitler. "Behr already knew from his brother-in-law, Nicholas von Below, who was Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant, what the Furher's tactics were when a 'Cassandra' brought bad news. He always tried to control the conversation, imposing his version of events, and overwhelming his interlocutor." (p. 342) This happened but Behr then said he had to finish his message and as he was doing that including the growing desertions of German soldiers to the Russians. "Field Marshall Keitel, unable to bear such frankness in the Fuhrer's presence, shook his fist at Behr from behind Hitler's back in an attempt to silence him." (p. 344) "But when Behr came to the situation facing the Sixth Army, Hitler turned back to the great map dotted with little flags as if nothing had changed." (p 345) "I saw then that he had lost touch with reality. He lived in a fantasy world of maps and flags. For Behr who had been an enthusiastic and 'nationalistic young German officer', the revelation came as a shock. 'It was the end of all my illusions about Hitler. I was convinced that we would now lose the war.'" (page 345)(less)

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Feb 01, 2013 Chris Walker rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 11, 2012 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is probably the definitive account of the Battle for Stalingrad. The account covers the start of Operation Barbarossa. The campaign lasting almost two years that lead the 6th Army to the town of Stalingrad. It weaves several threads together. The sycophants in German high command, the reckless gambling of Hitler. The rampant paranoia of Stalin and the Stavka. As well as the tenuous German front from the Don to the Volga. The 6th army in Stalingrad and its commander General Paulus.

The 6th a...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Jesse Tooper rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of my favorite WWII Books, being a avid reader of WWII Lore, I consider myself somewhat if an expert......obviously. It's always beneficial to get both points of view, from battles (and wars), as the truth generally lies in the middle somewhere. This book does a phenomenal job of telling sides from Germans as well as Russians.
Being a key city for the Germans to take, and a point of not only pride, but necessity for the Russians, the battle of Stalingrad has always been 1 of the most intere...more

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May 19, 2011 Speedy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historia, ensayo

Con estos relatos pormenorizados uno se da cuenta de la increible estupidez de los altos mandos que provocan daños inimaginables para los soldados en el frente de batalla. Nadie se salva, desde los ineptos comandantes rusos hasta los rastreros alemanes; unos paranoicos por causa de Stalin o derechamente incompetentes, otros acobardados o hipnotizados por Hitler, rehusándose a ver lo evidente.

Las pequeñas historias de heroísmo e incluso de humanidad contrastan con el desprecio total a la vida, l...more

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Feb 15, 2009 Roger rated it 5 of 5 stars

Stalingrad was the battle that turned the tide in the struggle against the German forces in WWII. This battle cost over 1 million lives with both sides refusing to lose. The fierce fight over a ruined city is fully explored along with the in human conditions both sides struggled with. The cost to the civilian population was staggering and this was a true battle of total war. Both sides showed little mercy to their own soldiers with executions and inhuman cruelity to prisoners. The egos of Stalin...more

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Mar 26, 2013 Jan de Leeuw rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Although I do not care for military strategy and details about weapons, Beevor also gives us his usual details about personalities, about the common soldier, and about suffering. And there was a lot of suffering in and around Stalingrad. If Hell has nine circles, then this must have been close to the inner one. There is always the immense presence of Death, and the many ways to die, frozen stiff, starved and diseased. The story is like Verdun or the Somme, although maybe not as massively sensele...more

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Apr 07, 2009 P. rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is certainly a popular history, but it is well sourced. It felt a bit like a Cornelius Ryan book in terms of the number of personal anecdotes included in the narrative. The first several chapters are probably unnecessary if you already know the general outlines of World War Two and Operation Barbarossa history, but they read quickly regardless. The misery described in the last third of the book (from the formation of the Kessel through the post war fate of the few surviving prisoners) is ho...more

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Jun 13, 2012 Gary rated it 4 of 5 stars

I cannot comment on the historical accuracy of this book (e.g., whether it presents a conventional or more radical interpretation of particular events), nor can I compare it with other books on the siege of Stalingrad.
That aside, I can recommend this book to anyone seeking a well-written view of what has to be one of the biggest military losses in contemporary history. Aside from descriptions of troop movements, officers' meetings, close-range combat, and all the other things you might except fr...more I cannot comment on the historical accuracy of this book (e.g., whether it presents a conventional or more radical interpretation of particular events), nor can I compare it with other books on the siege of Stalingrad.
That aside, I can recommend this book to anyone seeking a well-written view of what has to be one of the biggest military losses in contemporary history. Aside from descriptions of troop movements, officers' meetings, close-range combat, and all the other things you might except from a battle history, Beevor also intersperses it with material from interviews with survivors, as well as diary fragments and quotes from letters home. The result is a horrifying, in-depth view into what the battle was like for those fighting it, rather than an analysis of anonymous divisions.

I greatly appreciated the human face put on German soldiers. While never ceasing to condemn the brutality of the Nazi regime, "Stalingrad" also reminds us that a large proportion of the army (perhaps even the majority, though I know too little about history to say that - it's just the sense I get from the book) were not rabid, anti-Semitic Nazis (or even members of the party), but human soldiers - and all that implies. In other words, capable of suffering and inflicting suffering (both of which they did in great amounts), capable of giving and accepting mercy (both of which they did in amounts surprising to one accustomed to the all-Germans-evil-people view of WWII).

But the clearest thing I gleaned from this book was the utter perverse, double-edged miracle of it all: The first "miracle:" that Hitler's army's managed to defeat anything at all, considering Hitler's poor military strategies coupled with his obsession with controlling all troop movements from afar and his inability to take advice. The second: the defense of Stalingrad (and the Soviet Union in general), considering Stalin's overbearing impatience and the utter brutality of the Soviet regime. For example, early in the battle for Stalingrad, a secondary line of soldiers was positioned behind the front line, except these were security agency members, and their job was to shot (!?!?) anyone thought to be retreating, In the early weeks of the battle, Stalin provided Hitler with stiff competition for who could kill the most Soviet soldiers.

"War is hell" goes the cliché, and this book shows that, in this particular case especially, we can add to that: "War is [unbelievably stupid, unnecessary] hell."(less)

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Apr 30, 2013 Christopher Remple rated it 5 of 5 stars

Beevor is a very conservative historian, but with a respect for facts and for the broader political forces that move history. Here he not so much explains the Soviet victory as recounts how it was done. Not the why, but the how. Even so, the reader can draw conclusions. The willingness to fight under impossible conditions to defend the Soviet Union against the encroachments of fascism, while not universal, was a key factor in their triumph over a well-trained and well-provisioned capitalist army...more

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Nov 12, 2011 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfic-history, nonfic-war

The story of the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on the Ostfront is itself so incredible and full of extremes of human experience on a scale that most modern people can't comprehend, that even a dry historic account will still hit you in the gut. Beevor's writing certainly is a bit dry (as is the audiobook narration), but he conveys the triumphant hubris of the the German war machine as it grinds through an ill-prepared Soviet Army hampered by its own paranoid leader, the desperate...more

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Feb 18, 2010 Matt rated it 3 of 5 stars

"You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is 'never get involved in a land war in Asia' - but only slightly less well-known is this: 'Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line'"!
-- Wallace Shawn as Vizzini in The Princess Bride

Never get involved in a land war in Asia. Or the European portion of Russia.

That's good advice.

For whatever reason, though, the lure of Russia - its vast steppes, its vast resources, its vast and bloody history - has...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, russia

This is a painful book to read, as it shows the horror of the war on both sides. The half-year battle for the streets of Stalingrad was an unremitting horror, with not only two armies, but thousands of civilians jammed into a city that was being bombed into rubble while everyone was starving or dying of thirst. (Apparently this book demonstrated the dangers of trying to substitute snow for water.)

Just when the battle for the streets of Stalingrad appeared to be turning into a stalemate, with Ge...more This is a painful book to read, as it shows the horror of the war on both sides. The half-year battle for the streets of Stalingrad was an unremitting horror, with not only two armies, but thousands of civilians jammed into a city that was being bombed into rubble while everyone was starving or dying of thirst. (Apparently this book demonstrated the dangers of trying to substitute snow for water.)

Just when the battle for the streets of Stalingrad appeared to be turning into a stalemate, with General Vassili Chuikov of the Soviet 62nd Army fighting Paulus's German Sixth Army to a virtual draw, Marshal Zhukov initiated an encircling movement that caught the Nazis unaware. Both Hitler and his generals were astonished that the Russians had so many more men, tanks, and planes when it had seemed that there was nothing left on the Russian side but stumbling starvelings. In a trice, it was the Sixth Army that turned into stumbling starvelings sans food, sans ammunition, sans fuel, sans everything.

Hitler forbade Paulus to surrender. It was his fervent wish that the whole army commit suicide so that they could go down as heroes. They didn't: tens of thousands surrendered. But Hitler and Goebbels tried to buffalo the German people into thinking that the whole army was wiped out.

In the battle between Hitler and Stalin, it appeared that the Russian was the more reasonable. Hitler had no notion whatsoever of supplying a large army that was thousands of miles from its base in Central Europe. He just thought that his armies could supply themselves by living off the newly occupied territories. That worked to a certain extent, but how does an army make its tanks and cannon work without replacement equipment? And what about ammunition? As the Eastern Front collapsed toward the Volga, the Russians were closer to their base of supply in the Urals and around Moscow, while the Germans were dangerously stretched.

Antony Beevor has written an excellent history which should be required reading for those who think that D-Day was what broke the back of the Nazi war machine. The Wehrmacht units on the Ostfront would have paid to serve against the Americans and the British, instead of dying by the millions on the pitiless steppes of Russia.(less)

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Sep 30, 2012 Nicolas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Me recuerda a World War Z, un libro de ficción, con crónicas armadas a partir de sobrevivientes a una pandemia global zombie. Claramente World War Z se basó en este tipo de obras al momento de escribirse. Pero a diferencia de ese libro, este es un retrato histórico sobre la batalla por Stalingrado y todos los sucesos que llevaron a esa instancia decisiva de la guerra en el frente oriental. Se basa en cartas, diarios personales, informes militares y una gran cantidad de documentación y testimonio...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Ian Kemp rated it 5 of 5 stars

A comprehensive account of the turning point of WW2 in Europe. It's the human stories of this new and ghastly form of conflict which make it a great read. After exposure to the relentless, dislocating existance in the ruins of Stalingrad, the reader can almost feel the exultation on hearing the opening salvo of the great encirclement which led to the isolation of the German 6th army and ultimately the defeat of Nazi germany.

As a child growing up in Western Europe I had often seen footage of the...more

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Sep 11, 2009 Dr. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: world-war-2

The best book outlining a single battle that I have ever come across, ever. Beevor is a part of a new generation of WW2 historians who is rapidly and earnestly breaking down the western view of the war for the sake of something more objective. Read it and it will haunt you. Be careful, seriously impactful gave me fucking nightmares, not shitting you. Few authors have ever been able to put forth the true horrors of war in a way that really hit home and even begin to hint at the unspeakable things...more The best book outlining a single battle that I have ever come across, ever. Beevor is a part of a new generation of WW2 historians who is rapidly and earnestly breaking down the western view of the war for the sake of something more objective. Read it and it will haunt you. Be careful, seriously impactful gave me fucking nightmares, not shitting you. Few authors have ever been able to put forth the true horrors of war in a way that really hit home and even begin to hint at the unspeakable things that humans are able to sink to in combat. And this is non-fiction!

Stalingrad is probably the single most brutal battle in all of history. Imagine the nazi war machine that had stormed across france, belgium, holland, north africa, norway, yougoslovia, greece, the western soviet states etc. suddenly coming to a grinding halt at this city on the volga river. That war machine that was the bane of entire nations and huge swaths of land now found itself in a grinding fight for a tiny little strip of factories, homes, and warehouses right on the rivers edge. 600,000 german troops of the 6th army would enter stalingrad and something like 5,000 would ever make it home. Not to mention the countless numbers of soviet defenders who were hastily and wontonly thrown into the fray to die holding objectives that to our eyes seems so superficial, a house here, a grain elevator there.

By the end the nazis would find themselves completely surrounded, closed off from supply or reinforcement. Stuck scratching out a living in the burned out shell of a city which they themselves had come to destroy. By the end most would be frostbitten all over their bodies. Their skin would take on a sickly greenish color from a lack of any sort of nutrition or sufficient amounts of water. All would be sick, wounded, in some stage of dying. The only orders they would receive would be to hold fast, to the last man, die where they stood.

Its so impossible to comprehend but Beevor does it amazingly. You will never be able to hear mention of this battle again without shuddering.

The Fall of Berlin by Antony beevor is this books logical sequel and is the same caliber. (less)

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Jan 21, 2012 Makifat added it

Shelves: 20th, cent, military, ww, 2

The harrowing story of the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia and the seige of Stalingrad. The Soviets, wallowing in their own misery, tenaciously held the burned out ruins of the city, forcing the Nazis into a winter seige, during which the Soviets turned the tables by encircling the Nazis, letting guns, bitter cold, and starvation take its toll. Deprivations on both sides were horrendous, with the Germans getting the worst of it. One can understand why some believe that hell is a cold place.[retur...more

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Dec 19, 2011 Sandra rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-biography

I'm presently on a WWII kick, and this certainly fills in some blanks. The author is to be commended for the prodigious amount of research he did, even if the swarm of figures, dates, events, people make this book vert difficult to read. I felt completely overwhelmed a good part of the time. There is detail piled on detail, and a fair amount of going back and forward, and redundancy suggesting the need for better editing. But then the scale of this offensive is almost beyond belief, so I suppose...more

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Oct 07, 2012 Lee rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

Call me odd, but I've never been particularly fond of Hitler or Stalin. Controversial as that opinion may be, it was only reinforced by Antony Beevor's Stalingrad.

The Battle of Stalingrad was both one of the bloodiest in world history and — which says something about WWII — the second bloodiest conflict of the second World War. (The first was, predictably, the siege of Leningrad.) Quite what would have happened if the Soviet and German generals had been in charge of their respective armies is un...more Call me odd, but I've never been particularly fond of Hitler or Stalin. Controversial as that opinion may be, it was only reinforced by Antony Beevor's Stalingrad.

The Battle of Stalingrad was both one of the bloodiest in world history and — which says something about WWII — the second bloodiest conflict of the second World War. (The first was, predictably, the siege of Leningrad.) Quite what would have happened if the Soviet and German generals had been in charge of their respective armies is unclear, but I suspect the death toll would have been somewhat less than its ultimate figure of over a million. But the generals were not in charge. Hitler had been so successful at weeding out any independence in his military leaders that they were afraid to do anything without his say-so. Stalin, meanwhile, saw conspiracies everywhere and in every suggestion by his generals. This is neatly highlighted early on in Stalingrad when the German advance on Moscow is being discussed. A Soviet reconnaissance pilot spotted a twelve mile convoy of Panzers heading towards the capital and radioed it in. Unwilling to believe this, Stalin ordered a second pilot to be sent out. The second pilot corroborated the first pilot's report. Still unwilling to accept this, a third pilot was sent out. When the third pilot again reported the huge incoming convoy, Stalin's reaction was to demand the pilot's commander be arrested for panic-mongering.

The two dictators would presumably have loved Command and Conquer. Both seem to have sat in their armchairs before a neat map showing where all their units were. Aha! they said, if we move these divisions here and those corps there then we'll surround the enemy and be victorious! A general with experience might have pointed out that moving several thousand men and several hundred tanks from point A to point B involved more in real life than pushing a counter across a map, in reality there were minor inconveniences like food, fuel, equipment, and the issue that real soldiers need time and energy to traverse the land. But any general unwise enough to actually make a suggestion contrary to either of the leader's commands tended to be ignored at best, arrested at worst.

Whoever “won” at Stalingrad (and like the War itself, it's not clear that the victors came out of the battle in much better shape than the defeated), it was always going to be in spite of the commander-in-chief, not thanks to them. In the event, Stalin's desperation to not retreat beyond the Volga river along with his desire to save the city named after him seem to have injected some sense into him, and he became somewhat more willing to listen to his military advisers as the battle went on. Hitler had no such epiphany and the fate of the Sixth Army was sealed.

Antony Beevor has done a good job in explaining the immediate history leading up to the battle, although his discussion of the aftermath is almost entirely about the fate of the prisoners of war, with few specifics given about the importance of the battle in the context of the War.

The brunt of the work is about the battle itself. Beevor has trawled all the available sources and it does show, although the reluctance of the Russian government to release a lot of their files is somewhat limiting, as is the unavoidable problem of people altering their stories after the event to cover up perceived atrocities. The battle was huge and it was complex. But as Tolstoy says in War and Peace, a battle is determined by the actions of countless individual soldiers not the actions of one great general. Beevor seems to agree with this philosophy so a lot of the battle is described in little vignettes: snippets from letters sent home, brief eye witness reports, a datum here and there from the mass of available (and contradictory) statistics. The end result can feel a bit like a whole bunch of snippets glued together, which can be somewhat jarring when we again zoom out to the overall structure of the battle. This larger scale picture is oftentimes confusing, albeit this is hardly unavoidable. Beevor often describes the movements individual divisions, corps, et al. and refers to them by name, which can lead to sentences like “The 43rd Infantry Division then moved to outflank the 273rd Rifle Division, but was forced to retreat after bombardment by the 627th Artillery battalion.” Military buffs who can remember all the individual parts of the Sixth and Red Army would no doubt happily see all this in their mind's eye. For my part I had to keep reading until either a Panzer division was mentioned, allowing me to figure out which side were the Germans and then track back, or wait for a blatantly German or Russian name to be mentioned, or as a last resort find one of the mentioned divisions in the Appendix, which lists all the involved groups. Short of prefacing every Division's name with either “the German” or “the Soviet”, which would be pretty grating pretty quickly, I don't suppose this is really a solvable problem.

Antony Beevor does a good job at humanising a struggle in which so many inhuman events occurred. The Battle of Stalingrad is perhaps too complex and now too distant to ever be fully understood, but at least now I understand a little better the battle that changed the War.(less)

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Aug 11, 2012 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

While I don't normally enjoy military histories, I liked this book a great deal. Antony Beevor reconstructs the battle in extensive detail, looking not just at the national leaders and top generals, but also at the experiences of ordinary soldier. Overall, the book is an extremely engaging one-volume introduction in English to a very long, complicated, and brutal battle--a battle that really marked a turning point in both the Second World War and 20th century European history. My only complaint...more

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Feb 22, 2012 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

Superb book on the battle that marked the beginning of the end for Germany's Wehrmacht. It is a chilling read, particularly with respect to how the Russian military and political commisars treated their own people, civilians and soldiers alike. The NKVD alone killed over 13K of their own, making one consider their plight: death from the front or death from the back. In one account, a Russian officer, in order to make a point about the penalty of retreating, simply lined up a group of his soldier...more

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Feb 21, 2013 Rob Cheney added it

A wonderful account of a monumental struggle of epic proportions. Should be read in conjunction with Martin Sixsmith's "Russia A 1000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East" to attempt to grasp the historical origins of the Russian people's capacity to accept loss and suffering. The callous and casually cruel behavior (an almost inhuman disregard of human life and suffering) by both Hitler and Stalin comes shining through.

Small individual anecdotes and personal moments are interspersed with the huge pa...more

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Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943

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