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Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943

Antony Beevor

4.31 · Rating details · 29,271 ratings · 1,040 reviews

The Battle of Stalingrad was not only the psychological turning point of World War II: it also changed the face of modern warfare. Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle.

In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the f ...more

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Paperback, 494 pages

Published May 1st 1999 by Penguin Books (first published July 1st 1998)

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Feb 06, 2010 Matt rated it liked it

Shelves: world-war-ii-europe, world-war-ii

"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 11, 2012 Jim rated it it was amazing · 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 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. ...more

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Oct 16, 2020 Stefania Dzhanamova rated it it was amazing

Shelves: wwii

Antony Beevor's book is a compelling, meticulously researched study of the Battle of Stalingrad.

The first time the German people heard of the city of Stalingrad as a military objective was only two weeks before Hitler, who had never wanted his troops to become involved in street-fighting in Moscow or Leningrad, became determined to sieze this city "at any price." As Beevor explains, the events on the Caucasus Front, supposedly the Führer's main priority, played a major role in his decision. On Antony Beevor's book is a compelling, meticulously researched study of the Battle of Stalingrad.

The first time the German people heard of the city of Stalingrad as a military objective was only two weeks before Hitler, who had never wanted his troops to become involved in street-fighting in Moscow or Leningrad, became determined to sieze this city "at any price." As Beevor explains, the events on the Caucasus Front, supposedly the Führer's main priority, played a major role in his decision. On 7 September, a day when Heider noted "satisfying progress at Stalingrad", Hitler displayed his exasperation at the failure to advance in the Caucasus. He refused to accept that Field Marshal List didn't have enough troops for the task.
After the triumphs in Poland, Scandinavia, and France, Beevor explains, Hitler was often ready to despise "mundane requirements", such as fuel supplies and manpower shortages, "as if he were above the normal material constraints of war." When General Alfred Jodl, having just returned from a visit to List's headquarters, pointed out to the Führer that List had only followed his orders, Hitler screamed, "That's a lie!" and stormed out. Beevor argues that this outburst had brought the Führer "to a sort of psychological frontier.": General Warlimont was so shocked by Hitler's "long stare of burning hate" that he thought "he has realized that his fatal gamble is over, that Soviet Russia is not going to be beaten in this second attempt."

According to Beevor, Hitler probably did sense the truth, but he still couldn't accept it. The Volga was cut and Stalingrad's war industries destroyed – both the goals defined in Operation Blue (the main Nazi offensive in southern Russia). Yet, he now desired to capture the city named after Stalin, as though this in itself would achieve the subjugation of the enemy by other means. "The dangerous dreamer had turned to symbolic victory for compensation," writes Beevor.

As he shows, one or two spectacular successes sustained the illusion that Stalingrad "would be the crucible in which to prove the superiority of German might." On the north front, Russians sent in Lend-Lease American tanks, which with their thin protection, proved easier to knock out. The Soviet crews complained, "The tanks are no good. The valves go to pieces, the engine overheats and the transmission is no use." This is the reason why Count von Strachwitz, the commander of the 16th Panzer Division, destroyed more than a hundred of them, thus achieving the needed "spectacular victory."
However, although Soviet attacks at this point were appallingly wasteful and incompetent, there could be no doubt about the determination to defend Stalingrad at any cost. It was a resolve that more than matched the determination of the invader. "The hour of courage has struck on the clock..." quotes Beevor Anna Akhmatova's poem. As he also reveals, since the fall of Rostov, any means of igniting resistance had become permissible: on September 8, a picture in Stalingrad Front newspaper showed "a frightened girl with her limbs bound. 'What if your beloved girl is tied up like this by fascists?' said the caption. 'First they'll rape her insolently, then throw her under a tank. Advance warrior. Shoot the enemy. Your duty is to prevent the violator from raping your girl.'"
So, although when the first phase of the German onslaught began on September 13, the Germans made progress into the western edge of the city, capturing the small airfield and some barracks, the fighting proved to be much harder than they'd expected. Many privately realized that they might well be spending the winter in Stalingrad, mentions Beevor.

The struggle became especially intense for the Mamaev Kurgan. If the Germans took it, they could control the Volga, so they counterattacked again and again for days. Yet, General Rodimtsev's troops managed to hold on to the Kurgan, and the German 295th Infantry Division was "fought to a standstill." "Their losses were so heavy," describes Beevor, "that companies were merged. Officer casualties were particularly high, largely due to Russian snipers. After less than two weeks in the line, a company in Colonel Korfes's regiment of the 295th Infantry Division was on the its third commander, a young lieutenant."

Gradually, German soldiers, "red-eyed with exhaustion from the hard fighting, and mourning more comrades than they ever imagined", were losing their victorious mood. Hitler's frustrations over the lack of success in the Caucasus and at Stalingrad, meanwhile, reached its zenith when he dismissed General Haider, the chief of the Army General Staff. This dismissal, Beevor asserts, marked the tragic end of the general staff as an independent planning body. In addition, Hitler had said that with the Sixth Army "he could storm the heavens", yet Stalingrad still did not fall...

According to Beevor, the fighting in Stalingrad was remarkable because it represented a whole new form of warfare, concentrated "in the ruins of civillian life." The waste of war – shell cases, burnt-out tanks, and grenade boxes – was mixed with the wreckages of family homes. Soviet writer Vasily Grossman depicted "fighting in the brick-strewn, half-demolished rooms and corridors of apartment blocks, where there might stoll be a vase on the table, or a boy's homework open on the table." German infantrymen hated house-to-house combat, narrates Beevor. They found it "psychologically disorientating." During the last phases of the September battles, both sides had struggled to capture a warehouse on the Volga bank. At one point, it was "like a layered cake with Germans on the top floor, Russians below them, and more Germans underneath them." Often the enemy was unrecognizable, "with every uniform impregnated by the same dun-coloured dust."

On top of that, German generals did not even imagine what awaited their divisions inside the ruined city. As Beevor explains, since they lost their Blitzkrieg priorities, they were in many ways thrown back to WWI techniques. For instance, the Sixth Army had to respond to Soviet tactics with "storm-wedges" introduced in 1918: "assault groups of ten men armed with a machine-gun, light mortar and flame-throwers for clearing bunkers, cellars, sewers."
Thus, Antony Beevor shows that the fighting in Stalingrad was extremely terrifying. It possessed "savage intimacy," which horrified German generals, who felt they were rapidly losing control over events. "The enemy is invisible," wrote General Strecker to a friend. "Ambushes out of basements, wall remnants, hidden bunkers, and factory ruins produce heavy casualties among our troops."
Much of the fighting now consisted not of major attacks, but of relentless little conflicts, and the war turned into "stationary annihilation." German troops believed that they had been lured into a trap.

Antony Beevor's brilliant work succeeds in showing the experience of troops on both sides. The author draws upon a wide range of material, from Russian archives to war diaries, personal accounts, letters, and NKVD interrogations of German POWs. He creates a no-holds-bared account not only of the battle itself, with its logistics, strategies, and reality, but also of extraordinary events such as disertion of Soviet soldiers, incompetence, self-inflicted wounds, and drunkenness. For example, he reveals the shocking fact that the Soviet authorities executed around 13,500 of their own soldiers at Stalingrad, a demonstration of the brutal coercion used against diserters by the NKVD.
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege is a very well written history of the ideologically important battle. My only complaint is that it's awfully short of maps. Otherwise, I highly recommend it to all WWII buffs. ...more

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May 05, 2013 E. G. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, 4-star, antony-beevor, own, uk-ireland

List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Preface to the New Edition
Preface

--Stalingrad

Appendix A: German and Soviet Orders of Battle, 19 November 1942
Appendix B: The Statistical Debate: Sixth Army Strength in the Kessel
References
Source Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

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Nov 22, 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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Jun 12, 2009 'Aussie Rick' rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ww2, military-history

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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Nov 02, 2019 Steve rated it it was amazing

As with Mr. Beevor’s The Fall of Berlin 1945, Stalingrad is an excellent book, well written and researched. I have three primary thoughts:

First, to synthesize the standard American narrative of the Second World War’s European Theatre, it was the United States who broke the back of Nazi Germany, rescuing, yet again, the French (and others) from the Germans. It was the United States who provided substantial material support to Russia, significantly enhancing their ability to defeat Germany. While As with Mr. Beevor’s The Fall of Berlin 1945, Stalingrad is an excellent book, well written and researched. I have three primary thoughts:

First, to synthesize the standard American narrative of the Second World War’s European Theatre, it was the United States who broke the back of Nazi Germany, rescuing, yet again, the French (and others) from the Germans. It was the United States who provided substantial material support to Russia, significantly enhancing their ability to defeat Germany. While some of this narrative aligns with the historical record, it appears that it was Russia who turned the tide of Germany’s efforts with a monumental human sacrifice and that momentous turn occurred at Stalingrad. Further, Russians bore something like 60-80% of the overall allied burden in the Second World War, a thought that seems far from the minds of my fellow citizens today.

Second, Hitler and Stalin appeared as undeclared contestants in an evil brutality challenge, with the result being a tie. How do we process the overwhelming inhumanities that occurred during the years of that war, Stalingrad in particular? Perhaps we now have some consciousness for the absolute boundaries of the miseries we all are capable of inflicting on fellow humans given the right conditions? Yet typing those words feels wholly insufficient, even a mockery, given the collective amount of suffering so many endured for so long.

Third, I would like to believe that the world has moved past the horrors Mr. Beevor described. Unfortunately, we have not. Recent events in Yemen and Burma, among others, remind us that collectively we appear ignorant of the past, that somehow it is our nature to render appalling harm, regardless of what history has taught us. Additionally, the popular acceptance for the nationalistic demagoguery and propaganda used by political leaders today, though often of a milder caliber than that used by Stalin and Hitler, suggests a disregard for the lessons of history, maybe even an unwillingness to study history in the first place. Humanism indeed has its obstacles. ...more

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Apr 19, 2010 Sarah rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, wwii, russia

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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Sep 16, 2016 Stephen rated it it was amazing

Stunning account of perseverance, deprivation and stupidity surrounding one of the most pivotal battles of WW II. In the summer of 1942 German axis forces descended on the small city of Stalingrad, Russia, pollution 400,000. The city was of no real significance other than it carried Joesph Stalin's name. Germany thought it would be an easy win for their propaganda machine. It proved otherwise. Over the next 9 months, the Axis threw roughly 1 MM well armed expertly trained soldiers, supported by ...more

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Jan 12, 2020 Evan rated it really liked it

Shelves: nazi, world-war-ii, 2019-reads, warfare, history-euro, epic, russian-soviet-etc, freezin-ur-ass-off

Did you read the one about THE END OF THE WORLD but the name, ANTONY BEEVOR, was above the title and in as-big or bigger type? Antony Beevor is such a brand I think Penguin Books should just go full bore and give him an official logo in lightning-bolt font like some hair band of the '80s.

My rating of four stars is essentially meaningless. Three stars seems too severe but five seems too generous. Should you read it? Yes, but not as your first book on Stalingrad. Go to William Craig's Enemy at the ...more

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Jan 10, 2009 Mike rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: military, non-fiction, ww2, history

My first Beevor, it was outstanding. I will be coming back for more. Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943 gets 5 Stars for the epic battle history presented here. What Beevor conveys better than others is the sheer brutality of the eastern front and the Stalingrad battle. While millions die, Beevor brings the tragedy down to the individual level. Atrocity is matched by atrocity until you mourn the death of each side while seeing each side having justification. The Nazis started it but the So ...more

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Feb 03, 2018 Bettie rated it really liked it

Shelves: tbr-busting-2019, nonfiction, ukraine, paper-read, russia, war, published-1998, wwii, banned-books, autumn-2019

Description: The Battle of Stalingrad was not only the psychological turning point of World War II: it also changed the face of modern warfare. Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle.

In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five-month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold Stalingrad at any cost; then, in an astonishing revers ...more

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Mar 20, 2013 Vuk Prlainović rated it did not like it

It's not a bad book, but as a proclaimed "historical analysis" I can hardly give it more than one star. Reasons include:
- Heavy anti-Soviet bias. The author tries very hard to hammer in the notion of every Red Army soldier being a drunken lout. "Slavic peasant" phrasing is uncomfortably common, and it makes you question the author's intentions.
- Use of individual anecdotes to portray behaviors depicted in those anecdotes as common and regular.
- Unfounded claims, the most jarring of which being 1 ...more

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Jun 15, 2008 John rated it it was amazing

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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Jun 25, 2017 Karl Lazanski rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: eastern-front

What can one say about this book! Antony Beevor has written a tome that will last the ages.

I found this book so easy to read and follow, but also exciting and majorly informative. I came into this book, not having much knowledge of Stalingrad and the battle/s surrounding it. There is a lot of personal narrative from soldiers on both sides that gives one a very heart wrenching and sometimes grotesque idea of the pain and struggle that not only the soldiers went through, but also the civilians tha ...more

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Jun 03, 2018 Rohit Salgaonkar rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

~ Stalingrad - For when the attackers became the besieged.

At the foremost, the Siege of Stalingrad was perhaps the most strategically insignificant and inconsequential conquest after the failure of Operation Barbarossa, however, as events transpired gradually it became one of the most vital epicenter which would dictate how the finale of this prolonged turmoil of a war would end.

My recent fascination with WW2 in particular, has led me to rate it as a modern equivalent of the epic Mahabharata and ~ Stalingrad - For when the attackers became the besieged.

At the foremost, the Siege of Stalingrad was perhaps the most strategically insignificant and inconsequential conquest after the failure of Operation Barbarossa, however, as events transpired gradually it became one of the most vital epicenter which would dictate how the finale of this prolonged turmoil of a war would end.

My recent fascination with WW2 in particular, has led me to rate it as a modern equivalent of the epic Mahabharata and there are countless tales and lessons which one can adopt as precepts in their life. The most profound lesson is derived from the actions of Adolf Hitler, it educated me that it is extremely important to discern that thin line between obsession and plain, outright, and morbid megalomania. For such delusions only serves to bring chaos, isolation and self-destruction. Hitler firmly believed that one smash at the door and the whole damn rotten structure of Russia will fall, the difference between a visionary and a dreamer. The single most important difference between the outcome of the war, as the writer also points out, is that Stalin’s greatest advantage over Hitler was his lack of ideological shame. (The employment of women workforce in operating the anti-aircraft guns and in Russian factories at the time when Hitler couldn't even fathom such an idea qualifies equally if not more.)

~ What if you could change it back? - 11.22.63

History and the attraction to it, is primarily because it gives us an opportunity to explore and wonder, borrowing from the concept of Stephen King's book '11.22.63', the 'What If' situations. What if, during the final stages of Operation Barbarossa, when time was of the essence, the Army Groups South, North and Central coalesced into one unit and struck Moscow together? How drastic would have been the outcome if the eastern front of the Russian Army to safeguard against the Japanese invasion, wouldn't have been diverted soon enough? What if, Hitler wouldn't have halted the march of his army to annihilate the British and French troops? It is amusing to think what sequence of events would have followed if tides were turned in some of these events.

~ "Yes, Stannis is a good soldier, everyone knows that; so was Robert! Tell me something, do you still believe good soldiers make good kings?" - Renly Baratheon

Hitler's persona and aura undermines the formidable men like Goebbels, Himmler, Bormann, Speer and Goering who surrounded him. Leaving behind the ideology part and the personal vices and shortcomings of these men, it would be remiss not to admire that they were brilliant executioners and taskmasters and some of them were an individual power-center in themselves. In amidst of such brilliance, one most intriguing and outlandish personality was Friedrich Paulus, Commander of the German Sixth Army. He reminds us that hard-work, cleverness, conscientiousness are yes admirable qualities in an individual, however, if you are placing the fate of millions of people in a person, the qualities of decisiveness, command experience and toughness should outweigh any other qualities in times of war. The 'Ghost of Stalingrad' as he was referred to later, because of the state of physical and moral disintegration he was in during the closing stages, is someone you feel empathy towards. He did not want to go down in history as the general responsible for the greatest military disaster of all time, yet he was too obedient and dutiful of a person who respected the hierarchy of command and didn't dare go against it. That brings me back to the 'What If?' situation, what if the command of the Sixth Army was bestowed upon a more assertive figure, the 'Desert Fox' himself, Erwin Rommel? I wonder.

~ 'The Winds of Winter' & 'A Dream of Spring'

Most acts of bravery from that siege never came to light, having disappeared with the death of witnesses. Sir Anthony Beevor delivers an outstanding account of such common civilians, the most lowest ranked soldiers and some high ranking officials like Richthofen and Chuikov through what surely must have been arduous research of personal diaries and letter communications. One panzer officer wrote 'Stalingrad is no longer a town. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure.' It raises the hair on your neck to read through all the agony and suffering, the starvation, the cannibalism, the bouts of typhus, jaundice, lice infestation, amputations, frost bites and above all the longing to be able to fly away, out of this inferno in which they had been abandoned. Fly away to home, to their family and to the warmth of their home. On a lighter note, it appears that the best of humor and sarcasm also does come in only such horrendous times. I particularly enjoyed the thought of what would happen if ‘Vanyusha tried to marry Katyusha’, the analogy of uneventful Christmas celebrations with the war and the satirical instructions to those returning home for leave on how to act civil.

Sir Anthony's work to summarize is a thoroughly detailed and assiduous narrative which provides a testament of what events transpired in southernmost Russia. It tell us that the soldiers in the end, didn't fight for Hitler or Stalin, they didn't fight of Nazism or Communism, but for a greater pride, a pride of their motherland. ...more

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Aug 22, 2013 Boudewijn rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, world-war-2, on-ipod, audio, english, downloaded

Good global overview of the Battle of Stalingrad, from both sides. Author is citing a lot from personal letters sent by Russian and German soldiers.

Read in 2013 | Re-read in 2020 (in Dutch)

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Feb 10, 2020 Igor Ljubuncic rated it it was amazing

Shelves: soviet-union, germany, history, military, antony-beevor, ww2

One word: visceral.

Antony Beevor does not disappoint. He delivers a nonstop, no-pause total war tale of one of the most brutal, iconic sieges of all times. From euphoria of the blitzkrieg to disillusioned Wermacht soldiers dying with more lice than beard on their emaciated faces. From defeat and confusion among the Soviet troops to a sense of justified vengeance.

Every fact of the story is explored. The civilian population, the sycophantic generals, the ordinary soldiers in the freezing trenches, One word: visceral.

Antony Beevor does not disappoint. He delivers a nonstop, no-pause total war tale of one of the most brutal, iconic sieges of all times. From euphoria of the blitzkrieg to disillusioned Wermacht soldiers dying with more lice than beard on their emaciated faces. From defeat and confusion among the Soviet troops to a sense of justified vengeance.

Every fact of the story is explored. The civilian population, the sycophantic generals, the ordinary soldiers in the freezing trenches, the scheming of the politicians, the gruesome scenes of starvation, mutilation and relentless combat through mud and snow. This is a fantastic book, and more than once, you'll feel your guts twitch, which is unexpected for nonfiction. The fact you get so emotionally invested also shows vivid and terrible the siege of Stalingrad was. It's also a testament to great writing.

I guess everyone is familiar with the story of Stalingrad at some level, and we've all seen the movies. But there's so much more to it. The focus is on fighting, less so on what happened away from the immediate frontlines. The failed airlift, the slow dying, the bathhouses on one bank of the Volga and the slaughterhouse on the other, the letters from soldiers. Antony also places focus on the rivalry and hatred among the different German allies, like the Hungarians, the Romanians and the Italians, as well as their Soviet collaborators (Hiwis). He talks a lot about how the professional officers saw the entire campaign as a catastrophe, and yet, they didn't manage to generate the critical mass of willpower to disobey Hitler's wild fantasies. Then, there's the captivity of more than 100,000 Axis troops, and the years they spent in Soviet labor camps.

There's nothing even remotely cheerful about this story. It's a tragedy on every level, and the author does his best to put you in the middle of it. For a literary work, written some 65 years after the actual battle, this is a remarkable achievement.

Highly recommended.

I'm now going to read Berlin, by Antony Beevor. Kind of makes sense.

Igor ...more

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May 31, 2015 Walter Mendoza rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

The battle of Stalingrad was the most important of WWII, the author tell us about the siege of Stalingrad; an very detailed story of the battle and point of view of soldier. The book count with an excellent research, well written like a novel. You have a good look of both armies and their commanders, focuses on the details tactical and strategic of the battle, about decisions of the generals. However the book it barely mentioned the military aviation but this is one the best books of the battle ...more

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May 18, 2013 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it liked it

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 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. ...more

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Dec 17, 2018 Jim rated it it was amazing

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British historian Antony Beefor has written a complete and objective history of the titanic Battle of Stalingrad during WWII. He certainly did his research, drawing upon the once secret Russian archives as well as German records. The result is very readable, a narrative that moves along swiftly, so that at times I couldn't put it down. And we know the ending--the Soviet Army's defeat and destruction of the German Sixth Army in the city of Stalingrad in Russia. I would argue that it was not only British historian Antony Beefor has written a complete and objective history of the titanic Battle of Stalingrad during WWII. He certainly did his research, drawing upon the once secret Russian archives as well as German records. The result is very readable, a narrative that moves along swiftly, so that at times I couldn't put it down. And we know the ending--the Soviet Army's defeat and destruction of the German Sixth Army in the city of Stalingrad in Russia. I would argue that it was not only the turning point of the Eastern Front, but of the entire war. In the previous year (1941), the Germans had been stopped before Moscow and they had to struggle to survive the brutal Russian winter. In the summer of 1942, the German blitzkrieg of panzers (tanks) and Stuka dive bombers drove across Russia to reach the mighty Volga River--and Stalingrad, the city named for the Soviet dictator on the west side of the river. By fighting in the city, street by street, block by block, and even house by house, the Germans threw away their great advantage of mobility. The Soviet troops dug into the rubble of the bombed-out city and fought desperately for time. Stalin wanted to hold the Germans within the city while building reserves to mount a counter-offensive in the winter. That happened with Operation Uranus in November, as Soviet forces broke through the allied Romanian armies on the German flank--and trapped the 6th Army within the city that it had been fighting so hard to conquer. Then began a nightmarish ordeal as the Germans suffered from frostbite, disease, and even starvation during a siege that finally ended at the end of January, 1943. 91,ooo prisoners were taken including 22 German generals and that included Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, the commander. But even more than the horrendous losses, it was the psychological impact on Hitler and Germany that made Stalingrad the war's turning point. Victory was no longer assured and, in fact, Germany would need to fight for its life. Beevor gives us a lot of images and scenes that leave a lasting impression. Here is one scene-"These defeated remnants of the Sixth Army.....shivering in their inadequate greatcoats....were herded into long columns of march. A group of survivors from the 297th Infantry Division was confronted by a Russian officer, who pointed at the ruins around and yelled at them: "That's how Berlin is going to look." (pg. 387) ...more

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May 04, 2018 Pramodya rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

An excellent account of the Stalingrad battle on all perspectives. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

It recounts the battle and the importance of Stalingrad as a turning point in the war between the nazi Germany and the allied powers as well as the experiences of soldiers of both Russian and German soldiers.

Brilliantly researched and written down in a way that the reader gets a clear picture of the situation before ,during and the aftermath of the battle.
The author does not hide back fro ...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Ted rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history-ww-ii, classics, beach-serious-nonfiction

This is surely one of the best, if not the best, books written on the siege of Stalingrad. The description of the siege, from both the German and Soviet perspectives, is quite unforgettable. The battle was joined on 23 August 1942 and concluded over five months later with the encirclement of the assaulting German Sixth Army by Russian reinforcements. Casualty estimates are always difficult for a battle of this size, but most agree that over a million lives were lost on both sides. Many civilians ...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Anthony Ryan rated it really liked it

Beevor manages to capture the scale of a truly titanic struggle without forgetting the human element. A powerful and often harrowing picture what happens when two dictatorships go to war. The Soviet Union may have been a dreadful place to live, but it should be remembered that its people did, once upon a time, save the world from something worse.

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Feb 14, 2018 Aristotle rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018-reading-list, history, world-war-two

Stalingrad by Antony Beevor

Orlanda Figes, another popular Historian, describes Stalingrad as ‘a tour de force’ and I must say that I agree. Beevor’s book is a well put together no-holes-barred retelling of the fateful battle that involved several million individuals in the span of just over 5 months. The paced and procedural telling of the lead up, battle and aftermath week after week grips the heart and did a great job of making me better consolidate, but hardly improve, my understanding of the Stalingrad by Antony Beevor

Orlanda Figes, another popular Historian, describes Stalingrad as ‘a tour de force’ and I must say that I agree. Beevor’s book is a well put together no-holes-barred retelling of the fateful battle that involved several million individuals in the span of just over 5 months. The paced and procedural telling of the lead up, battle and aftermath week after week grips the heart and did a great job of making me better consolidate, but hardly improve, my understanding of the decisions and experiences that made up one of the most monumentally hellish and gigantic battles in human history. Originally published in 1998, upon the opening of many once top secret Russian war records, Stalingrad makes full use of all sources available to tell the story in a wholeheartedly objective way, from both sides. I think the Sabaton song managed to capture the battled best:

“Stalin’s fortress on fire

Is this madness or Hell

The sound of the mortars

The music of death

We’re playing the devil’s symphony

Our violins are guns conducted from Hell”

Without further adieu, let’s get into my thoughts.

The book itself is divided into 5 parts, with 2 in-depth appendixes at the end, to the joy of statistic lovers. Each part contains between 4 to 6 chapters from the start to the finish of the book. With two parts, or roughly a quarter of the entire reading, being dedicated to the lead up to the battle, first time readers can be well familiarized with the overheads of the War in the East before getting into it’s bloodiest battle. One thing I really enjoyed most about this book is it’s use of maps. Now, it’s not uncommon for books on Historical subjects to contains maps, but I found the maps in Stalingrad to be particularly descriptive and congruent with the subject matter. It was quite easy to line up exactly what I was reading with the maps in question.

Of course, a background knowledge of the second world war would be helpful coming into this type of book, but is very seriously not required. Beevor starts his book at the beginning of Barbarossa, and leads the reader through from the border, through Ukraine, all the way across the Steppe towards the ‘fateful city’. Throughout these chapters Beevor exercises a degree of suspense in the reader as he describes the procedural march towards Stalingrad. He does well to describe the hardships and atrocities along the way, along with the chain of decisions, engagements and strategic shifts which led to the creation of Case Blue and the drive for Stalingrad.

Beevor’s writing style is unassuming, many objects, concepts and individuals are given further explanation to inform curious readers. As you can tell, this is one of his most recurring qualities, and it really add to the ability to understand his book. However, as a more experienced History reader, I believe he weighed at times too heavily on the beginner explanations with not enough complex analysis that can be often seen in the works of Max Hastings or Richard Pipes. I believe that history books on any topic should always contain information and analysis for all levels of readers, people who are already familiar with the subject matter and those who are not. Stalingrad occasionally delves into deeper analysis of subjects, and even rarer so does provide arguments and counter-arguments to popular historical narratives, but I feel a stronger balance would have added to the book.

Finally, after all the lead up, Beevor starts addressing the Battle of Stalingrad itself starting in Part 3. Above all else, Beevor possesses a unique storytelling style that does well to make use of recurring information and anchoring concepts to ensure the narrative doesn’t become difficult to track, this I appreciated. By that, I mean that Beevor introduces certain people or formations, like the Austrian 44th Infantry Division, or Commissar Nikita Khrushchev, and will over the course of the book keep the reader occasionally updated on how these certain formations and people are engaging in the Battle of Stalingrad. Coupled with his overall narrative style, it makes for a very smooth and comfortable reading experience, excluding the subject matter of course. The most obvious qualities of his style is his regular use of quotes and anecdotal accounts from the people that were on the ground at the time, adding to the realism of the book.

I don’t want to spoil the subject matter of course, even though the battle itself is already widely researched and known, but I’ve essentially described what you’ll encounter for a good amount of the book. In summary, Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad is a well put together ‘tour de force’ of the infamous Battle which indubitably changed the course of the second world war and potentially human history. Like I mentioned before, I would have enjoyed some deeper analysis and review seen in other historical books but I doubt one becomes a bestseller through such a route. I found it a relatively easy read and would recommend it to first time history readers, but not for the faint of heart. The books 431 page length excluding the Appendixes took me roughly 15 hours to finish, in one long and arduous flight from Australia to Arabia. I would be happy giving it an 8/10. ...more

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May 09, 2013 Liam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-books, non-fiction, history, 2013, bought-2013

I've always been fascinated with modern history, especially World War II - it was my favourite subject and topic back in school. I would stay up late into the night reading up on various things from history (probably instead of doing my actual history homework) that interested me - I seem to remember spending a weekend doing nothing but reading about the Unification of Germany.

It's been a few years since I finished Year 12, and upon starting Stalingrad I was struck by how much I had missed readi I've always been fascinated with modern history, especially World War II - it was my favourite subject and topic back in school. I would stay up late into the night reading up on various things from history (probably instead of doing my actual history homework) that interested me - I seem to remember spending a weekend doing nothing but reading about the Unification of Germany.

It's been a few years since I finished Year 12, and upon starting Stalingrad I was struck by how much I had missed reading about history - and how I hadn't realised until that moment. There is something incredibly emotional, I find, about the way people experience history. I cannot read a historical piece without getting genuinely personally invested in the story being told, even if I (and I usually do) know the result. More on that in a minute.

Stalingrad is an account of the renowned Battle of Stalingrad on the Eastern Front during World War II, written by the respected historian Antony Beevor. It covers all aspects of the siege from the beginning of the Axis invasion of the USSR, right up to the fates of the various prisoners-of-war captured at Stalingrad.

Stalingrad in particular is an event that has always held an enormous amount of my respect and fascination. The idea of the under-equipped, out-numbered and out-gunned Red Army drawing a line in the sand, and declaring "No Axis forces shall pass this city", and not only holding themselves to that vow for months, but utterly defeating the invading force is the quintessential underdog story, and I love that sort of thing.

Going back to my getting personally invested, I was surprised when I finished the book to realise that for probably the last two thirds of the book, I had been rooting for the Axis troops. At some level I knew that of course, they couldn't win. History didn't work that way, and the Allies won.

I can only attribute this to Beevor's writing, which though accurate, is never cold or analytical as a lot of non-fiction works can be. He seems to genuinely care about how his subject is presented, which I find is fairly rare. The case of both the Red Army, stuck in their siege and under incredible pressure, and of the invading Germans, Romanians and Italians, freezing and starving to death, are presented equally, and with great compassion.

Beevor clearly also isn't without a sense of humour, and his numerous jabs at both the Soviet and Nazi leadership, tongue firmly in cheek, despite the grave and terrible things they were often related to paradoxically never failed to bring a smile to my face.

All in all I enjoyed Stalingrad immensely. I guess that makes sense, it wasn't an 'International Best-Seller' for nothing, though that title does get thrown around quite a bit. I'm looking forward to reading more of Beevor's work, specifically The Fall of Berlin 1945, as the Red Army's conquest of Berlin is another event that has always intrigued me. ...more

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Dec 07, 2010 ᴀᴍɪᴛ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: world-war-ii, war, russian-theater, russian, german, stalingrad

Indeed a great work by a great historian. An essential read for all world war followers.

Stalingrad was a game changer of world war 2. During the complete course of war, change in mood, thoughts, impressions of Germans, Romanians and Soviets is easily depicted. It is easy to trace that conflict of ego, was the main reason for mass killing of mankind and animals.

Conflicts of regional political ideologies was another big reason for it. Leaders of each region had recklessly tried to get public obed ...more

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May 31, 2013 Robin Webster rated it it was amazing

The ending of siege of Stalingrad was seen by many historians as the defining moment of the Second World War. It cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of both German and Russian soldiers, as well as countless numbers of civilians. It is said that during the reconstruction of Stalingrad they were digging up bodies for decades afterwards.Tens of thousands died needlessly due to the interference of both Stalin and Hitler who on countless occasions overrode their Generals and insisted upon attacks ...more

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Feb 17, 2019 Susan rated it it was amazing

I rate this book high, but it was not a pleasure to read, primarily because of the subject matter itself, not because of the author’s choices. These days it’s clear that our view of WWII usually downplay the role of Russia in winning the war. Not perhaps surprising in the past where we were brought up to see the USSR as enemy number one. But actually, the USSR and its leader Stalin were allies in WWII.

We were also led to believe not only that Stalin and his country were wicked but that the coun ...more

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Oct 30, 2019 Michael Gerald rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

If you learn your world history from American and Hollywood sources, you would think that it was only the US that won the Second World War.

Well, that's totally BS.

It was the Soviet Union that bore the brunt of the fighting, destruction and suffering. And the Battle of Stalingrad alone is a testament to that. ...more

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About Antony Beevor

Antony Beevor

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Antony James Beevor is a British historian who was educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous historian of World War II, John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for five years before resigning his commission. He has published several popular histories on the Second World War and the 20th century in general.

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“This armchair strategist never possessed the qualities for true generalship, because he ignored practical problems.” — 7 likes

“German soldiers made use of Stalingrad orphans themselves. Daily tasks, such as filling water-bottles, were dangerous when Russian snipers lay in wait for any movement. So, for the promise of a crust of bread, they would get Russian boys and girls to take their water-bottles down to the Volga’s edge to fill them. When the Soviet side realized what was happening, Red Army soldiers shot children on such missions.” — 4 likes

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