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In June 1941, German forces swept across Soviet territory in an offensive that finally brought them within twenty-five miles of Moscow. But in August 1942, the overconfident Hitler chose the wrong target, Stalin?s namesake city on the Volga. The battle of Stalingrad is extraordinary in every way: the triumphant invader fought to a standstill; then the Soviet trap sprung, surrounding their attackers; and the terrible siege, with Germans starving and freezing, forced to fight on by a disbelieving Hitler.The story has never been told as Antony Beevor tells it here. He writes of the great Manichaean clash between Stalin and Hitler, and the strategic brilliance and fatal flaws of their generals. Stalingrad is first and foremost the story of the man on the ground, a soldier?s-eye view of fighting house-to-house on an urban battlefield, with helpless civilians caught in the crossfire. Beevor has gained access to Russian reports on desertions and executions that have never been seen by Western scholars, German transcripts of prisoner interrogations, and private letters and diaries. These help re-create the compelling human drama of the most terrible battle in modern warfare.… (more)
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Author shows the destruction Germans left in their wake, collusion between army and SS troops tasked with extermination of Slavs and creating the space for future German settlers and duplicity of German generals in these matters (Paulus and Manstein especially). All of this caused a very stubborn resistance (even suicidal in some areas) from Soviet Red Army and partisans troops. Not because they were fighting Germans as Germans but because they were fighting for the very survival. After initial heavy defeats it was clear what Germans had in mind for the entire country. Soviets weren't fighting for Stalinism as such, but organized around Stalin because he was the only rally point available. And it is not that Germans gave much other choice than to fight by tooth and nail.
Where author meanders and then stutters is unavoidable romantic depiction of German armies. This approach to history is a blot on historical cover of WW2 especially from western (and western influenced) countries. Germans by the end of the book are treated as defenders of Stalingrad (!) I mean what? And then there is cliche depiction of Soviets and Russians as ordinary peasants, always drinking, and always lacking something, led by merciless officers, sacrificing huge number of people to stop the Germans.
On the other side only Romanians are depicted as savages [even for their own troops], echo of very brutal feudal times. All other German allies that participated in this conflict - Hungarians, Austrians, contingents from area of Yugoslavia, even Slovaks (this surprised me a lot) - are always poetic souls (same as Germans) to the level it had me vomiting every so often.
What I find interesting is that in majority of books I read this idea that great Soviet casualties were not necessary. I am truly trying to figure out how they came to this conclusion - what was the other option? Surrender and vanish? Because when one fights for mere survival is it strange that drastic measures are used? They are bloody, but they worked - once front stabilized and industry was in full war footing, German armies were running back and at the end Germany was ruined. After Germans tried so much to touch, alter and end life of everyone in Soviet Union is it strange that Soviets decided to return the favor? Events that took place during German advancement were so final, literal point of no return, that to expect anything else but bloody revenge was wishful thinking (and Germans were aware of this).
Should we feel sorry for German army of WW2? No. They were treated in the same way they treated nations they conquered and brutalized during the 6 year period. They got what they deserved and it is truly sad that their ideals (and dehumanizing of the East) are again used and glorified in our times, 80 years later, not just by general propaganda but by the very German nation (that German sociologist/historian explaining on TV how Russians do not have same set of values as rest of Europe because they are Asian "mix" - bliiiimeeeeey! Disgusting).
Despite these shortcomings (which are to be honest shortcomings of majority of popular books in the western historical circles related to Eastern front (unfortunately more critical and objective books exist from 1960s but were never as popular as pro-German line)) book contains a lot of details on ordinary soldier's view of war and utter devastation of Stalingrad through available mail correspondence and diaries found on dead bodies after the major battles. This gives this very brutal theater of military operations a touch of humanity and shows how devastating war truly is (again something that was forgotten after these 80 years).
Recommended.
My favourite part of "Stalingrad" is the very personal stories of the frontline soldiers that Beevor sources from letters and reports. Senior soldiers found comatose drunk near the front lines, defecting soldiers getting lost and, mistaking Russian officers for Germans, announcing his defection, and small orphaned children somehow surviving in the apocalyptic conditions of Stalingrad.
It's time to move on to read Beevor's "Berlin: The Downfall".
The Germans greatly underestimated the resistance of the Soviets who fought for every street and every building in the city. They were slowly pushed into a small beachead on the west side of the Volga, but the Germans never completely overran it, despite the fact that at some points they were in sight and in range of shelling the river that was the lifeline of supply of soldiers and equipment for the Soviets. The Germans also underestimated, they could not have known, the sheer brutal fixation of the Soviet Command, and Stalin, in not surrendering the city, andt their willingness to do so at all and any costs. The Soviets executed over 13,000 (!) of their own soldiers to ensure "discipline" and no shirking or surrendering to the enemy. The Soviet 13th Guard Rifle Division (10,000) soldiers was thrown into the battle in mid-September; at the end of the battle of Stalingrad, 320 of the original ten thousand were still alive. At the end, after months of bitter fighting and starvation as the Soviets closed the ring around the Sixth Army, the Soviets captured 235,000 mainly German, but also Romanian and other, soldiers. The survival rate in Soviet POW camps was dismal, unless you were an officer: over 95% of soldiers and NCOs dies, 55% of junior officers died, but just 5% of senior officier perished. The Soviets were brutal in their treatment of prisoners, but considering the starving and completely neglected Soviet prisoners they found under German contral at the end of the battle, it is not hard to understand.
While numerous battles defined the course of events, the decisive clash on the Eastern Front came in the autumn of 1942 in the city of Stalingrad. There the German Sixth Army fought a grinding campaign to conquer the industrial center, only to be encircled by a surprise Soviet counter-offensive in November. Debilitated by the twin forces of battle and winter, tens of thousands of troops surrendered in February 1943, inflicting the greatest defeat yet suffered by the Third Reich. One of the strengths of Antony Beevor's history of the battle is in its detailing of the experiences of the men who fought and died on both sides. Drawing upon letters, diaries, and other records, he describes the nearly unimaginable conditions they faced during their long months of struggle against each other. To this he adds a perceptive explanation of both the events leading up to the battle and how is was that the sides sustained such a debilitating effort, both on the national and personal level.
By clearly detailing its events and recounting the lives of the soldiers who fought in it, Beevor has written an excellent history of the battle that is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand it. And yet the book falls short in one important respect. For while Beevor conveys well the human side of the conflict, it doesn't quite capture its truly epic nature. Scale is missing, as the war-defining nature of the event lost amid the stories of the men and the details of the campaign. While the effort to do so would result in a very different book, perhaps only then might it be possible to fully appreciate the importance of the titanic struggle waged there, both for the people involved and for the broader war itself.