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A New York Times bestseller that brings to life one of the bloodiest battles of World War II--and the beginning of the end of the Third Reich. On August 5, 1942, giant pillars of dust rose over the Russian steppe, marking the advance of the 6th Army, an elite German combat unit dispatched by Hitler to capture the industrial city of Stalingrad and press on to the oil fields of Azerbaijan. The Germans were supremely confident; in three years, they had not suffered a single defeat.The Luftwaffe had already bombed the city into ruins. German soldiers hoped to complete their mission and be home in time for Christmas. The siege of Stalingrad lasted five months, one week, and three days. Nearly two million men and women died, and the 6th Army was completely destroyed. Considered by many historians to be the turning point of World War II in Europe, the Soviet Army's victory foreshadowed Hitler's downfall and the rise of a communist superpower. Bestselling author William Craig spent five years researching this epic clash of military titans, traveling to three continents in order to review documents and interview hundreds of survivors. Enemy at the Gates is the enthralling result: the definitive account of one of the most important battles in world history. It became a New York Times bestseller and was also the inspiration for the 2001 film of the same name, starring Joseph Fiennes and Jude Law.… (more)
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Covers from the generals to the soldiers, and fits their memories into a chronological account.
I was hoping for a story which followed individuals more closely and was more of a play by play. This is probably an unrealistic expectation given the number of people involved in
The book is fairly graphic at points and while difficult matters are addressed, they are done so in an appropriate way. An R rating would be appropriate. There are only so many ways to convey the horror of having a child ripped apart. Like many stories of this time... We must read them and deal with the horror or be doomed to repeat them.
Enemy at the Gates is an account of the fight for Stalingrad. William Craig did an outstanding job in researching the battle, drawing from first-person accounts of witnesses and survivors on both sides. His sources are include every rank, ranging from private to general, as well as the parts played by people who never appeared in t he battle but loomed large over nearly every key decision, particularly Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
While Enemy at the Gates is essentially a work of history, it is also in some ways a tragedy. Reading it 70 years after the battle, with the rise and fall of both the Third Reich and the Soviet Union as established facts of history, we can see in Hitler and Stalin the personality characteristics that drive leaders in a myopic manner, a manner in which the expenditure of literally hundreds of thousands of lives, is seen as fully justified. Unfortunately, the world as a whole seems to have learned little, as the mass horrors of Stalingrad continue to repeat themselves in armed conflict today.
As history, this is a well-written book of a terrible moment in human history. As tragedy, this reminds that when I read the latest accounts from Syria and Iraq, just two of today's points of conflict in the world, it remains as Ecclesiastes wrote: There is nothing new under the sun.
He has interviewed hundreds of survivors, or the spouses of those who fought, to knit together an enthralling memoir of the hell on earth that was Stalingrad. The invaders and the defenders are treated with equal measures of sympathy for their common humanity in this nightmare.
Stalingrad was the turning point in the war on the Russian front. Craig shows us how Hitler's indifference to the lives of his own troops condemned the German Sixth Army to a terrible fate. "Enemy at the Gates" is a terrific read.