Product Description

This gripping history is the definitive account of the battle that shifted the tide of World War II.

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 caught their Nazi enemy in an astonishing reversal.

As never before, Stalingrad conveys the experience of soldiers on both sides as they fought in inhuman conditions, and of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield. Antony Beevor has interviewed survivors and discovered completely new material in a wide range of German and Soviet archives, including reports of prisoner interrogations, desertions, and executions. The battle of Stalingrad was the psychological turning point of World War II; as Beevor makes clear, it also changed the face of modern warfare. As a story of cruelty, courage, and human suffering, Stalingrad is unprecedented and unforgettable.
"A fantastic and sobering story . . . fully and authoritatively told." -Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24309 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Amazon.com
Hitler made two fundamental and crippling mistakes during the Second World War: The first was his whimsical belief that the United Kingdom would eventually become his ally, which delayed his decision to launch a major invasion of Britain, whose army was unprepared for the force of blitzkrieg warfare. The second was the ill-conceived Operation Barbarossa--an invasion of Russia that was supposed to take the German army to the gates of Moscow. Antony Beevor's thoughtfully researched compendium recalls this epic struggle for Stalingrad. No one, least of all the Germans, could foretell the deep well of Soviet resolve that would become the foundation of the Red Army; Russia, the Germans believed, would fall as swiftly as France and Poland. The ill-prepared Nazi forces were trapped in a bloody war of attrition against the Russian behemoth, which held them in the pit of Stalingrad for nearly two years. Beevor points out that the Russians were by no means ready for the war either, making their stand even more remarkable; Soviet intelligence spent as much time spying on its own forces--in fear of desertion, treachery, and incompetence--as they did on the Nazis. Due attention is also given to the points of view of the soldiers and generals of both forces, from the sickening battles to life in the gulags.

Many believe Stalingrad to be the turning point of the war. The Nazi war machine proved to be fallible as it spread itself too thin for a cause that was born more from arrogance than practicality. The Germans never recovered, and its weakened defenses were no match for the Allied invasion of 1944. We know little of what took place in Stalingrad or its overall significance, leading Beevor to humbly admit that "[t]he Battle of Stalingrad remains such an ideologically charged and symbolically important subject that the last word will not be heard for many years." This is true. But this gripping account should become the standard work against which all others should measure themselves. --Jeremy Storey

From Publishers Weekly
This gripping account of Germany's notorious campaign combines sophisticated use of previously published firsthand accounts in German and Russian along with newly available Soviet archival sources and caches of letters from the front. For Beevor (Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949), the 1942 German offensive was a gamble that reflected Hitler's growing ascendancy over his military subordinates. The wide-open mobile operations that took the 6th Army into Stalingrad were nevertheless so successful that Soviet authorities insisted they could be explained only by treason. (Over 13,000 Soviet soldiers were formally executed during the battle for Stalingrad alone.) Combat in Stalingrad, however, deprived the Germans of their principal force multipliers of initiative and flexibility. The close-gripped fighting brought men to the limits of endurance, then kept them there. Beevor juxtaposes the grotesque with the mundane, demonstrating the routines that men on both sides developed to cope with an environment that brought them to the edge of madness. The end began when German army commander Friedrich von Paulus refused to prepare for the counterattack everyone knew was coming. An encircled 6th Army could neither be supplied by air nor fight its way out of the pocket unsupported. Fewer than 10,000 of Stalingrad's survivors ever saw Germany again. For the Soviet Union, the victory became a symbol not of a government, but of a people. The men and women who died in the city's rubble could have had worse epitaphs than this sympathetic treatment. Agent: Andrew Nurnberg. History Book Club main selection; BOMC alternate selection; foreign sales to the U.K., Germany and Russia.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
More than half a century later, the Battle of Stalingrad still strikes powerful chords. Its titanic scale and ferocity, the endurance and fighting capacities of the combatants, and the huge importance of the outcome to the larger world war beyond combine to give the terrific clash on the Volga a unique, epic quality. All this comes out splendidly in this book. Beevor (Paris After the Liberation, LJ 8/94) has drawn on archival and published sources in Russia and the West, along with revealing interviews with veterans on both sides. The savagery of Stalin's regime toward its own people, struggling to emerge both alive and victorious from the deadly battle with the invading Germans, has not been bettered. This is a thoroughly mesmerizing narrative to be read by specialists and generalists alike. Highly recommended.
-ARobert H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ont.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Awesome Book
This is a great book that tells the story of probably the most significant and decisive battle of World War II. I could not put it down. The story telling, anecdotes, and research are all first class.

I saw another review that complained that the book took a German perspective on the setting and consequences and there is probably a little truth to that. However I felt it did not detract from the overall impact of this book. To get a little better sense of the Soviet perspective of the times in relation to the battle of Stalingrad, I would highly recommend reading "Life and Fate" by Vasily Grossman (who Beevor quotes extensively). Although this is a work of fiction, it really gives you a sense of what was at stake here for the Soviet Union and how they rose to the challenge.

The Fateful Siege
I thought this was an excellent look at the battle of Stalingrad. Antony Beevor covers all the bases from countless accounts from soldiers in the trenches (& ruins) - both German & Russian, to events involving a few soldiers to entire divisions. Then he explains how some of the major players on the Russian front made their decisions & acted under pressure.

The detailed information doesn't stop there - much of the book details the almost personal battle between Stalin & Hitler and all that Stalingrad represented to both sides. Antony Beevor does a great job of describing what was going on in other parts of the European theater of war & how they tied into this great battle. This was a pivital battle that affected the future of every country touched by world war 2. Worth reading.

Academic, yet accessible
One of the things I like best about Antony Beevor's books is that, while he goes into great detail, his writing style is so well constructed and accessible that you could recommend his books to someone who's not usually a history reader and expect that they would still enjoy them.

Beevor conveys the details of the Stalingrad battle front's strategies and tactics; politics; environmental and medical factors; and samples of both German and Soviet viewpoints taken from letters, journal entries, and post-war interviews into a well blended narrative. He also relates some lesser known facts about the battle without dwelling on them at the expense of the larger picture and conventional information.

Highly recommended; if you wanted to gain a good understanding of Stalingrad and the Russian front in WWII, and were to read only one book about it, then this is what I'd recommend.