Stalingrad

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These mini-arcs were engrossing, none more so than Beevor's tale of Smyslov (Russian Army intelligence) and Dyatlenko (of the Russian NKVD). This dismissal, Beevor asserts, marked the tragic end of the general staff as an independent planning body. However, without a map showing where that body of soldiers was actually positioned on this earth, it's all a lot of numbers and letters signifying nothing.

The battle became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front. Victoria Mather, Daily Mail “Stalingrad by Antony Beevor is the best battle history for many years – balanced, dramatic, dreadful.Few had fired the guns before, owing to the shortage of ammunition, and none of them had been trained to take on targets on the ground. From the lice infestations ( a soldier counting over 200 in his helmet; moving masses leaving a dead body to find living flesh). By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames.

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Keith Lowe, writing in The Telegraph, notes that Stalingrad transformed both Beevor's reputation and that of military history, making it from something only for "retired colonels and armchair fantasists" into a "sleek, attention-grabbing subject" always on the bestseller lists. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. In addition, Hitler had said that with the Sixth Army "he could storm the heavens", yet Stalingrad still did not fall. I found this to be the weakest part of the book, and it actually made me pause and consider continuing. WWII да започва да прилича на окопната война WWI, а и да се правят редица паралели с Наполеоновото поражение - военният театър е доста по-сложен за разбиране, а развръзката си остава все същата - един оцелява, друг умира, всички страдат.

Some men stared at the water around them to avoid the sight of the far bank, rather like a climber refusing to look down. 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. 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. Once the preliminaries are taken care of, and the focus is placed on General Paulus' fight for Stalingrad, things get better.The crossing was probably most eerie for those in the rowing boats, as the water gently slapped the bow, and the rowlocks creaked in unison.

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.In short, Stalingrad is a great book, the sort of account a battle so important and breathtakingly vicious deserves. 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. He has made impressive use of the German and Russian military archives – not just to uncover new evidence on the atrocities committed by both sides but also to bring out, in all its terrifying aspects, the human experience of the war by citing soldiers’ letters and diaries, personal accounts and oral testimonies of civilians. A Ukrainian translator said there were "significant differences" between the Russian translation and the original English version, with the English text referring to "two police battalions" that participated in the Babi Yar massacre, while the Russian translation refers to "two battalions of Ukrainian nationalists", and another instance regarding the 1941 Bila Tserkva massacre where "Ukrainian militiamen" was translated to "Ukrainian nationalists". 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!