Review by Booklist Review
Stalingrad not only defined a decisive turning point in the Second World War but also symbolized the scarcely believable character of the German-Russian war. War is not nice, and when directed by two monstrous supremos like Hitler and Stalin, it can reach an all-time crescendo of pitiless brutality. Beevor, an assiduous researcher who skillfully paints the telling detail into the complete canvas, preludes the fate of the German Sixth Army with the predatory purpose of its campaigns. The Sixth Army was implicated in the Babi Yar massacre of 1941, and, in 1942 under a new commander, Friedrich Paulus, it showed little mercy to Soviet soldiers captured on its advance to Stalingrad. On the Soviet side, Stalin insisted on draconian discipline to stop desertions, and the Soviet soldier, staring at death in every direction, grimly dug into the city's rubble. Exploring empathically how soldiers on both sides felt at being trapped in that titanic totalitarian cauldron, Beevor weaves official reports, personal letters, and recently released Soviet security reports into a superior war narrative. Focusing on the soldiers' morale, its rising optimisms and sinking despairs, while not neglecting the military strategies ruling their lives, Beevor has composed a history of Stalingrad unlikely to be bettered. --Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
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. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/98.]ÄRobert H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ont. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
From independent historian Beevor (coauthor, Paris After the Liberation, 1994, etc.), a meticulously researched and gripping account of the horrific battle that culminated in the collapse of Adolf Hitler's blitzkrieg offensive in Russia, and ultimately ordained German defeat in WWII. In June 1941, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, with a vast surprise attack comprising three large army groups, a quick defeat of the Red Army seemed probable if not inevitable: Germany's massive blitzkrieg style of war had quickly subjugated Poland and France. But, as Beevor makes clear, Hitler never prepared his army adequately for war with the Russian behemoth, and the blitzkrieg petered out as the Russian winter closed in. Hitler delayed the attack on Moscow, and by the early spring of 1942, when General Friedrich Wilhelm Paulus assumed command of the Sixth Army, the combination of surprise and terror on which the Nazis had depended was lost. Despite strategic victories along the way, the objective, Stalingrad, proved elusive, and after Paulus's repeated sanguinary assaults against the city proved ineffective, his position became a trap for thousands of German troops, few of whom survived the battle or the rigors of the Soviet gulag. Beevor is evenhanded in his treatment of the two sides: By contrasting the German and Soviet points of view, he conveys the experiences of Axis generals and fighting men (who comprised thousands of Romanian, Hungarian, and disaffected Russians as well as Germans) in the midst of a total war, and those of Soviet soldiers, who had to fear the NKVD and SMERSH, the Soviet intelligence services, as much as the Nazis. A painstakingly thorough study that will become a standard work on the battle of Stalingrad. (Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection/History Book Club main selection)
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Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
