Stalingrad

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During the last phases of the September battles, both sides had struggled to capture a warehouse on the Volga bank. 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! But it also makes just as much sense that a self-aggrandizing, paranoid-delusional sociopath would be utterly unable to exercise that power, and would make stupid decisions in the unsupported belief that he was always right.

By fighting in the city, street by street, block by block, and even house by house, the Germans threw away their great advantage of mobility. Beevors writings offered me a great baseline of understanding about the situation and I came from this book with facts that left an imprint on me. I was not aware of the Soviet U-2 biplanes dropping bombs at night but they were very successful at keeping the Germans from any rest.

Just when the battle for the streets of Stalingrad appeared to be turning into a stalemate, with General Vassili Chuikov of the Soviet 62nd Army fighting Paulus's German Sixth Army to a virtual draw, Marshal Zhukov initiated an encircling movement that caught the Nazis unaware. With that there is a subtle study of human nature here and what people will do to survive when their backs are against the cliff edge. Dopo aver letto “Vita e destino” volevo saperne un po’ di più sulla battaglia di Stalingrado: ne ho saputo pure troppo. But if you can over look this thn your left with a very good book, detailing the background to the battle, the actual battle and what happened to the victors and defeated of both sides after the battle.

The narrative of Stalingrad is captivating, even for someone like myself who takes little interest in military matters. Law plays Vassili Zaitsev who became a Hero of Russia for killing 225 Axis soldiers including 11 opposing snipers during the battle. Once the Germans are on the defensive, battling Russians and the winter, Beevor's narrative really grips you. Lately I have been on a reading binge of books focused on the Eastern Front and the Second World War. 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".Peter Noble is the narrator for both of them, so despite describing events two years apart, they comprise a unique whole in my mind. 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. Beevor even devotes an entire chapter to explaining how much the Germans loved Christmas, and how they tried to celebrate despite freezing and starving to death. 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. 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.

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. There are no tiresome minute-by-minute descriptions of what street or house switched sides on what day. I like Beevor's work at the level it is presented (it is a good primer for the Glantz volumes I am about to dig into). Trotz seiner Sympathien für die Russen wird der Respekt und die Empathie für die Leidenden deutlich. The result is very readable, a narrative that moves along swiftly, so that at times I couldn't put it down.Richard Bernstein, New York Times “Stalingrad’s heart-piercing tragedy needed a chronicler with acute insight into human nature as well as the forces of history.