Stalingrad

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The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front.

The “house warmings”, as the Stuka attacks were known, only made the city tougher to fight in for the Germans whose army was made for swift, blitzkrieg battles…not urban bloodbaths. As Beevor explains, since they lost their Blitzkrieg priorities, they were in many ways thrown back to WWI techniques. I wanted the to read about the fate of stalingrad but this book gives so much detailes about the battle that it is hard to grasp everything. Some soldiers were optimistic about Hitler’s declarations about how he would relieve the army at Stalingrad but pray to be taken away via Pitomnik airfield. Antony Beevor has interviewed survivors and discovered completely new material in a wide range of German and Soviet archives, including prisoner interrogations and reports of desertions and executions.The Third Reich would reach it's ceiling; its high point, before the gradual decline and a vengeful Stalin marching his Soviet forces west to steamroll Berlin. A Napoleonic dictum says that to gain power, one must be absolutely petty, but to wield power, one must exercise true greatness. He has made out of a nightmare a beautifully paced narrative, which is both a condemnation of folly and a tribute to men’s extraordinary capacity to accept it at the cost of their lives. Still, it's a gripping, absorbing and important book, showing just how close Russia came to full Nazi occupation and the terrible consequences of two evil men in Hitler and Stalin coming to blows.

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.That is why the Soviets could send so many to die without giving them training, arms or tactics to succeed. While they are pitted against each other in a fanciful cat-and-mouse Hollywood contest, the visuals--the devastation of the city and deprivation of citizens unable to escape--bring Beevor's account to life. In October 1942, a Panzer officer wrote ‘Stalingrad is no longer a town… Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure’.