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. Beevor has a knack for putting you in place, as he sets the scene, on both sides, in the run-up to 19 Nov 1942, when Zhukov's forces were unleashed, up to 100 miles to the rear of the German spearhead in the city. I found it interesting that men who'd essentially created their own self-Holocaust in the hopeless trap they'd made for themselves at Stalingrad couldn't even get their last letters home. Serhiy Oliyinyk, the head of the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting department on licensing and distribution-control, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that several paragraphs prevented the import of the books, citing a passage that purportedly said: "Ukrainian nationalists were tasked with shooting the children" so that they could "spare the feelings of SS Sonderkommando". It possessed "savage intimacy," which horrified German generals, who felt they were rapidly losing control over events.

An extraordinary story of tactical genius, civilian bravery and the nature of war itself, which changed how history is written, Stalingrad is a testament to the vital role of the Soviet war effort. Some might find it hard to believe that we escaped through what appears to be luck - luck that Hitler made such a string of foolhardy decisions. Litt from the University of Bath, awarded in 2010, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Kent, awarded in 2004. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from.Hitler intervened and split the German Army Group, sending Group B to Stalingrad, where it was eventually chewed to pieces. In this book we get to read about the living conditions of German soldiers during Stalingrad, those who become prisoners, and what happened to Red Army prisoners. Beevor is at his absolute best when he leaves the generalities and finds a specific character or two to follow for a couple of pages. Beevor has also compiled a vivid record of the interior nature of the battle, from the slang expressions used by the soldiers to the Russian cult of the sniper and the German fascination with suicide rather than surrender” International Herald Tribune “In a masterly work of military history, the author covers everything from the strategic considerations shaping Hitler’s and Stalin’s decision-making to the urban battles of snipers and small assault teams.

Peter Noble is the narrator for both of them, so despite describing events two years apart, they comprise a unique whole in my mind. 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! The brutal Russian winter - which played a huge part in the final encirclement and devastation of the German Sixth Army - is another thing that really takes hold in this book. That worked to a certain extent, but how does an army make its tanks and cannon work without replacement equipment?The Stalingrad story is biblical in its extremes of barbarism and heroism, and Antony Beevor has told it superbly. 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. Part 1, Chapter one: The Double-Edged Sword of Barbarossa: Saturday, 21 June 1941, produced a perfect summer¨'s morning. about topics as varied as medical care, starvation, frostbite, and Russian vodka rations (they often went into battle drunk, natch).

Once in the bunker, they finally convince the German company commander to take the message to his commander. The citizens of Stalingrad endured unimaginable hardship; the battle, with fierce hand-to-hand fighting in each room of each building, was brutally destructive to both armies. As Beevor explains, the events on the Caucasus Front, supposedly the Führer's main priority, played a major role in his decision. Russia countered with over 1 MM poorly trained, poorly armed, mostly forcibly drafted farm boys as cannon fodder.Antony Beevor is the author of Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (Runciman Prize), Stalingrad (Samuel Johnson Prize, Wolfson Prize for History and Hawthornden Prize), Berlin: The Downfall , The Battle for Spain (Premio La Vanguardia), D-Day: The Battle for Normandy (Prix Henry Malherbe and the RUSI Westminster Medal), The Second World War, and Ardennes 1944 (shortlist Prix Médicis) .