Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943
by Antony Beevor
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Book Reviews of Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943
Book Review: The War of the Century...
Summary: 5 Stars
... at least the last one. The German-Russian war, the largest component of what was known as the Second World War, dwarfed all other theaters in the war, and all other wars in that century, in terms of total casualties, as well as the ferocity of the fighting. Beevor estimated the Soviet dead, military and civilian, from all causes, at 27 million. The German figure is roughly half that, and such is the sad state of war statistics, that he could be off by a couple million, one way or the other. The "plus or minus" number of dead outnumbered virtually all other wars in the century, save for the madness that was version one of World War. The author commences his story on the summer's solstice of 1941, with many Berliners taking a train to a park in Potsdam, named the San Souci, and their lives would be anything but, over the next few years.
In the first hundred pages or so Beevor deftly summarizes the war from the invasion of Russia by the Germans to the epic battle. As in so many wars, the Germans expected quick victory, which was justified to some extent by their lightening conquests of Poland, the Low Countries, and France. It was further aided by the abysmal initial defenses of the Russians, due primarily to Stalin's belief that the Germans really would not attack. The German invasion commenced a month later than planned, a crucial flaw. Within a few short months General Heinz Guderian famously stood on a hill, able to see the spirals of the Kremlin, before the weather, and Soviet troops from Asia pushed him back. Meanwhile, Army Group South was making a dash to the Caucasus, with the prize being the oil fields around Baku, essential for the German war effort. And out of the southern dash arose, rather incidentally, the titanic struggle for the city that bore the name of the USSR's leader.
The following three fourths of the book is the battle itself. I liked Beevor's style, at several different levels. The pace is straightforward, and measured at the same time. He addresses the mindset of the nations two leader's well, and the political forces on each, and the ones generated by their personalities. He more than adequately describes the personalities of the top military leaders on both sides; he also tells anecdotes of the lives of the "Ivan" and "Hans" foot soldiers, drawn primarily from their letters and diaries. It IS military history, and so the armaments and particular units involved are described as well, and are accompanied by some excellent maps and pictures. Ironically, the Volga River, upon which Stalingrad sat, was the final eastern objective of the German troops. A massive Russian counterattack, of a 1.2 million troops, lead by General Zhuikov, quickly surrounded the German 6th Army, lead by Paulus, and by Feb. 02, 1943, he had surrendered. Beevor traces the lives of those who were defeated; largely they went quickly to their graves, but a small percentage, yet sizable number lingered in POW and forced labor camps for years after the war. Beevor's "new" contribution to the numerous books on this battle, unearthed from the Soviet archives, is the number, and sad fate, of the Russians who fought on the side of the Germans.
It is an excellent historical account, and should be the classic account of the battle for the general reader. As with all history, there are those parallels with the present. Hitler went to war based on false pretenses, claiming the Soviets had massed troops on the border. There was the ugly racism that Hitler promoted, that the Slavs were not quite human, and strong measures were required to protect "civilization," "our European values." When Paulus surrendered, instead of committing suicide, Hitler was furious. And there was the ultimate "spin-doctor," Gobbels, trying to turn defeat into victory.
I read all the 1, and 2-star reviews, and considered their criticisms of limited merit. Yes, Beevor depicted the German high command in far greater detail than the Soviet one, and it is unclear why, given the opening of records after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And yes, it is only a "primer," but a wonderful one, and isn't that all that the "general reader" needs, which is the vast majority of us.
Due to the justified discrediting of Stalin's rule, the city's name has reverted to Volgograd. Yet there is still a subway stop in Paris named "Stalingrad," commemorating the turning point of the European war. For those wanting more information, there is an excellent movie, entitled "The War of the Century," which interviews the survivors of this conflict, on both side, now in their `70's and `80's.
Beevor's account is an essential read to balance a Western reader's knowledge about WW II, with events that occurred far from the Pacific war or the Western front.
Book Review: Analytically shallow but a good read
Summary: 3 Stars
I went to see Antony Beevor during Sydney Writer's Festival this year. Near the end of the talk he brought up something interesting. Beevor explained that the famous German historian Joachim Fest had once written a highly critical three-page article on him in which Fest stated: "Beevor has no leading thought." "Well," Beevor told the audience, "I know some historians who do have a leading thought - like Goldhagen - and they don't budge from it even if they encounter evidence which contradicts it."
It was a non-rebuttal of Fest's point. Although it's interesting to note that Daniel Jonah Goldhagen remains the serious historian's benchmark for poor scholarship, it was impossible not to also notice that Beevor used the bogey of Goldhagen to duck the issue. When you have finished reading Stalingrad, you begin to understand that Fest is essentially correct: Beevor is great at giving an account, but seems constitutionally incapable of reaching a conclusion. The narrative moves along nicely and then just stops once the boundary of the story has been reached. There were no remarks on the historiographical debate, no analysis of the ideologies of either side, little insight into Hitler or Stalin's motives, no passage beginning with the words like "And so, in summary ...". The chronicle just seems to stop by crash-landing on the last page.
Beevor is certainly correct to say in his preface that "a purely military history of such a titanic struggle fails to convey its reality on the ground" - and indeed he does a very good job of rendering the phenomenological reality of war as experienced by soldiers on either side. The horrors of military conflict are not lost in abstract descriptions of troop movements and battlefield tactics. Herein we learn that when the Germans ran out of planks to ford mud-soaked trenches with, they simply lined up Russian corpses and drove their vehicles over them [p. 36]; that Russian POWs were left to sleep out in the open during snowdrifts and tried to huddle together in holes in the ground which they dug with their bare hands [p. 178]; that mice chewed off the frostbitten toes of sleeping soldiers [p. 337]; and that the encircled servicemen eventually resorted to cannibalism [p. 315, 350]. There's nothing to indicate that Beevor wilfully sought out lurid details: he seems to state them out of a need to genuinely convey "the reality on the ground".
But for me, the reality above ground is equally important, and herein it is given scarcely a mention. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were the world's foremost totalitarian powers at the time. In discussing the only conflict they fought against one another, it is remarkable that their ideologies were given such scant treatment by Beevor. Hannah Arendt once argued that the scale of the Nazi-Soviet conflict masked the fact that both regimes had far more in common than they were mutually distinguished by. Beevor has written a book about Vassily Grossman: he is surely aware of the passage in Grossman's book "Life and Fate" (which is all about the siege of Stalingrad) where the Nazi officer tells the captured orthodox Communist that the two movements do not differ in their essentials and whichever one wins will not extirpate the other, but merely absorb its essence [See Robert Conquest's book on Stalin]. This was Arendt's point in a nutshell. Amazingly, Beevor never found time to explore such an interesting issue. And many others simply fell by the wayside.
I bought this book because it came enshrouded in a cloud of gushing compliments from the press. And indeed it does tell a good tale. We learn a great deal about *what* happened in Stalingrad: but I left the book with something of an empty feeling: I didn't learn much about *why* it happened.
Book Review: A classic
Summary: 5 Stars
Anthony Beevor's "Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege" is one of those books you just have to read, even as much of it is unpleasant. Indeed, because much of it is unpleasant. What this book does is bring to you the reality of war as much as any book can. Beevor's narrative methodology alternates between three threads: the Sixth Army at Stalingrad itself, the Soviet side, and the German military and political leadership on the Eastern front and in Germany proper. Among these three narratives, the primary focus is on German soldiers, of all ranks, within the Sixth Army. Beevor's bias is not anti-Russian, as he makes clear that the real culpability for this massive panorama of human suffering lies with Hitler, Goebbels and the German senior military staff. He also includes enough traditional war history material about the large-scale movement of armies and units to make the broader strategic context clear. But that is not what makes this book what it is.
Blaming Hitler and the Nazis is easy; the more difficult question is who among the German general staff was in a position to turn against Hitler before it was too late. Beevor points to General Erich von Manstein, the Eastern front commander to whom the much-maligned General Friedrich von Paulus, head of the doomed Sixth Army, reported. Like many German officers who were not Nazi Party members, Manstein disliked Hitler, talked him down among close colleagues and even trained his dog to do the Nazi salute as a joke. According to Beevor, Manstein more than any other both had the knowledge of what was happening inside the Kessel and - perhaps - the ability to lead an anti-Nazi coup within the Wehrmacht. But he didn't.
Beevor portrays Paulus himself as more of a tragic figure. Emotionally and morally broken by the time of his capture, Paulus seems at once both dutiful and weak. He might have broken out had he disobeyed orders, but by mid-December 1942 it was too late. He seems almost a pathetic person to be leading an armed force in one of history's most significant events.
The valor of ordinary German soldiers shines through, and is impossible to ignore despite the heinous nature of their country's political leadership. Beevor gives many examples of this, noting, for instance, that of the 600 doctors assigned to the Sixth Army, none capable of working flew out. Nor do any German officers appear to have tried to their rank to get out, despite there being almost daily airlifts almost until the end. What can be said in Paulus' favor is that he made no attempt to save himself.
Although Beevor makes use of Russian sources, the source material is definitely German-dominated here. He does not ignore the Russian side, but my estimation - without doing a precise page count - is that a bit more than half the material is focused on the Sixth Army and other German units directly involved, about a third focuses on the Red Army and the Soviet government, with the remainder taken up in discussion of the German senior staff and events back in Germany.
Book Review: Good as an introduction only
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a readable simple and superficial book. Although this may seem like a criticism but, the reality is that superficial books have their place for people who are first approaching a subject and don't want to read a vast technically written tome. This book is a combination of some secondary sources plus a bit of primary research. The author has indicated that the one thing that he has found which was not generally known was the very large number of Russians who were used as auxiliaries and helpers in the Stalingrad Campaign. Due to troop losses a number of these Russians appear to have become combat troops with the Sixth Army. Apart from that insight the book summarizes longer works such as Ericsons "the Road to Stalingrad" and Glanz's "When Titans Clash". The author then gives the book a more human dimension by quoting a range of other sources about the minutia of the campaign. Soldiers letters, discussions between generals as things start to happen and the like. Other reviewers have spoken about the books readability and all of that is true the book is easy to read and for a person unfamiliar with the material it is no doubt an engrossing account of a dramatic event which was important in determining the outcome of the war.
The faults of the book relate to its portrayal of the military aspects of the campaign. The author fails to pick up on a number of points. The major one is that the Germans had no idea of the Soviet force levels and the number of reserves available. If they had been aware then the advance so far into Soviet Territory and the splitting of the invading force into two were serious mistakes. The depth of the advance made the supply of the army at Staligrad almost impossible. At the time of the encirclement the sixth army had very limited stocks of ammunition and petrol. Once the Sixth Army was encircled there was no way it could break out as it had no supplies. Its collapse would lead to a loss of the forces in the Caucuses. The decision to stand was thus in reality the only rational one available.
The author tends to accept the German Generals self serving portrayal of themselves in their memoirs. That is that they opposed Hitler in this period. The reality is that the German Staff only started to have problems with the regime when defeat became closer. The failure of the Stalingrad operation was not because of Hitler's interference in operational strategy but the flawed nature of the whole plan. None of the German General Staff opposed the operation at its inception.
The author also has not read some other relevant material such as Glantz's "Zhukov's Greatest Defeat" which described how at the same time that the Germans were being defeated in Stalingrad the Russians were mounting another massive operation against Army Group Centre which was defeated.
Despite these quibbles the book clearly is of interest to some and serves as a good introduction to an important event in the history of the last century.
Book Review: Stalingrad: The Ultimate Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Few books have been able to strike a chill in me as Antony Beevor's masterpiece has. It is the most profound reference on war, or for that matter, on any subject, I have ever having the opportunity of reading. I bought this book after reading other Stalingrad studies, but I had not been able to gather the details and overall grandure of the battle as I have here. I had not been able to gather the gigantic scope and horror that the Battle of Stalingrad was. Beevor is a brilliant historian and writer who has gone above and beyond the call of duty by literally bringing to life the war in Stalingrad through a amazing and impressive amount of details. Most of the information has never been known up until this point and it most certainly has not been recycled or recalled as new. Beevor went to Germany and Russia and splurged into archives that have never been published before. Beevor has provided and excellent service to us by writing down this fascinating information, information that I will never forget.
Stalingrad's haunting and disturbing prose is also credited to Beevor. He has created the book in a no nonsense-tell it like it is style which gives the book its lasting impression on the reader. I was emotionally exhausted by the end of the mammoth sized book. All of the information is expertly analyized by Beevor and surprisingly accurate. You empathize with the people in this book and the devastating struggle that they endured.
There is no bias here; this is the profound work on the subject because it delves deep into the political views, historical narration, personal accounts of soldiers and higher ranking people as well as civilians. The book really achieves the goal it set out for itself. There are a plethora of maps within the contents of the book to enhance the text as well as several well chosen photographs.Beevor took no expense in delivering the harsh reality to us. It was really well researched and is by no means the journalistic view that people surmised it was. The book is explained in graphic detail like no other book has. I was able to visualize everything that was going on during the worst battle that maybe was ever fought.
There is little that I can say that would any better enhance the work of this book. It was set up brilliantly by studying the first announcement of Barbarossa and continued it's astonishing narrative through battles end. The emotion in the book is wildly unpretentous. Beevor has done it! He has single-handedly created the most in-depth, thorough, accurate, emotional and unbias account on war ever. It is my favorite book and a very important one as well.
I knew tons of facts about Stalingrad before I read this book, yet I learned so much more. It truly is a profound and remarkable book and I can honestly say that Beevor is the greatest historian. He deserves all of the accolades that this book has recieved. So for it's wealth of knowledge, sources, analysis and workmanship, I highly recommend this book to you.