Stalingrad biography books

Q. You are obviously famous for your book Stalingrad – can you explain why that was another key moment in the war?

Antony Beevor: “Stalingrad was the psychological turning point of the war. It took place between 23 August 1942 to 2 February 1943 and it was the largest battle on the Eastern Front. Nazi Germany and their allies were fighting for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwest Russia. The geopolitical turning point of the war came slightly earlier, even though people didn’t really recognise it at the time. It was in December 1941, when the German armies were repulsed in front of Moscow and Hitler decided to declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor. But Stalingrad was vital in its own particular way because the Red Army for the first time held its ground in the city, fighting in desperate circumstances. Also, its new commanders had the foresight to do what they felt was necessary rather than being terrified of being arrested for their actions, which was the case in the earlier part of the war.

Two Soviet generals, Georgy Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky, came up with this plan to encircle the whole of the Sixth Army, which was incredibly ambitious. The Germans saw that it was a possibility but they simply did not

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Stalingrad

“Beevor’s account of this savage war is a tour de force.”Orlando Figes, Sunday Telegraph

“At times, it felt as if I was reading a classical epic drama of the scope of War and Peace...”Vitali Vitaliev, Guardian

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Synopsis

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’.

The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin’s determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front. 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. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, was the first defeat of Hitler’s territorial ambitions in Europe, and the start of his decline.

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.

“Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad is a superb retelling of the saga. Beevor combines a soldier’s understandi