Stalingrad

by Antony Beevor (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $5.64

  A compulsive narrative of the harrowing siege that was the psychological turning point of World War II, drawn from sources never-before seen by Western scholarsIn June 1941, German forces swept across Soviet territory in an offensive that finally brought them within twenty-five miles of Moscow. But in August 1942, the overconfident Hitler chose the wrong target, Stalin's namesake city on the Volga. The battle of Stalingrad is extraordinary in every way: the triumphant invader fought to a standstill; then the Soviet trap sprung, surrounding their attackers; and the terrible siege, with Germans starving and freezing, forced to fight on by a disbelieving Hitler.The story has never been told as Antony Beevor tells it here. He writes of the great Manichaean clash between Stalin and Hitler, and the strategic brilliance and fatal flaws of their generals. Stalingrad is first and foremost the story of the man on the ground, a soldier's-eye view of fighting house-to-house on an urban battlefield, with helpless civilians caught in the crossfire. Beevor has gained access to Russian reports on desertions and executions that have never been seen by Western scholars, German transcripts of prisoner interrogations, and private letters and diaries. These help re-create the compelling human drama of the most terrible battle in modern warfare.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.25

  'The Stalingrad story is biblical in its extremes of barbarism and heroism, and Antony Beevor has told it superbly' - Literary Review '[Stalingrad] illuminates so pitilessly, and yet with a reassuring glow of humanity, the bitterest and most cruel of all 20th-century battles' - Alan Clark 'Read Beevor first as a compelling tale of human tribulation' - Evening Standard

• New

  paperback
  

  $13.93

  Antony Beevor's Stalingrad is a harrowing look at one of history's darkest moments. 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, obsession, carnage and the nature of war itself, Stalingrad will act as a testament to the vital role of the soviet war effort. 'A superb re-telling. Beevor combines a soldier's understanding of war's realities with the narrative techniques of a novelist ...This is a book that lets the reader look into the face of battle' Orlando Figes, Sunday Telegraph 'A brilliantly researched tour de force of military history' Sarah Bradford, The Times Antony Beevor is the renowned author of Stalingrad, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature, and Berlin, which received the first Longman-History Today Trustees' Award. His books have sold nearly four million copies.