Peter Noble is the narrator for both of them, so despite describing events two years apart, they comprise a unique whole in my mind. Undoubtedly, the winters were rough, and the Germans unprepared, but as Anthony Beevor makes clear in Stalingrad, the fault did not lie in the weather, but in Hitler and the stars. 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. 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.

At near 500 pages it's deep and dense enough giving you just about the most comprehensive account of the Battle of Stalingrad, yet never becomes boring or too academic making for an immensely addictive and intense read if you like your WW2 history books. It deserves to be understood by every literate westerner, because what happened on the Eastern Front had a decisive impact on the post-war world. With that there is a subtle study of human nature here and what people will do to survive when their backs are against the cliff edge. The half-year battle for the streets of Stalingrad was an unremitting horror, with not only two armies, but thousands of civilians jammed into a city that was being bombed into rubble while everyone was starving or dying of thirst.As he also reveals, since the fall of Rostov, any means of igniting resistance had become permissible: on September 8, a picture in Stalingrad Front newspaper showed "a frightened girl with her limbs bound. Ambushes out of basements, wall remnants, hidden bunkers, and factory ruins produce heavy casualties among our troops. In the summer of 1942 German axis forces descended on the small city of Stalingrad, Russia, pollution 400,000.

Beevor’s description of the events of the battle remain with the reader long after the book has been closed. Hitler's frustrations over the lack of success in the Caucasus and at Stalingrad, meanwhile, reached its zenith when he dismissed General Haider, the chief of the Army General Staff. Litt from the University of Bath, awarded in 2010, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Kent, awarded in 2004. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Kent and an Honorary Fellow of King's College, London. Atlanta Journal Constitution “Before any self-proclaimed guru says one more word about “military operations in urban terrain” he or she ought to read British historian Antony Beevor’s monumental new work on the battle for Stalingrad.Beevor combines a soldier’s understanding of war’s realities with the narrative technique of a novelist. Not only because of the details of countless atrocities, but also because of the volume of detailed military details contained within. Of course, there is a flip side to this too in heroism, and medals dished out like they were sweets. 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. Beevor is a storyteller who never loses his way and an historian who can appreciate the huge without forgetting the human.

He would have nothing to do with ideas concerning the retreat or surrender of the encircled 6th Army in Stalingrad. this brilliant tapestry, which illuminates so pitilessly, and yet with a reassuring glow of humanity, the bitterest and most cruel of all 20th-century battles. Zhukov, Vasilevskiy, and Chuikov emerged out of this conflict as heroes of the Soviet Union, and it was this successful campaign that swayed Stalin into allowing Red Army commanders more freedom, (putting commissars into subordinate roles) and allowing them to use deep battle operations. I have no doubt Stalingrad and failure of the Fall Blau (operation blue) was the turning point where the Red Army went from a stumbling colossus to a mighty goliath. This book has been on my mind for 20 years, since I was a school boy and my history teacher had a poster of it on his wall.With Hitler's launch of Operation Barbarossa and planned annihilation of Bolshevism - or rather, it's new form: Stalinism, his armies would turned up on the banks of the Volga and end up marking the turning point in the second World War. This is the reason why Count von Strachwitz, the commander of the 16th Panzer Division, destroyed more than a hundred of them, thus achieving the needed "spectacular victory. Richard Overy, author of Why the Allies Won and Russia’s War “Beevor’s Stalingrad represents the triumph of the written word: no news report, no documentary however powerful, could communicate the totality of the cruelty imposed on both sides. The Russian advance toward Germany forced Germans to defend Nazism in the same way as the German aggression forced Russians to defend Stalinism - this author's conclusion explains a lot of nations' controversial decisions to support their leaders in modern times.