There we would sit, side by side, and Lyuba would be speed-reading through and I would say, ‘Hang on. What about that?’ And she would say, ‘No, no. But this.’ And immediately focus in. That way one could work far faster than one would ever be able to do otherwise. Five Dials With Lyuba it was fantastic. One could see straight away that she had absolutely the right instinct, the nose. The nose is terribly important. You also need a magpie mind. You’ve got to be able to speed-read, to be able to fasten on the vital things. She immediately had that instinct. Others were too conscientious. There is so much material you’ve got to cover, that you mustn’t be overly conscientious. Beevor: The point about the Battle of Stalingrad was that it was the psychological turning point of the war. It became quite clear both to the Red Army and also to the German Army that from now on there would now be a movement toward the West and eventually Berlin would suffer the same fate as Stalingrad. It took five months before we even got in, as we were negotiating with the general staff in the ministry of defence. They controlled the archives. Pritzker Military Museum & Library Announces 2014 Literature Award Winner - BWWBooksWorld". Broadwayworld.com . Retrieved 25 June 2014.

There are still places where you can get good stuff. Tim Snyder is a good example. He got it from the Ukrainian archives. You’ve got to be quite clever in the way that gets you round the obstacles.He also expressed doubt as to whether errors or misrepresentations might have been introduced in the Russian version targeted in the Ukrainian import ban, citing the thorough approach of publisher Azbooka-Atticus, a joint venture between French Hachette and Aleksandr Mamut's A&NN Group. Beevor said he was broadsided by confirmation of the ban, which he initially dismissed as possible disinformation in the context of Ukrainian-Russian relations. For me, there were no computers at all. None of the catalogues were computerized. They hadn’t yet managed to cross-reference. Catherine Merridale, who wrote an excellent book called Ivan’s War, was the one who then tipped me off. She wasn’t allowed into Podolsk. By then the barrier had come down. Spiro, Zachary. 2015. Russia Bans Books on Nazi Defeat by British Historians. The Times (6 August).

In Berlin you were dealing with source material recounting horrible behaviour. How do you do that with sensitivity? Antony Beevor RFE/RL: Did the ferocity and brutality of the fighting in Stalingrad have a lot to do with the fact that it was effectively two totalitarian armies squaring off against each other, i.e., battle fatigue, surrender, etc., were simply not things that could be countenanced? 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. There was a wonderful moment when a colonel said to us, ‘We have a simple rule in our archives. You tell us the subject. We choose the files.’

Rather as the Ukrainians today are denounced as Nazis, so the Bolsheviks claimed that the sailors were led by tsarist officers. It was a lie. Many of the rebels were summarily executed. Before they were shot, writes Beevor, they shouted out: “Long live the world revolution!” It was on precisely that kind of imperishable belief that the Soviet communists traded with remarkable durability for more than 70 years. Beevor has captured the beginnings of the tragedy in mesmerising detail.

Beevor was awarded an Honorary D.Litt. from the University of Kent in 2004, [26] from the University of Bath in 2010, [27] the University of East Anglia in 2014 [28] and the University of York in 2015. [29] He was elected an honorary Fellow of King's College London in July 2016. [30] urn:lcp:stalingrad00beev:epub:3732ac35-5aa7-4237-b77b-2dfd30f092dd Extramarc University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (PZ) Foldoutcount 0 Identifier stalingrad00beev Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t9g45fp9k Isbn 0670870951 Beevor: No, absolutely not.... It was only when Hitler started to have doubts that he was going to achieve his objective of seizing the oil fields in the Caucasus that he, in his rather typical way, started to switch his attention very much toward a symbol of victory rather than a genuine -- if you like -- military objective. And Stalingrad, because it bore Stalin’s name, could at least symbolize a form of victory. In a 2012 interview, Beevor told RFE/RL that he thought books like his contributed to a greater understanding of the Eastern Front in World War II, particularly among Westerners accustomed to focusing on the Western Front. Stalingrad has become a tremendous sort of myth. In fact, Jean-Jacques Annaud, the director of “Enemy at the Gates,” said to me once, "But Antony, who can tell where myth begins and truth ends?" And all the rest of it...I don’t know whether that’s an excuse for playing around with history and sort of saying that history is totally elastic. I’m afraid it’s one of the problems that basically the needs of Hollywood and the entertainment industry and the needs of history are totally incompatible.

Russia – Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921

In a curious way, newspapers like to think of easy, straightforward parallels, which they can then instruct their readers with, which in fact are always completely misleading and usually very dangerous. They know they are. Arnhem is a very good example of this. At the very end of August, there was a Minister in the Government in Exile in London who broadcast to Holland through the BBC, saying ‘Liberation is coming. Keep a diary.’ And that explains the quantity. The British Army, Manpower and Society into the Twenty-First Century, ed by Hew Strachan ISBN 978-0-7146-8069-9