Stalingrad

Beevor has a rare gift of presenting war at the level of both the ordinary soldier and the generals and distant leadership making decisions both good and bad. His sources range from letters home, to diaries, to dispatches on both the Soviet and German side. He writes without flinching about the horrors of war, or too overtly playing the cheerleader as so many military histories do, to their detriment. 

The epic battle of Stalingrad in 1942–43 changed the direction of World War II as the invading armies of Nazi Germany were eventually surrounded and defeated in the city of Stalingrad by the defending Red Army of the Soviet Union. At times, the fighting was so fierce that the two sides fought each other from different floors of the same building. Anthony Beevor’s magnificent book captures the intensity and horror of this epic battle.

A definitive history of the most lethal battle of WW2, told with exceptional clarity, academic rigor, and narrative flair, benefiting from access for the first time for a Western historian to the Soviet archives on a battle that would prove the nemesis of Nazi Germany.

With Stalingrad, Beevor broke the mold of traditional military history, reaching a wide readership who found themselves in possession of something more than an absorbing account of a decisive battle. Stalingrad reflects the human condition in extremis.

Stalingrad was the most famous and perhaps the crucial battle during World War II, and no one described it better than Antony Beevor. Beevor’s narrative tells us about the experiences of both the Soviet and German soldiers facing each other. It also describes the life of civilians in Stalingrad and the terrible price at which the Soviets achieved victory.