Stalingrad

Product Information

The senior Generals and officers and the political elites of both countries get heard again and again either though state archives or diaries etc. Of course, there is a flip side to this too in heroism, and medals dished out like they were sweets.

This is not to get nit-picky, but as I read, I often had this almost unconscious sensation that something was slightly off. However, as I’ve ventured down the rabbit hole of consuming history, it become unavoidable if one wants to learn from the lessons of history to avoid todays mistakes. I like Beevor's work at the level it is presented (it is a good primer for the Glantz volumes I am about to dig into). The ill-prepared Nazi forces were trapped in a bloody war of attrition against the Russian behemoth, which held them in the pit of Stalingrad for nearly two years.Stalingrad is a narrative history written by Antony Beevor of the battle fought in and around the city of Stalingrad during World War II, as well as the events leading up to it. D. Foot, The Times “Even for those who already think they know the story well, Antony Beevor has written a superb new narrative. 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. Orlando Figes, The Independent “Stalingrad by Antony Beevor is the greatest battle book ever written. Some captured commanders (namely, Walther von Seydlitz-Kurbach) were naive enough to create The League of German Officers and ask the Soviets to parachute them into Germany to start the fight against the Nazi regime.

The first was his whimsical belief that the United Kingdom would eventually become his ally, which delayed his decision to launch a major invasion of Britain, whose army was unprepared for the force of blitzkrieg warfare. You read about General Paulus’s nervous tic, or about how Operation Uranus, the plan that encircled the Sixth army, came into being. As the Eastern Front collapsed toward the Volga, the Russians were closer to their base of supply in the Urals and around Moscow, while the Germans were dangerously stretched. The waste of war – shell cases, burnt-out tanks, and grenade boxes – was mixed with the wreckages of family homes.Stalingrad must rank with the Battle Of Britain as one of the major game-changers, the heroic epics, of World War II. Recent events in Yemen and Burma, among others, remind us that collectively we appear ignorant of the past, that somehow it is our nature to render appalling harm, regardless of what history has taught us.

Napoleon was failed by the logistics of his day and age; the harder he pressed Kutuzov, and the deeper he got into Russia, the longer his supply line became.He is also a visiting professor at the University of Kent and an Honorary Fellow of King's College, London. This was the most appalling part of this conflict as the war of attrition stepped up to inhuman levels effort and endurance. Hitler si Antonescu au avut o discutie tensionata in "Wolfschanze" (buncarul lui Hitler din Prusia Orientala).