The Battle of Stalingrad was not only the psychological turning point of World War II: it also changed the face of modern warfare
Beevor's latest book Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge is now available from Viking Books
Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle.
In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five-month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold Stalingrad at any cost; then, in an astonishing reversal, encircled and trapped their Nazi enemy. This battle for the ruins of a city cost more than a million lives. Stalingrad conveys the experience of soldiers on both sides, fighting in inhuman conditions, and of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield. Antony Beevor has itnerviewed survivors and discovered completely new material in a wide range of German and Soviet archives, including prisoner interrogations and reports of desertions and executions. As a story of cruelty, courage, and human suffering, Stalingrad is unprecedented and unforgettable.
Chapter 1. The Double-Edged Sword of Barbarossa
Chapter 2. ‘Nothing is Impossible for the German Soldier!’
Chapter 3. ‘Smash in the Door and the Whole Rotten Structure Will Come Crashing Down!’
Chapter 4. Hitler’s Hubris: The Delayed Battle for Moscow
Chapter 5. General Paulus’s First Battle
Chapter 6. ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need?’
Chapter 7. ‘Not One Step Backwards’
Chapter 8. ‘The Volga is Reached!’
Chapter 9. ‘Time is Blood’: The September Battles
Chapter 11. Traitors and Allies
Chapter 12. Fortresses of Rubble and Iron
Chapter 13. Paulus’s Final Assault
Chapter 14. ‘All For the Front!’
Chapter 16. Hitler’s Obsession
Chapter 17. ‘The Fortress Without a Roof’
Chapter 18. ‘Der Manstein Kommt!’
Chapter 19. ‘Christmas in the German Way’
Chapter 21. ‘Surrender Out of the Question’
Chapter 22. ‘A German Field Marshal Does Not Commit Suicide with a Pair of Nail Scissors!’
Chapter 23. ‘Stop Dancing! Stalingrad Has Fallen’
Chapter 24. The City of the Dead
Chapter 25. The Sword of Stalingrad
APPENDIX A - German and Soviet Orders of Battle, 19 November 1942
APPENDIX B - The Statistical Debate: Sixth Army Strength in the Kessel