Essentiality: ⭐
Accessibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Quality: ⭐⭐⭐
We are fortunate this text exists. Russia has gone from the oppressive propaganda of the Soviet Union to the nationalist despotism of today’s Federation, but in between were a few halcyon years for history where the archives opened up. Antony Beevor used them to build a rich record of the millions of lives that funneled into, and ended at, the bloodiest battle of WWII: Stalingrad.
Stalingrad presents months of background to the battle. In contrast, there is little elaboration on Stalingrad’s consequences. Prior knowledge of how the Nazis lost WWII in the east is assumed. In principle, I’m opposed to too much context beforehand. This is a history of Stalingrad, not the Eastern Front. In practice, this serves the text well. The battle needs that grounding, or else the text becomes military history for the sake of playing at wargames.
Otherwise, though, I did find myself questioning the greater purpose of reading books like this. Beevor does a marvellous job in collating so many stories. Some are darkly humorous, or even heartwarming. Most are grim, horrific, or sad. This was a clash between two dystopian dictatorships, one of which intended to perpetrate such massacres on a continental scale and with a genocidal purview. By late in the book, I was questioning what the purpose was of putting myself through this again and again. There are few happy endings, and half of them belong to Nazis - hardly sympathetic characters.
That being said, even if there’s no wider purpose to understanding the battle, I’m now satisfied I’ve learnt thoroughly about the battle. Gone are vague notions of thousands of Germans and Russians sitting around in a city for an endless, pointless, stalemated battle. The book makes clear that there would be real consequences if Stalingrad fell, and that the city was under urgent and constant threat, as the Germans made rapid progress through the city. The city’s end lay at the west bank of the Volga, and the critical role of the river is heavily emphasised throughout. Siberian rifles nervously eye the pallor of smoke over the city, as their ferries wend through the splashes and splooshes of bullets machine gunned and bombs shelled into the riverbed, hoping to make it in time before the last wave dies off. Especially of note is the long, brutal crushing of the encircled Germans, finally forced into degrading living standards approaching those of the Soviets.
This is a book you could quite happily go without reading. If you find that reading about the same sad, horrible death and destruction over and over again gets you down, you should stay away. If you want to develop more of a beginner’s understanding to WWII, there are books with a larger scope, but few more engaging or riveting - there’s a reason this one is well-known and reputed. If you’re satisfied with just learning about something interesting, for the sake of learning, and you find war interesting, this is your book.
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