This gripping account of Germany's notorious campaign combinessophisticated use of previously published firsthand accounts inGerman and Russian along with newly available Soviet archivalsources and caches of letters from the front. For Beevor (ParisAfter the Liberation, 1944-1949), the 1942 German offensive was agamble that reflected Hitler's growing ascendancy over his militarysubordinates. The wide-open mobile operations that took the 6thArmy into Stalingrad were nevertheless so successful that Sovietauthorities insisted they could be explained only by treason. (Over13,000 Soviet soldiers were formally executed during the battle forStalingrad alone.) Combat in Stalingrad, however, deprived theGermans of their principal force multipliers of initiative andflexibility. The close-gripped fighting brought men to the limitsof endurance, then kept them there. Beevor juxtaposes the grotesquewith the mundane, demonstrating the routines that men on both sidesdeveloped to cope with an environment that brought them to the edgeof madness. The end began when German army commander Friedrich vonPaulus refused to prepare for the counterattack everyone knew wascoming. An encircled 6th Army could neither be supplied by air norfight its way out of the pocket unsupported. Fewer than 10,000 ofStalingrad's survivors ever saw Germany again. For the SovietUnion, the victory became a symbol not of a government, but of apeople. The men and women who died in the city's rubble could havehad worse epitaphs than this sympathetic treatment. Agent: AndrewNurnberg. History Book Club main selection; BOMC alternateselection; foreign sales to the U.K., Germany and Russia. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This textrefers to an out of print or unavailable edition of thistitle.
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