Rating: 
Summary: Very solid account of the ordinary soldiers' war.
Review: If you want to read about higher strategy this is not the book for you. And If you want to learn about the Luftwaffe's failure to win the Battle of Stalingrad and then keep 6th army alive you'll have to look elsewhere. Where should you look? At Joel Hayward's definitive, excellent STOPPED AT STALINGRAD: THE LUFTWAFFE AND HITLER'S DEFEAT IN THE EAST. But if you want to learn about the suffering of ordinary ground troops on both sides THIS IS THE RIGHT BOOK! Read Hayward and Beevor together and you've got the whole picture. It a grim, miserable but poignant picture. Stalingrad is what happens when the poor recruits of two evil tyrants square off and are not allowed to retreat 'even one inch'.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much information
Review: This was indeed a well-written account of the horror of Stalingrad. But as I read, I found myself getting innundated and bogged down with a severe case of too-much-information. Specifically, trying to keep track of all the vast array of units involved - example as follows... ...4th Tank Corps, XI Corps, Soviet 65th Army, Austrian 44th Infantry Division, 14th Panzer Division, 3rd Guards Calvary Corps, Romanian VI Army Corps, 4th Mechanized Corps, 138th Rifle Division, VIII Air Corps, 305th Infantry Division, 62nd Army, 64th Army, 115th Special Brigade, XXIV Panzer Corps, 295th Infantry Division, 71st Infantry Divsion, 76th Infantry Division, IV Corps, XLVII Panzer Corps, 16th Motorized Division, and on, and on, and on.... WHEW! See what I mean? How does one keep track of all this? I KNOW this book could have been written without this high-end level of detail and still conveyed the horror and heroism and experience of Stalingrad. I would have prefered a 'dumbed down' version that layed out the Stalingrad campaign in an easier and less technical approach. With all the minute attention to detail it quickly became dry reading. Because 'Stalingrad' goes into much more detail than was necessary for me, I am reluctant to read A. Beevor's new book 'The Fall of Berlin 1945'. It is a subject which interests me greatly, but I suspect I would easily get mired in more information than I (personally) want or need.
Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading-But Still Lacking Something
Review: Antony Beevor has written an important book because there is an appalling lack of knowledge in the Western World about what happened in the Soviet-German theater during World War II so anything that contributes to alleviating this problem is welcome. Therefore, I think the fact that a significant fraction of the book is devoted to describing what happened in the war before the German's began their offensive towards Stalingrad and the Caucasus is worthwhile.
I do agree with other reviewers who state that the actual fighting inside Stalingrad is not described adequately. Two legendary engagements within the city (the Battle of the Grain Elevator and "Pavlov's House") are just given a few lines each. A more detailed description of what the fighters on each side went through would have given a real taste of how the campaign has fought.
On the other hand, Beevor does make some important points that have have been glossed over in other accounts of the battle. First, unlike other writers, Beevor does not portray German Sixth Army commander Paulus as just a simple-minded lackey of [dictator] who led his men into disaster and then refused to try to save them after they were cut off inside the "Kessel". Beevor points out that the Sixth Army was in very poor condition at the time of Manstein's attempt to reach the Kessel and so it would not have been possible for the Sixth Army to punch through the Soviet ring. Similarly, he also points out that not all the Rumanian troops fighting on the side of the Germans were incompetant bunglers as they are often portrayed.
Beevor also makes clear that Goebbels' infamous "Total War" campaign, begun just at the time the Sixth Army surrendered, was a thinly disguised attempt to create another "stab-in-the back" legend (as in the 1918 armistice), i.e. to shift the blame for the disaster from [dictator] and the [German] leadership onto the traditional aristocracy and the Army high command which was an important component of the German (or really, Prussian) ruling elite.
Finally, Beevor makes clear that the German prisoners could not expect to receive treatment much better than that which they gave to the Soviet prisoners they had previously captured and who were starved and brutalized in the millions. This explains why half of the 91,000 prisoners taken died within 3 months and why only 5,000 survived to return to Germany in the 1950's.
Rating: 
Summary: Incredibly gripping stuff...
Review: The Battle of Stalingrad is certainly an interesting study. Everything about it is warfare taken to an extreme, from the will of the leaders, to the weather, to the methods of "motivation," make for gripping human drama. Beevor's account, in my opinion, strikes an excellent balance between all of these extremes of human suffering and the actual tactics and movements of the battle. I thought Beevor did a good job of recounting the suffering of the common soldier without allowing this book to turn into a series of sad stories. The appalling conditions at Stalingrad are certainly one factor which makes the battle such a fascinating subject, but Beevor does not forget that there was a battle fought around Stalingrad with tanks and guns, and that is what ultimately defeated the Germans, not rats and lice. The conditions are kept in context with the greater battle. The reasons for the attrition of the German sixth army and its subsequent encirclement are given at both the tactical and strategic levels, from the viewpoint of both the common soldier and the general staff. For better or worse, there isn't a lot of mention of the fact that the starving and freezing German army was the same one which had murdered and raped its way through the steppe, nor that the Soviet army would do much the same to the German people when they crossed into Germany. This omission lends a little more human quality to the book, in that these factors aren't considered when the stories of suffering are recounted, and one finds him or herself pitying the combatants probably more than one would otherwise. The battle for Stalingrad is one of the great stories of life-and-death struggles between nations, and Beevor does it tremendous justice, in my opinion, from the perspective of both the private and the general.
Rating: 
Summary: A typical eastern front book
Review: Mr. Beevor may well have traveled to lots of places, to meet lots of people and to analyze countless world war II documents and archives to write his book. However, the final product can easily be added to a huge list of typical books related to the military operations in the eastern front in WWII. The book has a wide variety of weaknesses, as a matter of fact from the very beggining of the book:
"'Russia', observed the poet Tyuchev, 'cannot be understood with the mind'" (Preface!!!)... Again, i find myself before an author who gladly provides me with his own words to strike and to possibly shatter his own arguments. Need examples? He insists the one of the greates mistakes, out of thousands, the Germans made was to underestimate the red army. So let's quote Mr. Beevor: "Japanese military intelligence took rather a different view. It was about the only foreign service which did not underestimate the red army at this time." (page 24).
... Again, we find a book, where the infinite boldness and bravery of the ordinary soviet soldier is highly praised. This pattern can be easily found everywhere in Mr. Beevor's book. Even when he focus in the moments where the 6th Army gave the red army a heavy battering. It's very simple, basic perhaps, if the defenders were bold, the attackers were bolder, however Mr. Beevor appears to have had no idea about that. "The russians always fought to the very last moment and never surrendered". (I think the Germans took more the 5 million soviet prisoners)... He calls Zhukov "an agressive young commander". Perhaps he was agressive. But a tactician, i am not so sure.
Part Four "Zhukov's trap", is another weak link in Beevor's chain. I agree that Zhukov had much better tactical ideas compared to the rest of the soviet commanders, however, i am firmly convinced that soviet generals were more "meat for the enemy guns administrators" rather than tacticians. He dedicates a huge amount of lines to describe the utterly depressed letters allegedly wrote by German soldiers, that never reached their relatives, and sadly for them, were found in their corpses by soviet soldiers and commissars... I am of the belief that the Wehrmacht had everything to bring the Soviet Union down on its knees. Now we know about the german mistakes, which the soviets -in some cases- knew how to exploit in their war effort.
Rating:
Summary: Best book on arguable the most important battle of WWII
Review: Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege is a disturbing, thought-provoking look into hell itself. Detailed accounts of the horror that went on in this city are stunning. Stalingrad was unlike any other battle these two armies had ever fought; the Germans called it "rattenkrieg" or "war of the rats". Soldiers from either army controlled different stories in the same building, or even rooms on the same story. You can almost feel the horror and the surprise of the Wermacht, and the jubilation and relief of the Red Army, as Beevor depicts the encirclement and surrender of Paulus' Sixth Army. The slogan for the Russian defenders of Stalingrad was "There is no land for you on the other side of the Volga". There will be no time for you to put down this book!
Rating:
Summary: A Magnificent Book for all to read
Review: This is one of those books that if you were to know nothing about Stalingrad or very little about WWII, you would still find this book to be great.
It has so many great quotes from the people who lived the battle. The wording used to described such acts as, bravery, savery, pity and sorrow is done in a way that all of us would understand and feel for the soldiers in the battle.
This book does not glorify either side but gives it straight down the middle.
Other books rely a lot on were each army is at, giving you stats and movements and this books does that too but, as previously said, it goes the extra mile by giving you the quotes and the author's thoughts which are in my mind very intelligently put.
If you are looking for the Army Movements, battles in a unpersonal way, which is to say without that many quotes and just strategic talk, then I would recomment "The Inferno Cauldron" by Walsh. A really good book if all you want if just the stratefic stuff. For the oveall view on the battles, the soldiers, the destruction, this book is it.
Deserves the Five Stars
Rating:
Summary: Don't understand the negative reviews
Review: Not much to add to the rave reviews (see my five stars), but I really can't understand the reviewers who have criticised Beevor's writing style - "clumsy", "dry", "boring", etc. It is NONE of these (if you want clumsy dry and boring, try Gore Vidal's "Lincoln") - it is well-written, well-researched and gripping. As for the US reviewer who thinks that references to flags flying at "half-mast" is an error, it isn't - it's standard British usage (I'd never heard "half-staff" until reading that review).
Rating:
Summary: Good overview with defined lessons learned
Review: This book deals in sufficient detail with many of the most salient lessons learned from the battle of Stalingrad at the tactical, operational and strategic level. Any book of this length will not provide the finite level of detail that many historians may prefer in having the most concrete possible picture of the battle. However, when trying to learn about the relevance of Stalingrad at all levels, Beevor's book does shed light on critical decisions and concepts. Importantly, he illustrates these in a manner that demonstrates their continued relevance. As an active duty Army armor officer, I recommend vignettes from the book that provide a great deal of fruit for thought. He spends sufficient time discussing the effects of logistics on this battle. He gives a good account of the effects of destruction of the city prior to the commencement of the heaviest concentration of urban warfare and cites good examples of the negative effect this had on the Germans as the attackers at the tactical level. He provides a good description of the terrible casualties suffered by both sides. This is useful in teaching the difference between tactical and operational victory. He is one of the few historians who gives the Rumanian Army some credit during their battles to defend the 6th Army's flanks, 19-22 November 1942. He subsequently provides lessons about the importance of adjacent unit coordination which is so critical in maneuver warfare. I feel the purpose of history is to teach, not to compile and provide data. Beevor succeeded. I recommend this book to all who want to learn the lessons of this great battle without making it their hobby.
Rating:
Summary: Overrated: a popular fictionalized narrative history
Review: Beware books that rate five stars on this site. Not a bad book, but, the narratives are fictionalized: Hitler (foaming at the mouth): "Stalingrad must be destroyed!"
Stalin (eyes ablaze): "Fight to the bitter end!" And so on... Now, how would the author know exactly what was said? Maybe his previously classified treasure trove of musty old materials. But, I have been overrulled by hoi polloi, who seem to love this emphasis on volume over mass.
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