Rating: 
Summary: Stalingrad-View From Ground Level
Review: For most people in the West, the War between German and Russia 1941-45 is the "Unknown War". Thanks to movies like "The Longest Day", "A Bridge Too Far", and many others, the impression is gained that the United States and Britain carried the bulk of the war against Nazi Germany, but the fact is that 3/4 of the entire strength of the German Wehrmacht was destroyed by the USSR's Red Army. Although many fine books have been written in the US and Britain about this war, most of them have been written more for people who already have a strong background in WWII, but this book makes the story of battle marking the turning point of the war, Stalingrad, accessible to the general public. The book is written in a form that was made popular in the 1960's and 1970's bringing vignettes both from the political and military leaders as well as the experiences of ordinary people caught up in the maelstrom. Famous encounters in the engagement such as the "Battle of the Grain Elevator" or "Pavlov's House" are described, bringing the horror of the "rattenkrieg" (rat's war) in the ruins of the city to the reader. Craig points out how the indescriminate bombing of the city as a prelude to the German attack which killed tens of thousands of civilians including the deliberate strafing of columns of civilians trying
to flee to the east bank of the Volga river ended up backfiringon the Germans, enabling the Soviet defenders to turn the rubble into improvised fortresses forcing the Germany's vaunted Sixth Army into fighting house-to-house, cellar to cellar, street to street, and sometimes room to room, something they were unused to, coming from successful blitzkrieg, mobile warfare, campaigns. He also points out that in spite of the fact that the German army was famous for discipline, when the German pocket (the "kessel") was in danger of falling to the Soviets, many soldiers made self-inflicted wounds in order to be flown out or they would defy orders and storm the waiting aircraft, even though they had not been given permissionto be evacuated..
A couple of items should be mentioned as corrections to the book, however. First of all, Craig calls Sixth Army commander
Friedrich von Paulus, but Paulus came from a family that was not part of the Prussian Military aristocracy, so "von" was not part of his name.
Secondly, this book was written in the early 1970's, before the fall of the Communist regime. Antony Beevor has written another popular-style book about Stalingrad based on research done since then and he brings new facts to light. Among them is his skepticism about the famous duel that was believed to occur between Soviet master sniper Vassily Zaitsev and the German Konings. Although this story was circulated for many years and Craig recounts in this book, Beevor says there is reason to doubt whether it really occurred (this story forms the backdrop of the movie with the same title of this book, which is not really based on the book, unfortunately).
In summary, I strongly recommend this book, in addition to Beevor's to really get a feeling for the titanic, inhuman struggle that was the Russo-German front in the Second World War.
Rating:
Summary: Easily the best ever
Review: Enemy at the Gates is a classic military book written about the epic World War II Battle of Stalingrad, fought in 1942-1943 between the superpowers of the time - Hitler's Germany and Stalin's U.S.S.R. The author interviewed a lot of survivors from both sides, including soldiers, doctors and civilians and obtain invaluable insight into the battle which significantly influenced the outcome of the war. For the first time, Nazi Germany had been crushed in a battle.The book describes how in 1942, the German Sixth Army, fresh from crushing victories inflicted on the Allies across Europe, advanced deep into U.S.S.R. in an attempt to capture Stalingrad. Though out-numbered, the Russian army heroically fought back and held Stalingrad against a much more powerful enemy. Eye-witness accounts of the horrors of the initial bombings, the brutality of the fighting were described. The Russians were slowly pushed back and victory for the Germans seemed just a matter of time before the Russian reinforcements came in and encircled the Germans in Stalingrad, cutting supply lines for an army with almost 300,000 men. The Germans quickly ran out of food and ammunition as the Russians encirclement grew tighter and tighter. The book detailed how the German High Command was bullish about delivering enough supplies to the troops inside the encirclement (even predicting a victory) and the politics and individual misjudgements which lead to the diaster that followed. At this point, no matter what your opinions on the Germans are, you will feel sorry for the German troops trapped in the encirclement, slowly weakening and dying due to hunger, unable to launch counterattacks due to lack of supplies, waiting for the inevitable diaster to come. The final chapter also describes the surrender and the fate of hundreds of thousands of German, Romanian and Italian prisoners of war. Only a small percentage of these troops saw their home countries again as they were killed or starved to death. Survivors of the prison camps described in horror how some of their countrymen had to resort to cannibalism to survive. At the back of the book is a short chapter describing the fate of some of the survivors of the battle. I found this section to be quite interesting to see how the people involved in this battle ended up. The only thing I find lacking in this book is detailed maps showing how the battle evolved from the initial German advances to the final destruction of the Sixth Army. I strongly recommend this book to you.
Rating:
Summary: The Definitive Pick
Review: Schoolboys talk about it, armchair historians love to dissect it.
This is easily the best of the Stalingrad books - not a novel but the historical record written in muscular prose that the great war chroniclers like Harrison Salisbury and Cornelius Ryan trademarked. Superb insight on the white heat of the battle, of how this was a culminating battle where animal hatreds would decide one of hisotory's turning points. This is considerably more readable and less cluttered than Antony Beevor's volume. It is definitive history that seems to settle the arguments of revisionists about what might have been. This time, not even Manstein could have saved them. The front was vulnerable in too many places. The Russians would win. The real story is just how Manstein pulled off the extrication of the rest of the southern German forces, which military logic would have seemed were next victims after the anihilation of the Sixth Army. And he followed up this mephistophlean feat with the astonishing Kharkov counter - attack that sent the Russians reeling. There's lots of great history surrounding Stalngrad. This book is the place to start and finish on the battle, then readers can move on to the real death knel - Operation Bagration. Books on this (which signalled the real collapse) are rarer but Amazon usually has a reasonably priced volume or two in its listings.
| 
