Stalingrad

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Grazie allo spoglio degli archivi tedeschi e russi, ma soprattutto dell’NKVD (la mamma del KGB di putiniana memoria) e alla consultazione ed analisi di rapporti, lettere dei soldati a casa, interrogatori dei prigionieri, nonché memorie e interviste ai sopravvissuti, vengono alla luce piccole e piccolissime storie, non solo di ufficiali superiori, ma di soldati e civili travolti, sbattuti, inghiottiti e divorati nel terribile gorgo di Stalingrado. The Number One bestselling historian in Britain , Beevor's books have appeared in thirty-two languages and have sold just over seven million copies. Keith Lowe, writing in The Telegraph, notes that Stalingrad transformed both Beevor's reputation and that of military history, making it from something only for "retired colonels and armchair fantasists" into a "sleek, attention-grabbing subject" always on the bestseller lists. You read about General Paulus’s nervous tic, or about how Operation Uranus, the plan that encircled the Sixth army, came into being.

Beevor’s Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege is a humane testament to the wartime sufferings of millions and a damning indictment of the totalitarian warlords responsible for their fate. succeeds triumphantly in reconstructing, from the chaos of combat and the shards of personal memory, the experience of the worst single defeat ever suffered (until then) by the German army. This is an excellent account of the battle of Stalingrad, I'd place it next to 'Enemy at the Gates'. The second was the ill-conceived Operation Barbarossa--an invasion of Russia that was supposed to take the German army to the gates of Moscow.I found it interesting that men who'd essentially created their own self-Holocaust in the hopeless trap they'd made for themselves at Stalingrad couldn't even get their last letters home. While the German soldiers wrote tenderly about how much they missed hearth and home, Beevor makes clear that the Russian letters were filled with mindless propaganda. WWII да започва да прилича на окопната война WWI, а и да се правят редица паралели с Наполеоновото поражение - военният театър е доста по-сложен за разбиране, а развръзката си остава все същата - един оцелява, друг умира, всички страдат. The German panzer crews quickly overcame their initial surprise, and deployed to attack some of the batteries.

That is why the Soviets could send so many to die without giving them training, arms or tactics to succeed.Laurence Rees in The Week United States “This gripping account of Germany’s notorious campaign combines sophisticated use of previously published firsthand accounts in German and Russian along with newly available Soviet archival sources and caches of letters from the front. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa was the first defeat of Hitler's territorial ambitions in Europe, and the start of his decline. On 7 September, a day when Heider noted "satisfying progress at Stalingrad", Hitler displayed his exasperation at the failure to advance in the Caucasus.