Stalingrad

United Kingdom

"Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad is a superb retelling of the saga. Beevor combines a soldier’s understanding of war’s realities with the narrative technique of a novelist. He has made impressive use of the German and Russian military archives – not just to uncover new evidence on the atrocities committed by both sides but also to bring out, in all its terrifying aspects, the human experience of the war by citing soldiers’ letters and diaries, personal accounts and oral testimonies of civilians. This is a book that lets the reader look into the face of battle. . . Beevor’s account of this savage war is a tour de force."

- Orlando Figes Sunday Telegraph

"The narrative of Stalingrad is captivating, even for someone like myself who takes little interest in military matters. At times, it felt as if I was reading a classical epic drama of the scope of War and Peace. . . Beevor has skilfully incorporated into the book thousands of sparkling details. One is tempted to forget that these are not Tolstoyan literary metaphors, but painstakingly selected facts from eyewitness accounts, soldiers’ letters and other archival documents. . . Jingoistic statues never pay a proper tribute to the dead, but honest books, like this one, certainly do."

- Vitali Vitaliev Guardian

"In this brilliant book, Antony Beevor explains what happened at Stalingrad from Russian and German sources combined; he has got beyond both sides’ propaganda to write a compelling piece of military history. M.R.D. Foot, The Times"

- M.R.D. Foot The Times

"Even for those who already think they know the story well, Antony Beevor has written a superb new narrative. Stalingrad is a monumental tale. It deserves to be understood by every literate westerner, because what happened on the Eastern Front had a decisive impact on the post-war world. . . But read Beevor first as a compelling tale of human retribution, rather than as military history. "

- Max Hastings The Evening Standard

"What a pleasure it is to welcome a real book by a writer who truly understands the drama and tragedy of great operations. It is certainly the best narrative of the battle yet to appear and is not likely to be surpassed in our time. . . this magnificent book."

- John Keegan The Daily Telegraph

"Antony Beevor’s account of this historic turning-point is truly powerful, written with a compelling narrative drive. . . One of the witnesses to Stalingrad was the Russian writer Vassily Grossman, whose epic novel had seemed the last word about the terror loosed there upon the world. Antony Beevor shows that good history is as telling as fiction. This is a fine achievement."

- David Pryce-Jones The Daily Mail

"This superlative work. . . is a book to be read with humility, awe and respect. It has much to teach us, born into the pampered post-war epoch, about the unfathomable evil of which human beings are capable. But also of the courage, resilience and guts shown by hundreds of thousands of ordinary soldiers. Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad is a monumental book. "

- Peter Oborne Sunday Express

"A classic. . . Stalingrad is bedtime reading only for those who do not dream. . . It is enormously difficult to write about murder outside the framework of justice, heroes and villains. Both regimes were mechanisms of genocide. Soldiers on either side behaved without the least shred of humanity. However, Stalingrad is a deeply moral book, impassioned and sensitive. Beevor has drawn a mappa mundi of war so terrible, that in that terror lies its beauty. Amanda Foreman, Independent"

- Amanda Foreman The Independent

"This magisterial account of the battle by Antony Beevor, the foremost military historian of his generation. . . Beevor’s brilliance as a military writer lies in putting the sometimes extremely complex tactical situations into their proper context, making them easily understandable to non-military minds, and then investigating the effect on the troops in the field. This perfect blend of politics, strategy and personal reminiscence has been made possible as the vast archives of the former USSR are slowly being opened up to Western scholars. . . The Stalingrad story is biblical in its extremes of barbarism and heroism, and Antony Beevor has told it superbly."

- Andrew Roberts The Literary Review

"It is admirably done. One is convinced by his scholarship, and increasingly moved by the drama. . . he succeeds brilliantly. He has made out of a nightmare a beautifully paced narrative, which is both a condemnation of folly and a tribute to men’s extraordinary capacity to accept it at the cost of their lives. "

- Nigel Nicolson The Spectator

"I was worried that my taste for military history had run down. . . But now, at last, something really worth reading has appeared. Indeed so gripping is Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad that I actually found myself reading it walking along the pavement. . . this brilliant tapestry, which illuminates so pitilessly, and yet with a reassuring glow of humanity, the bitterest and most cruel of all 20th-century battles."

- Alan Clark The New Statesman

"In his excellent book, Antony Beevor . . . 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."

- Piers Brendon The Mail on Sunday

"Antony Beevor’s humane and thoroughly researched account of the battle of Stalingrad, a book which definitively reminds us that modern warfare is inconceivably terrible."

- Michael Burleigh The Independent on Sunday

"It is not often that tales of battleground strategy and tactics reach the very top of bestselling lists of non-fiction. But this retelling of the Battle of Stalingrad has proved to be a surprising runaway hit. It is no small achievement to have reached such a wide audience with the pity of this particular war."

The Economist

"Cool and heartrending, balanced and detailed: the best war history to appear for many years. "

- Robert Conquest Author of Stalin

"Antony Beevor has produced a compelling and extraordinary story, richly detailed and engrossingly written. Western scholars owe him a very great debt. We now have the real history of Stalingrad without myth or embellishment."

- Richard Overy Author of Why the Allies Won and Russia’s War

"Beevor’s Stalingrad represents the triumph of the written word: no news report, no documentary however powerful, could communicate the totality of the cruelty imposed on both sides. The uniqueness of this book, more even than that classic, All Quiet on the Western Front, seems to me to lie in the writer’s own humanity and infinite literary subtlety."

- Gitta Sereny Author of Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth

"In a masterly work of military history, the author covers everything from the strategic considerations shaping Hitler’s and Stalin’s decision-making to the urban battles of snipers and small assault teams. Compellingly written, impeccably researched in both Russian and German archives, this is an exceptional work of military history."

- Eliot A. Cohen The Foreign Affairs

"This book is overpowering. . . Beevor’s description of the events of the battle remain with the reader long after the book has been closed."

The Toronto Globe and Mail

"This superb book shows how it happened. . . There has never been a battle like this one, and there has never been a book about a battle such as this."

The Australian

"The best war history to appear in years. Beevor is a storyteller who never loses his way and an historian who can appreciate the huge without forgetting the human."

- Les Carlyon The Bulletin

Books of the Year

"Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad was as good a piece of war history as I have ever read."

- Jeremy Paxman The Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year

"Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad is distinguished not only for its exhaustive research and sheer narrative drive, but for its portrayal of the ordinarily human during one of the most atrocious battles of the century"

- Colin Thubron The Sunday Telegraph

"I have recently read and been hugely impressed by Stalingrad by Antony Beevor"

- Ben Elton The Sunday Telegraph

"My choice this year is, without any doubt, Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad, a magnificent winter tapestry. . . It reads like an accessible novel rather than the superb history which it really is."

- Dirk Bogarde The Daily Telegraph Books of the Year

"Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad is much more than a military history. . . Indeed, it is as readable and as captivating as a Tolstoyan epic drama of the scope of War and Peace. Revealing, profound and thoroughly unputdownable, Stalingrad is an extraordinary achievement which transcends its genre."

- Vitali Vitaliev The Daily Telegraph

"Antony Beevor tells an epic story superbly "

- Keith Baxter, Daily Telegraph The Daily Telegraph

"Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad is superb: a gripping and dispassionate account of alternating folly and endurance."

- Nicholas Shakespeare The Daily Telegraph

"A good year for military history. Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad is well researched and very readable."

- Orlando Figes The Independent

"Stalingrad by Antony Beevor is the greatest battle book ever written. I am still having nightmares over it."

- Taki The Spectator

"A brilliantly researched tour de force"

- Sarah Bradford The Sunday Times

"First I want to add to the many laurels that have crowned Stalingrad by Antony Beevor. This superb work of narrative history (all of human despair, and also of heroism is there) chilled the marrow of my bones, even though read at high summer."

- Antonia Fraser The Sunday Times

"Stalingrad cannot fail to leave one moved."

- Victoria Mather The Daily Mail

"Stalingrad by Antony Beevor is the best battle history for many years – balanced, dramatic, dreadful. "

- Robert Conquest The Times Literary Supplement

"In spite of having won every prize in sight, Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad really is outstanding, dealing as it does with perhaps the most horrible and decisive battle in the history of the world with scholarship, clarity and compassion."

- Michael Howard The Times Literary Supplement

"Antony Beevor met a long-felt need with his deservedly successful Stalingrad."

- Christian Tyler The Financial Times

"A masterpiece of historical narrative that will still be read in a hundred years. Beevor manages to make military history accessible to readers who aren’t interested in tanks or guns – and all because of his immense capacity for emotional empathy."

- Laurence Rees The Week

United States of America

"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."

Publishers Weekly

"A meticulously researched and gripping account. . . a painstakingly thorough study that will become the standard work."

Kirkus Reviews

"A wonderfully readable work of history."

The Wall Street Journal

"The colossal scale of Stalingrad, the megalomania, the utter absurdity, the sheer magnitude of the carnage in what many military historians see as the turning point in the war, are marvelously captured in Antony Beevor’s new history. . . Stalingrad is a formidable military history, informed by Mr. Beevor’s keen strategic sense and his appreciation of the complexities of battle. . . [it] is, in short, a fantastic and sobering story, and it has been fully and authoritatively told in Mr. Beevor’s book."

- Richard Bernstein The New York Times

"Stalingrad’s heart-piercing tragedy needed a chronicler with acute insight into human nature as well as the forces of history. Antony Beevor is that historian. . . 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."

The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Using once secret Russian archives and German records, Beevor has fashioned a narrative that moves with swift and hypnotic force, like a great river with a savage undertow. . . this searing book."

San Diego Union-Tribune

"Stalingrad is a splendid piece of work, on the human as well as the historical level"

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"This gripping account. . . Beevor juxtaposes the grotesque with the mundane, demonstrating the routines that men on both sides developed to cope with an environment that brought them to the edge of madness."

The Record

"Time and again Beevor delivers an image or anecdote that leaves the reader with a lasting impression of what the participants felt or thought. . . In short, Stalingrad is a great book, the sort of account a battle so important and breathtakingly vicious deserves."

Raleigh News & Observer

"Antony Beevor brings to the tale fresh research in previously unavailable archives, and he details daily life in a desperate and crucial battle. Beevor deals adroitly with tactics and politics, but the human-scale stories make Stalingrad more than a battle buffs’ book."

Atlanta Journal Constitution

"Before any self-proclaimed guru says one more word about military operations in urban terrain he or she ought to read British historian Antony Beevor’s monumental new work on the battle for Stalingrad. What helps make it so is the author’s unprecedented, post-Soviet access to new material. . . a fascinating read."

The Washington Times

"A vivid and detailed account. . . Beevor has also compiled a vivid record of the interior nature of the battle, from the slang expressions used by the soldiers to the Russian cult of the sniper and the German fascination with suicide rather than surrender"

The International Herald Tribune

Ireland

"This monumental book is a masterly account of hubris and nemesis on a classic scale. He has written an authoritative and profoundly human study."

- Patrick Skene Catling The Irish Times