Stalingrad: The Pity and the Terror

     Antony Beevor.  Stalingrad (1998) One of my uncles went missing at Stalingrad, so my reading of this book was coloured by that knowledge. What stands out most to me is the appalling mistakes made by Hitler, and the toadying of the careerist generals who put their careers ahead of their loyalty to the Nation. And of course there were generals who believed the Nazi race theories. They were Prussians; the Prussian military caste was supposedly raised to put the Nation first.

     The other take-aways simply make that military betrayal all the more poignant. The siege was a battle of attrition. The Russians won because they could support their supply lines better than the Germans could; because they produced more materiel (a fact that the Nazi-imbued command couldn’t believe); because they were willing to sacrifice their men; and because Hitler and his general staff understood neither the sheer size of Russia, nor the violence of the Russian winter. Like Napoleon’s, their conception of the battle field was limited by their circumscribed European experience.
     In the end, the battle cost about one million lives, most of them soldiers. The city was reduced to rubble. And Hitler, supported by a general staff and  Nazi hierarchy that would not disobey his increasingly crazy commands, prolonged the war and the slaughter for another two years.
     Beevor tells his story clearly, but it helps to have the maps at hand while reading. It would also help to have coloured maps, and more of them. Still, the shape of the battle and siege are clear enough on a first reading.  I won’t read this book again, though. Beevor includes many verbatim reports gleaned from written records and interviews. These, even more than the accounts of the troop movements, bring the waste of Stalingrad to vivid life, and death.
     I don’t want to think about what happened to my uncle. He was a Lutheran pastor, who volunteered as a private because he didn’t want the officer rank of chaplain to come between him and the men he expected to serve. Less than 10% of the 5th Army eventually returned. These men brought what news they could, but much of it was garbled, or incomplete, or little more than a name. My uncle may have survived the siege. If he did, he did not survive Siberia.
     Recommended. ****