History

Stalingrad

Anthony Beevor

Viking, #25

ON February 1, 1943, the encircled German Sixth Army surrendered to the Russians at Stalingrad on the Volga, more than 2000 miles from the German frontier. More than 90,000 prisoners were taken, including the commander, Frederick Paulus, and a host of other senior officers. There had been somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 troops (estimates differ) in the trap which the Russians had sprung in November 1942. Casualties had been enormous. Beevor estimates the Germans lost half a million men in the five-month campaign for the city where their role as besiegers was abruptly reversed.

The Red Army lost a similar number, for its commanders, and not only Stalin, had spent lives with an astonishing prodigality and insensitivity to suffering. It paid off. Stalingrad was the psychological turning point of the war. The previous winter, fighting outside Moscow showed that the Germans could be contained but their morale quickly recovered. Even after Stalingrad a degree of recuperation allowed them to regain their balance and launch a summer offensive which culminated in the famous tank battle of Kursk, which they lost. But Stalingrad convinced the Russians, soldiers and people generally alike, that they could win the war. They had every reason to exalt. They had equalled the Germans in courage, determination, and self-sacrifice, but also out-generalled them.

In this splendid, gripping, and even compelling book, Anthony Beevor tells the story of epic struggle. More than half a century after the events he describes, he achieves a freshness and immediacy from new sources and interviews with survivors from both sides. The old Soviet archives are now open (though not completely for some vital NKVD files remain secret) and through these he has access to soldiers' letters and diaries either retained by Red Army censors or, in the case of German material, captured after the surrender. He has, too, read widely in the published literature of military memoirs and academic military history, but what he has achieved is a popular book with high academic standards.

The heroes of the first half of this account are the ordinary Russian soldiers, who consciously sacrificed their lives for their country on a large scale. Beevor recounts their experiences often quoting their own words, and achieves an eloquence which will move his readers. Fortitude, courage, determination, innovation (not usually identified as one of their qualities), and energy are the words which spring to mind concerning them. In a way which is curious, these very same words apply also to the Germans when the roles are reversed. Decency, nobility; in fact every attribute of human goodness is unconfined by ideological or racial connections. Nor is wickedness and evil: behind the Red Army's infantry were the NKVD machine gunners to compel bravery. On the German side was the propaganda of Nazi evil - the idea of sub-humanity which condemned all the Russians; and the reality of the Sonderkommandos

who murdered Russian Jews and obvious Communists as the Sixth Army advanced.

The whole book is suffused with irony - both sides were fighting for not very different versions of socialist tyranny which held soldiers' lives in contempt. That so many Soviet citizens fought for the Germans as ''willing helpers'' is instructive - the victors were amazed by their number. Beevor suspects that full details of the helpers' fates are in the still-secret NKVD files.

The architects of Soviet victory were Zhukov and Vasilevsky. Stalin took their professional advice. Hitler could take no advice. He could not even accept factual reality. Beevor finds him mainly responsible for the German disaster, though Goering is shot down as well. The German High Command attracts no respect, however; and Von Manstein, Paulus's would-be rescuer attracts disdain. Paulus himself is treated with some sympathy. He was a staff officer and planner who had not commanded a division let alone a corps before Hitler promoted him to lead the very large Sixth Army. He did not rise to the occasion. The Russians did. They deserved the salute this book delivers and the thanks of the West Europeans whom they saved, though ironically being unable to save themselves.