Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

492 Pages·1999·2.03 MB·english

by  Antony Beevor

PENGUIN BOOKS
STALINGRAD
As featured in Book of the Year choices:
'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 book which it really
is' Dirk Bogarde, Daily Telegraph
'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 Fräser, Sunday Times
'Antony Beevor's Stalingrad is superb: a gripping and dispassionate
account of alternating folly and endurance' Nicholas Shakespeare,
Daily Telegraph
'I have recently read and been hugely impressed by Stalingrad by
Antony Beevor' Ben Elton, Sunday Telegraph
''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, Sunday Teleraph
'A brilliantly researched tour deforce' Sarah Bradford, Sunday Times
'Stalingrad by Antony Beevor is the best battle history for many
years - balanced, dramatic, dreadful' Robert Conquest,
The Times Literary Supplement
'Stalingrad by Antony Beevor cannot fail to leave one moved'
Victoria Mather, Daily Mail
'Revealing, profound and thoroughly unputdownable, Stalingrad is
an extraordinary achievement which transcends its genre'
Vitali Vitaliev, Daily Telegraph
More praise for Stalingrad:
'This book is overpowering . . . Beevor's description of the events of
the battle remain with the reader long after the book has been
closed' Toronto Globe and Mail
'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' Economist
'Truly powerful' David Pryce-Jones, Daily Mail
'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' Philadelphia Inquirer
'A wonderfully readable work of history' Wall Street Journal
'A masterly account of hubris and nemesis on a classic scale ... he
has written an authoritative and profoundly human study'
Patrick Skene Catling, Irish Times
'The Stalingrad story is biblical in its extremes of barbarism and
heroism, and Antony Beevor has told it superbly'
Andrew Roberts, Literary Review
'Superb ... a story you'll never forget. There has never been a
battle like this one, and there has never been a book about a battle
such as this' Australian
'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 marvellously
captured in Antony Beevor's new history' Richard Bernstein,
The New York Times
'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
*w
STALINGRAD
Antony Beevor
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London w8 5TZ, England
Penguin Putnam Inc , 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Private Bag 102902, NSMC, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published by Viking 1998
Published in Penguin Books 1999
5 7 9 10 8 6
Copyright © Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper, 1998
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Set in Monotype Ehrhardt
Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pJc
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VÜi
LIST OF MAPS xi
PREFACE Xiii
PART ONE
'THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH!'
1 The Double-Edged Sword of Barbarossa 3
2 'Nothing is Impossible for the German Soldier!' 12
3 'Smash in the Door and the Whole Rotten Structure
Will Come Crashing Down!' 21
4 Hitler's Hubris: The Delayed Battle for Moscow 31
PART TWO
BARBAROSSA RELAUNCHED
5 General Paulus 's First Battle 51
6 'How Muck Land Does a Man Need?' 69
7 'Not One Step Backwards' 84
8 'The Volga is Reached!' 102
v
Contents
PART THREE
•THE FATEFUL CITY'
9 'Time is Blood': The September Battles 123
10 Rattenkrieg 145
11 Traitors and Allies 166
12 Fortresses of Rubble and Iron 187
13 Paulus's Final Assault 208
14 'All For the Front!' 220
PART FOUR
ZHUKOV'S TRAP
15 Operation Uranus 239
16 Hitler's Obsession 266
17 'The Fortress Without a Roof' 278
18 'Der Manstein Kommt!' 291
19 Christmas in the German Way 311
PART FIVE
THE SUBJUGATION OF THE SIXTH ARMY
20 The Air-Bridge 333
21 'Surrender Out of the Question' 352
22 !/4 German Field Marshal Does Not Commit Suicide with
a Pair of Nail Scissors!' 374
23 'Stop Dancing! Stalingrad Has Fallen' 396
24 The City of the Dead 406
25 The Sword of Stalingrad 418
vi
Contents
i
APPENDIX A:
German and Soviet Orders of Battle, ig November ig^2 433
APPENDIX B:
The Statistical Debate: Sixth Army Strength in the Kessel 439
REFERENCES 441
SOURCE NOTES 443
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 477
INDEX 487
Vll
List of Illustrations
PHOTOGRAPHIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am particularly grateful to the Arkhiv Muzeya Panorami Stalin-
gradskoy Bitvi (the Archive of the Panoramic Museum of the Battle
of Stalingrad) in Volgograd for providing illustrations 10, 14, 18, 19
and 20.
Helmut Abt Verlag, Bis Stalingrad, Alois Beck: 6
AKG London: 24, 30
Archive Photos, London: 12, 15
Bundesarchiv, Koblenz: 2, 21
Getty Images, London: 1, 3, 17, 22, 23, 25
Imperial War Museum, London: 4, 5, 8, 9, n, 26, 28, 29, 31
Methuen & Co Ltd, Paulus and Stalingrad: A Life of Field Marshal
Paulus, Walter Goerlitz: 13
Private collection: 27
Topham Picturepoint, Edenbridge, Kent: 16
Westdeutsches Verlag, Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht Gibt
Bekannt, Martin H. Sommerfeldt: 7
List of Maps
1 Operation Barbarossa, June-December 1941 2
2 Operation Blue, Summer 1942 64
3 The German Assault on Stalingrad, September 1942 126
4 Operation Uranus, November 1942 242
5 Operation Winter Storm and Operation Little Saturn,
December 1942 294
6 Operation Ring, January 1943 346
XI
Preface
'Russia', observed the poet Tyuchev, 'cannot be understood with the
mind.' The Battle of Stalingrad cannot be adequately understood
through a standard examination. A purely military study of such a
titanic struggle fails to convey its reality on the ground, rather as
Hitler's maps in his Rastenburg Wolfsschanze isolated him in a fantasy-
world, far from the suffering of his soldiers.
The idea behind this book is to show, within the framework of a
conventional historical narrative, the experience of troops on both
sides, using a wide range of new material, especially from archives in
Russia. The variety of sources is important to convey the unpre-
cedented nature of the fighting and its effects on those caught up in
it with little hope of escape.
The sources include war diaries, chaplains' reports, personal
accounts, letters, NKVD (security police) interrogations of German
and other prisoners, personal diaries and interviews with participants.
One of the richest sources in the Russian Ministry of Defence central
archive at Podolsk consists of the very detailed reports sent daily from
the Stalingrad Front to Aleksandr Shcherbakov, the head of the
political department of the Red Army in Moscow. These describe not
only heroic actions, but also 'extraordinary events' (the commissars'
euphemism for treasonous behaviour), such as desertion, crossing
over to the enemy, cowardice, incompetence, self-inflicted wounds,
'anti-Soviet agitation' and even drunkenness. The Soviet authorities
Xlll