Stalingrad

Description

The international mega-bestseller that redefined military history, reissued for the 75th anniversary of one of the bloodiest battles in history In October 1942, a Panzer officer wrote 'Stalingrad is no longer a town... Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure'. The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front. The citizens of Stalingrad endured unimaginable hardship; the battle, with fierce hand-to-hand fighting in each room of each building, was brutally destructive to both armies. 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. An extraordinary story of tactical genius, civilian bravery and the nature of war itself, which changed how history is written, Stalingrad is a testament to the vital role of the Soviet war effort.

Antony Beevor's latest book is Ardennes 1944 - Hitler's Last Gamble. He is the author of Crete - The Battle and the Resistance, (Runciman Prize), Stalingrad, (Samuel Johnson Prize, Wolfson Prize for History and Hawthornden Prize for Literature), Berlin - The Downfall, The Battle for Spain (Premio La Vanguardia), and D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, (Prix Henry Malherbe and the Royal United Services Institute Westminster Medal). His next work The Second World War was another No. 1 international bestseller. His books have appeared in more than thirty languages and have sold more than six and a half million copies. According to the Bookseller, 'Beevor is the bestselling historian of the BookScan era'. A former chairman of the Society of Authors, he has received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Kent, Bath, East Anglia and York, and he is also a visiting professor at the University of Kent. In 2014, he received the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.

A superb re-telling. Beevor combines a soldier's understanding of war's realities with the narrative techniques of a novelist ... This is a book that lets the reader look into the face of battle -- Orlando Figes Sunday Telegraph A brilliantly researched tour de force of military history -- Sarah Bradford The Times