Reddit mentions of Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

This is my favorite WW2 book:

In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five-month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold Stalingrad at any cost; then, in an astonishing reversal, encircled and trapped their Nazi enemy. This battle for the ruins of a city cost more than a million lives. Stalingrad conveys the experience of soldiers on both sides, fighting in inhuman conditions, and of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield.

https://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Beevor/dp/0140284583/

A quick google found this post in AskHistorians, which cites a passage from this book.

>On 20 August, chaplains from the 295th Infantry Division informed Lieutenant-Colonel Helmuth Groscurth, the chief of staff, that ninety Jewish orphans in the town of Belaya Tserkov were being held in disgusting conditions. They ranged from infants up to seven-year-old children. They were to be shot, like their parents. Groscurth, the son of a pastor and a convinced anti-Nazi, had been the Abwehr officer who, that spring, had secretly passed details of the illegal orders for Barbarossa to Ulrich von Hassell. Groscurth immediately sought out the district commander and insisted that the execution must be stopped. He then contacted Sixth Army headquarters, even though Standartenführer Paul Blobel, the head of the Sonderkommando, warned Groscurth that he would report his interference to Reichsführer SS Himmler. Field Marshal von Reichenau supported Blobel. The ninety Jewish children were shot the next evening by Ukrainian militiamen, to save the feelings of the Sonderkommando. Groscurth wrote a full report which he sent direct to headquarters Army Group South. Appalled and furious, he wrote to his wife: ‘We cannot and should not be allowed to win this war.’

Unfortunately I don't own a copy of the book itself, so I can't look into what sources the author used.

You can, however, read the original report that Groscurth filed with Army Group South (and an English translation, although I'm not sure of how accurate it is) here.

Stalingrad. Yes, I know there have been some movies about it, but none that even came anywhere close to being accurate. What happened at Stalingrad during WW2 is completely unknown to most people of the world. It was probably the most horrifying battle in all of human history.

Suggested reading

Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad was a pretty gripping read about the battle and the fate of the 6th army. I'm sure some of the more hardcore history buffs out there have more detailed suggestions, but if you're looking for a good layman's history of Stalingrad you can't go wrong with it.

Here's the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-The-Fateful-Siege-1942-1943/dp/0140284583

I'd highly recommend it. Definitely accessible for a non-historian (such as me). It was just amazing how the Soviets recovered from almost losing Moscow. The Germans continually thought the Soviets were on their last legs, just one more push before they'd collapse - but it never happened, and the Soviets kept forming up division after division, manufacturing tank after tank, way beyond what Germany thought they were capable of doing.

Now I'd like to find a good book about the aftermath - the gradual multi-year fighting retreat Westwards of the German army until the end.

I can give you a short list of personal favorites, books that I consider both informative and extremely interesting / entertaining to read. As you'll see I prefer memoirs and eyewitness accounts to sweeping historical overviews of the war.

With the Old Breed, E.B. Sledge. Personal memoir of the author's experience as a marine machine gunner in the Pacific war, specifically the campaigns on Peleliu and Okinawa. Sledge is a marvelous writer with prose I'd describe as "Hemingwayesque", a real compliment. Grueling, appalling, human, his account does a great job of sketching in the personalities of his fellow marines.

"The Good War": An Oral History of World War II, Studs Terkel. This is the book that World War Z is aping, but the actual book is a far more gripping read. Terkel sat down for personal interviews with 121 survivors of the war, Germans, Japanese, British, Canadian as well as American.

Band Of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose. Now made famous by the TV series, the story of E Company's recruitment, training and ultimate combat experience during and after the Normandy invasion is as intense and eye-opening as it sounds.

Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, Leo Marks. Marks was a cryptographer working in London for the SOE (special operations executive, the group responsible for running much of "The Resistance" throughout occupied Europe, North Africa and Asia). He's a very funny guy, a self-professed coward, but the book portrays his deeply heartfelt concern for the well-being of the agents he was sending behind enemy lines. His codes, and methods of transmitting them, could be the only thing saving them from capture by the Gestapo. All too often, they weren't enough. "If you brief an agent on the Tuesday and three days later his eyes are taken out with a fork, it hastens the aging process," he writes.

Stalingrad, Anthony Beevor. When you start to read about the Eastern Front, you realize that much of the conventional western perspective of WWII in Europe is based on the comparatively minor engagements in Italy and France. France lost 350,000 civilians to the war, The Soviet Union lost 15-20 million. Considered purely from the POV of total casualties and total armed forces committed, WWII was primarily an engagement between Germany and the Soviet Union throughout Eastern Europe, with a number of smaller actions in the western countries. Anyhow, the story of the brutal, grinding siege of Stalingrad, the point where the German tide definitively turned, is a must-read.

Homage To Catalonia, George Orwell. This is Orwell's personal account of his service fighting on the Republican side against fascists during the Spanish Civil War from 1936-37. Basically, this was the war before the war, as described by one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Incidentally Hemingway's novel For Whom The Bell Tolls is a fairly accurate, very powerful portrayal of a different view of the same war.

Naked Economics - conforme /u/jpjandrade recomendou (a Economia Nua e Crua em PT-BR) é sensacional, o tipo de livro que dá vontade de comprar 10 para dar de presente.

Outro um pouco mais avançado é Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, o qual creio não ter edição em PTBR ainda.

De história vai depender muito do seu gosto... os de economia são simples de escolher pois o básico da economia é o seu próprio núcleo... história é muito ampla...

Eu adoro história e devo ter uns 50 livros, sendo uns 20 sobre episódios específicos da Segunda Guerra. Recomendo os seguintes livros como sendo bons mesmo pra quem nunca leu nada a respeito (creio que todos os abaixos existam em PTBR, caso não leia em Inglês):

The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land;

Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War - Se gostou do filme, o livro é sensacional - totalmente baseado nos relatos das unidades presentes em combate;

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 - este livro é sensacional, se já ouviu alguma vez sobre a batalha de Stalingrado a leitura é obrigatória;

Por fim, caso goste de ciência (física e química especificamente) e de história militar, este foi o livro que mostrou pra mim que a ciência caminha de forma fantástica, e que muitas (se não todas) as explicações de descobertas são superhypermega simplificadas: The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

The German Wehrmacht did use flame throwers. And they were very effective during WWII. However flame thrower operators were always high priority targets and therefore were offered bonuses. For reference please read Anthony Beevor's book Stalingrad.

https://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Beevor/dp/0140284583

Also the US Marine Corps while fighting the Japanese loved using flame throwers against bunkers.

The Battle for Spain by Anthony Beevor is considered the definitive, modern single volume history of this conflict.

Beevor is renowned for his justifiably famous books Stalingrad, D-Day and The Fall of Berlin.

Yes, Hitler made tons of tactical blunders with Russia. Timing was his biggest blunder (he should have waited to invade). But even then he had assembled a 6million man army that proceeded to crush Russian forces for the first couple months. The defeats only came with trying to take Moscow and Stalingrad. Many historians conjecture that if Hitler had diverted forces to the oil fields in the Caucasus instead of Stalingrad, the Eastern Front would have looked much differently for the Germans.

If you haven't This is a great book on the subject

If you're interested, I suggest you go out and read both Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege and Berlin: The Downfall. Really some of the best books on the Eastern Front I've ever read. There's also books like Sniper on the Eastern Front, and also Enemy at the Gates (not the movie, the book, which is superb).

Also, may I suggest Downfall about Hitlers last days in Berlin's Fuhrerbunker told from his secretary's point of view. I found it to be the best movie I had ever seen on the Eastern Front.

Most of my knowledge regarding the matter is European, so I'm going to give a list of my favorites regarding the European / African front.

To get the German perspective of the war, I'd recommend:

• Panzer Commander - Hans von Luck - One of my favorites
  
  
• Panzer Leader - Heinz Guderian - He developed Blitzkrieg tactics
  
  
• The Rommel Papers - Erwin Rommel - Written by my favorite German Field Marshal up until his forced suicide by Hitler. Good read of the Western and African theaters of war. Also a good book to read if you're interested in what German command was doing on the lead up to D-Day.
  
  I have a few battle-specific books I enjoy too:
  
  
• Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942-1943 - You really don't know the brutality of Stalingrad till you've read this book. You'll see it in a whole new light I think.
  
  
• Berlin: Downfall 1945 - Battle of Berlin at the end of the war, another good book.
  
  Now if you want to play games, Hearts of Iron series is great (someone recommended the Darkest Hour release of the game. Allows you to play historical missions based on historical troop layouts, or play the entire war as a nation. Historical events are incorporated into the game. While you'll rarely get a 100% accurate game as it is abstracted, it is an excellent way to see what challenges faced the nations of the time. You could play as Russia from 1936 and prepare yourself for the eventual German invasion. Or maybe you decide to play as Germany, and not invade Russia. But will Russia invade you when they are stronger? Will warn you: It does not have a learning curve. As with almost all Paradox Interactive games, it is a learning cliff.

Try this: http://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Beevor/dp/0140284583 ... looks like a good book. Appears to discuss disease.

Probably Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943.

Some great history books:

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything
   
   
2. Stalingrad
   
   
3. The Interrogators
   
   
4. On Roads
   
   The first and last are not military history but are quite a good and different reads for someone interested in history and facts.

Some of my reccommendations

​

Anthony Beevor's books on Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin

​

Bernard Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place about the Siege of Dien Bien Phu

​

Osprey's book on Infantry Anti Tank Tactics. I thoroughly enjoyed this and gave me some insight into tactis that I can try out in the Combat Mission games.

​

Has he read Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor? It's an amazing book, also very detailed (560 pages).

I would like to read that thread. In Stalingrad by Beevor he says that the NKVD would execute them, which is why many of them fought alongside the sixth army.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0140284583/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481376503&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=beevor+stalingrad&dpPl=1&dpID=51Rdczaix2L&ref=plSrch

Anthony Beevor wrote the ultimate book on Stalingrad:

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

Antony Beevor's Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin 1945 were superb narrative histories of World War Two in the East. On the American end, the first two volumes of Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy - An Army at Dawn and The Day of Battle are great. I think somebody else mentioned The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. Just the first paragraph of that book is worth the price of the paperback.

If you're not into the whole military thing, The Worst Hard Time by Tim Egan covers the dustbowl era in the southern plains. Reads like an epic novel.

All of these suggestions prioritize craft of writing over intellectual rigor. I studied history, so I have a keen appreciation for the value (and the limits) of academic history. These books are not that sort of history, though I don't think any of them get any facts egregiously wrong. It's just that they're remarkable for being well-written - which should appeal to a fiction enthusiast - not for being pathbreaking academic treatments of their subject matter.

I very much prefer Antony Beevor's Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943

His book draws on some sources that weren't available to Westerners when Evans wrote Siege, and he's very, very readable.

A World Undone about WWI.
I've never read it myself, but many people have recommended it to me.

Also you can never go wrong with something about Stalingrad

The Fall of Berlin by Antony Beevor is an amazing book.

Also Stalingrad The Fateful Seige by Beevor is great too.

Antony Beevor's "Stalingrad" is considered by many to be the definitive book on the battle. Not only discussing the battle itself, but also the buildup to the battle and its effect on the German campaign.

http://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Beevor/dp/0140284583/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418910432&sr=8-1&keywords=antony+beevor+stalingrad

A couple that I've read from Antony Beevor:

Stalingrad, and its follow up book The Fall of Berlin 1945. Beevor has also written books on the Ardennes, D-Day, and an all encompassing book on WWII. I have yet to read those but can attest that his two Eastern Front focused books are fantastic

I would also highly recommend The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison Salisbury. Absolutely haunting stuff.

I'm starting to get the sense that you didn't read my first comment. I literally said a very specific two year period before the end of stalingrad.

I then went on to talk about the people who joined the red army in the early war after the shock of operation barbarossa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa


Read the following Books for more information:

Ivan's war

Stalingrad

Leningrad

The Fall of Berlin

I don't know why you keep posting things from after the date range I specified. So many of the men who faugh in the early battles were dead by the time even operation Uranus took place, let alone during invasion of Germany.