Book Review: Stalingrad, Antony Beevor

Antony Beevor has a talent for writing military history that reads almost like an action novel. His account of the demise of the German 6th Army - the largest in the entire Wehrmacht at the time - during the fight for Stalingrad, is gripping.

The colossal scale of war on the Ostfront, and the barbarism of both sides, driven by pitiless ideologies, make this theatre particularly and ghoulishly fascinating. And, as is often said, Stalingrad is commonly viewed as the turning point both in this conflict, and the war at large.

A saluting skeleton greets German troops arriving in Stalingrad. [1]

The Germans pressed all available resource into their service.

Hitler and Stalin both became maniacally obsessed with imposing their will in this contest, neither permitting their beleaguered troops to give up or retreat. The profligacy of lives on both sides is truly appalling. Beevor, like the reader, is clearly enthralled by the carnage.

It strikes me that Hitler allowed himself to be deflected from his original goal of securing the breadbasket of the Ukraine and the oil of the Caucuses, and was lured into a wasteful concentration on prestige targets, namely cities: Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad.

Germans dug in beneath a knocked-out T-34.

A famous pic. of German troops amidst the rubble of Stalingrad.

These battles favoured the Russians, as they denied the Germans the undoubted advantages of their mobile 'blitzkrieg' tactics, drawing them into static battles of attrition, in which the weight of Soviet numbers could be used to wear the Germans and their sometimes less than enthusiastic allies (Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, etc.) down.

The detail of the battle itself is well conveyed. Although I'd have liked a few more maps to have helped track how things developed. And Beevor manages to move pretty deftly around the theatre, from the action amidst the rubble to developments elsewhere on the flanks, without spoiling the narrative flow.

Soviet troops fighting in the ruined City..

You can easily see how arduous such street-fighting must've been.

He also moves smoothly through the various gears, from the top brass, with their concerns of ideological and personal prestige, down the chain of command to the God-forsaken 'grunts', fighting for their lives in a Dantean inferno, the hellishness of which is made all the worse by the inhumanity of the political ideologies that drove this conflict.

On that topic, one thing that really strikes me, the more I read about Russian history during Stalin's reign, is that - whilst Hitler singled out certain groups, in particular the Jews, for merciless persecution - 'Uncle' Joe seems, whilst preserving a glacially cool exterior (unlike the often apoplectic Führer), to have been a psychotic mass murderer of a far more wide-rangingly brutal and paranoid type.

Russian POWs who starved to death in Stalingrad captivity.

Stalingrad literally became a blitzkrieg graveyard.

Another striking thing is how many Russians sought to join the Germans. Some might well have done so just as a means to survive. But many, especially those persecuted under Communism (e.g. Kulaks, Cossacks, Poles, Ukrainians) initially saw the Germans as liberators from the Stalinist/Communist yoke.

According to Beevor the NKVD, part of Stalin's internal police/terror apparatus, were shocked and appalled when they discovered how many Russians were collaborating with the German invaders. These 'Hiwis' (from 'Hilfswillige') in places made up as much as 25% of German forces, and some estimates - unsurprisingly uncertain in the fog of war - run as high as 80,000 for the battle at Stalingrad itself.

The pitiful remains of VIth Army, passing into captivity.

Young aryans of the vaunted 'master race', reduced to troglodytes.

In typically Stalinist fashion, such people became 'former Russians'. Caught between two such appallingly inhumane ideologies the sufferings of all concerned were, frankly unimaginable. But Beevor does a damn good job of trying to convey how things were, and it makes for terrifically gripping reading.

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NOTES:

In researching images for this post I found a really cool post (click here) on abandoned German armour at Stalingrad. Some great images/info!

[1] Little did they know how prophetic this macabre roadside attraction would prove to be.

Film Review: Stalingrad, 1992

I first saw this film in an execrably dubbed version, several years ago. Because my memories of that weren't good at all, I hesitated over buying the 'fully restored' version. But I'm ever so glad I did. It really is superb.

The film tells the story of a group of soldiers who we meet on leave in Italy, 1942, after their return from active service in North Africa. Most of the key characters whose fate this film charts are at a beach, looking after their former platoon commander, who is a near basket-case, wheelchair-bound and raving. Late for a medal presentation parade, they meet their new commander. They don't all get off to the best of starts.

'Rollo' (Jochen Nickel), playing cards with Lupo (J. Alfred Mehnert).

Leutnant Hans von Witzland (Thomas Kretschman) on parade with his new charges... nice trousers!

Witzland, distributing awards to his new men, addresses Obergefreiter Fritz Reiser (Dominique Horwitz)

Aboard a troop train their new commander, Leutnant Hans von Witzland (Thomas Kretschmann, perhaps better known to contemporary audiences as ships Captain Englehorn, in Peter Jackson's King Kong remake), informs them that they're on their way to Stalingrad. Grizzled older combat veteran Unteroffizier Manfred "Rollo" Rohleder (Jochen Nickel) bets their green and squeaky-clean new officer that he'll outlive him.

All of this sets up the film for the groups arrival at the front, where they immediately see all is not well, as they pass hordes of wounded who are clearly neither happy nor well attended to. Leutnant Witzland tries to protest when he witnesses the maltreatment of Soviet prisoners, but is laughed off by a creepy senior office in specs, Hauptmann Haller (Dieter Okras), who we'll see more of later.

The Germans attack the factory.

Fritz, none too pleased to be carrying the flamethrower, by the looks of it.

At this point, after Witzland meets the brass (during a prayer meeting!), the movie moves into the combat zone proper, with a fierce and bloody attack on a factory complex. I personally think it's supremely well done. Gear nuts and uniform fetishists - and let's face it, how many wargamers and modellers aren't both? - will love the authenticity of the costumes and materiel. [1]

Things then get, and remain, very brutal. The soldiers we are following soon find themselves cut off, and a small group enter the sewers to try and connect with their parent unit. I'll leave off the narrative exposition at this point, since, as ever, I don't want to spoil things for readers who haven't seen the movie as yet. What I will say is that the soldiers we are following find themselves in plenty more tight spots, and there's a good deal of footage showing the winter biting hard, including another superb combat sequence.

A Pak 38, small arms, and magnetic mines, against T-34s and Russian infantry..

Vilsmaier doesn't spare us any gore.

Vilsmaier has said himself that he sought to depict the full brutality and ugliness of war, and knew that he might well offend some in doing so. Perhaps ironically, whilst the film is relentlessly grim, and undoubtedly intended as an anti-war tonic, something to shock us and prevent us repeating history, it could be argued that it might be as attractive to new viewers for its 'war porn' brutality [2] as for anything else.

During their jolly jaunt in the subterranean sewers - one of several stunning locations - Edgar Emigholz (Heinz Emigholz) is severely wounded. The group attempt to get him treated at an understaffed hospital...

... spirits and temperatures plummet.

Vilsmaeir's wife plays the only female with more than a minor role, as a Russian soldier whose path crosses with our group on several occasions. The film is very good in that, although we follow the Germans, it doesn't really take sides, but simply shows the conflict in all its bestial intensity. We see plenty of Russians, and their civilian population, and the Germans range from humane and heroic to barbarously brutal, with many of them simply enduring their suffering in mute disbelief, as do all parties.

Whenever the odious Hauptmann Haller appears, you know it's not going to be good.

We first meet a young Russian kid, Kolya during the factory battle episode, after which he appears to abscond in the confusion of battle. Then, later, we meet him again.

This film doesn't really seek to address Nazism as such, except in one or two very brief moments. But there are many other films that do explore that issue. This film, like Das Boot [3], doesn't set out to examine that subject so much as the fate of the ordinary man, as a soldier, caught up in something appalling, and, very largely, out of their control. 

Having said this, Stalingrad doesn't duck the issue of complicity in inhumane atrocities, with one particularly gruelling scene forcing the men we're following to dirty their hands irretrievably.

After the snow fight...

Fritz, Ge-Ge, Hans and Rollo.

All in all, superb. And thank goodness there's now a decent subtitled version, so we can experience this film as it was intended to be seen.

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NOTES:

The most important thing when watching this movie is, I feel, to get the right version. I think the dubbed version is nigh on unwatchable, turning a superb film into a (frozen) turkey. In case it helps, the new version, pictured at the top of this post, is copyright 2014, says it's 'fully restored', and makes a point of mentioning thats it's in the original language, with subtitles. 

The one to avoid, at least in the form I have a copy of it, has a cover more like the image shown below. Not only do the dubbed voices sound disembodied, but there are no subtitles for the expository texts, or the moments when Russian is spoken, or even the speech by Hitler that the soldiers listen to on the radio after the battle for the factory.

[1] There's an interesting wiki type website here that lists the weapons you can observe in the film.

[2] From the apparently earnest Saving Private Ryan, or the HBO Pacific mini-series, to the more overtly wish-fulfilment fantasies of Fury or Inglorious Bastards, it cannot be doubted that some viewers will get off on the violence depicted in war films.

[3] The older of my two versions claims Stalingrad was made by the same production team that made Das Boot. The newer version doesn't make this claim/connection. I glanced at production credits for both films, and couldn't see Vilsmaier named in the Das Boot credits. Does anybody know who, if anyone, worked on both?

The real McCoy...

... Stalingrad pays a moving tribute to all who suffered in this infernal cauldron.

Book Review: Infernal Cauldron - Stephen Walsh

I don't know why, but as a rule I don't usually go for books of this sort - glossy papered, picture heavy, slim A4 format hardbacks - I think it's cause I associate the format with 'history-lite' treatments of subjects. 

But I bought this book second-hand, without bothering to check the format, from an Amazon re-seller. I got it because, having recently read several books on Hitler's life and career - I have a couple on Stalin to read next [1] - and a couple on Barbarossa, I wanted to continue 'zooming in' in the Ostfront. And Stalingrad, the turning point of both Barbarrosa and, arguably, the whole European war, seemed like the obvious place to start. I also have the Antony Beevor Stalingrad book, which, rather worryingly, I'm not sure if I've read or not!

This is the whole of one of the images used in the montage on the cover.

Walsh's book starts with an introductory first chapter that sets out German aims and means in launching Barborossa, the Nazi invasion of Russia, before, in chapter two, focussing on the advance to Stalingrad. Three chapters then describe the three successive German assaults on Stalingrad, that would eventually lead to the Germans occupying the (by then) bombed out shell of the Russian city that was named for the terrifyingly powerful Soviet leader. 

Chapters six and seven describe the Russian operation Uranus, and the Caucasus campaign, which culminate in the isolation and encirclement of Paulus' 6th Army, whilst chapters eight to ten describe, first, the moment when the fate of 6th Army hung in the balance (to break out? to be reached by relief from their own side? airlifts? to fight on?), then their annihilation/surrender, and finally the aftermath.

This pic, showing a crowd of German POWs after the Russian's recaptured Stalingrad, is in the book. The infamous grain elevator is in the background.

Walsh ably describes the war of wills that took place between Hitler and Stalin, also highlighting how, for all that both were brutal paranoid dictators, Stalin and the Russians triumphed not just because of a better match between means and ends (a recurrent them of Walsh's analysis of this titanic battle) on the Russian side, but because both Stalin and his commanders and troops proved flexible, evolving to meet the developing situations. 

In stark contrast Hitler's 'iron will', and his increasingly isolationist position in relation to the 'professional' German military leadership, meant that he refused to be flexible in his responses, the German forces became a monolithic and unchanging agent, the 'blunt instrument' if you like, of his 'will'.

Stalingrad... reduced to a sparse 'forest' of chimney-stacks. This pic isn't in this book.

In fact, if anything, Hitler had a retrograde evolution, trading down from the former triumphs of a war of manoeuvre, in which German troops continually isolated and then destroyed or captured Russian forces, in numerous Kesselschlacht (or 'cauldron battles'), and allowing the Russians to force him into an attritional head-on conflict, where the mobility that had brought so many triumphs was neutralised, and his own forces were ultimately sacrificed in an 'infernal cauldron' of their own.

Russian troops in action in the gutted city.

Walsh, a member of the Sandhurst faculty at the time of this books publication - I don't know if he still works there? - is a military authority of some professional standing (apparently he's been on TV as well, though I don't believe I've seen him in that capacity). I was somewhat surprised, in light of this, to find numerous picture captions making what seemed to me like rather basic errors, such as when a pic of two machine gunners is described as a single machine gunner, or Russians are described as sheltering beneath a Russian tank when it's clearly a German tank, etc.

Another pic that is in this book: a German soldier pays the ultimate price. Is this a genuine or a staged picture?

The picture captioning is a relatively minor niggle. More fundamentally, it's quite confusing trying to follow all the factual descriptions, of units, commanders, and geography. This is a frequent problem in narratives of military campaigns. Indeed, it's an area where the requirements of the subject frequently seem to be in a kind of conflict with the medium of writing. Clausewitz's book on the 1812 Russian campaign, for example, is, in my view, an awfully turgid read in the first section, where he does what Walsh does a lot of throughout practically all of this book, which is to, more or less, simply list the facts of the troop movements and engagements.

Paulus and staff surrender (this pic's not in the book).

However, it's far from all being bad news, as aspects of Walsh's analysis are very perceptive. What he says, perhaps too often for my liking (though it does bear repeating, in light of the German repetitions of the mistake) about the disparity between German ends and means is absolutely true. So also are his observations about the key differences between Russian and German evolution: the Russians did, and won, the Germans didn't and lost.

In terms of literary verve and clarity, this left something to be desired. But in terms of factual content and astute observation, it's excellent. It's also copiously illustrated, which is of course useful for us wargamers and modellers. There are also several maps, and even some interesting aerial surveillance photos. Whether I already read it or not, I think I'll go to Antony Beevor's Stalingrad next, as I imagine (I seem to be coming down on the I haven't read it line!), based on recently reading Ardennes, 1944, that it'll be rip-snorting good read.

This photo (a variant of which does appear in the book) was taken at Kursk, the last major German offensive on the Ostfront... So, not going so well, eh, 'Fritz'?

This post also found me finally getting around to developing a WWII scoring graphic equivalent to my 'Boney's Bicorne' system, for the Napoleonic era: as it's a very distinctive emblem, and not quite as contaminated as the swastika, not to mention that most of my interests lie in and around the German military machine, I've gone with the Balkankreuz, as used on tanks and planes, etc. I've also decided to add 1/2 scores, because this book didn't excite me enough to give it four, and wasn't so bad as to only merit three, so three and a half 'kreuz it is!

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NOTES:

[1] What is it, exactly, that makes such monstrous dictators so compelling as subjects to read about? Well, I guess, at least in part, it is their very monstrosity!