Anthony Beevor’s Stalingrad

I took me two years to read this very popular book. It is very easy to read compared to most works of military history. It is a populist work concentrating on the lives of the soldiers who were on the front lines in Stalingrad during the fateful conflict that raged there at the turning point of World War II. Once you have read a page long description of a starving and frostbitten soldier covered with lice you understand the manifest purpose of the book because Beevor repeats this description over and over again. The author seeks to arouse compassion from the general reader and does so quite effectively. The latent purpose of the book is to diminish Adolf Hitler and he also does this quite effectively. Hitler is depicted as a selfish coward, and an incompetent leader in war. Hitler has no concern for the front line troops and callously gives them a choice between victory and death. While the former is not true the latter is. Hitler was harsh in his conduct of war. Too many hounds means death to the hare. That is the situation that Hitler faced and he was ever mindful of it. But he was not a selfish coward or incompetent. I have read over ten biographies of Hitler and know enough not to be persuaded by Beevor’s hatchet job. Even biographers that claim that they hate Hitler seem to admire him when you read their books. Jew William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich describes him as a giant. So who is Beevor trying to please in presenting this totally negative portrait. The answer is the British academic establishment. These are the same people that won’t speak to David Irving because Irving is outspoken in his admiration of Hitler. I tried to find if there is some Jewish connection with Beevor but came up with nothing. The British upper class is heavy intermarried with the Jews. For example, Beevor’s colleague Max Hastings author of Inferno is married to a Jew. It seems that all the historians of the British establishment who have written about WWII have praised this book. Is it therefore a must read? Not really!