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, Dai/y 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 Fraser, 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 oneof the most atrocious battles of the century'Colin Thubron, Sunday Teleraph

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF MAPS

PREFACE

PART ONE‘THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH!'

The Double-Edged Sword of Barbarossa

‘Nothing is Impossible for the German Soldier!'

‘Smash in the Door and the Whole Rotten Structure

Will Come Crashing Down!'

Hitler's Hubris: The Delayed Battle for Moscow

PART TWO BARBAROSSA RELAUHCHED

General Paulus's First Battle

‘How Much Land Does a Man Need?'

‘Not One Step Backwards'

‘The Volga is Reached!'

PART THREE‘THE FATEFUL CITY'

‘Time is Blood" The September Battles

Rattenkrieg

Traitors and Allies

Fortresses of Rubble and Iron

Paulus's Final Assault

‘All For the Front!'

PART FOUR ZHUKOY'STRAP

Operation Uranus

Hitler's Obsession

‘The Fortress Without a Roof'

‘Der Manstein Kommt!'

Christmas in the German Way

PART FIVE THE SUBJUGATION OF THE SIXTH ARMY

The Air-Bridge

‘Surrender Out of the Question'

"A German Field Marshal Does Not Commit Suicide.with

a Pair of Nail Scissors!'

‘Stop Dancing! Stalingrad Has Fallen'

The City of the Dead

The Sword of Stalingrad

APPENDIX A

German and Soviet Orders of Battle, 19 November 1942

APPENDIX B:

The Statistical Debate: Sixth Array Strength in the Kessel

REFERENCES

SOVRCE NOTES

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX