Stalingrad

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Others, however, kept glancing ahead to the blazing buildings on the western shore, their steel-helmeted heads instinctively withdrawn into the shoulders.

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.I don't think this is entirely my fault, because there is a distinct anti-Soviet bias in Beevor's telling.

Antony Beevor is such a brand I think Penguin Books should just go full bore and give him an official logo in lightning-bolt font like some hair band of the '80s. A story of civilian bravery, obsession, carnage and the nature of war itself, Stalingrad remembers the vital role of the soviet war effort. Beevor’s description of the events of the battle remain with the reader long after the book has been closed. In contrast, disease, starvation, wounds, revenge of Russians soldiers did kill most of the German soldiers held prisoners with only a few thousand surviving incarceration.The result is very readable, a narrative that moves along swiftly, so that at times I couldn't put it down. The temptation when dealing with Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, is to compare its failure to that of Napoleon, and chalk it up to Russia's tremendous size and unforgiving winters.