The War Of The Rats

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There are other memorable characters like Nikki, the young German soldier, a dairy farmer from Westphalia ; Tania Chernova, a partisan fighter from Belarus and Danilov, a Russian commisar. This book, like the movie Stalingrad traverses every human emotion imaginable. The fortitude of the Russians to fight for the Rodina, not for political ideology but for themselves and the thousands of Russians caught in the grips of the Nazi war machine. He also paints a vivid description of the invaders. The arrogance has been left far behind. Stalingrad is a war unto itself. The once proud Wehrmacht is faced in a titanic struggle for what? Will the battle bring them victory or will is be just another conquered city along with thousands of others? Will the war end or will it continue to drag on taking with it tens of thousands other lives?

The story focuses in on the lives of two expert snipers, a Russian and a German, each with the goal of killing the other. The two snipers, Army Chief Master Sergeant Vasily Zaytsev of the Red Army and SS Colonel Heinz Thorvald of the German army, are equally matched. However, the story is complicated when a female sniper, Tania Chernova, becomes one of Vasily's most talented assistants and his battlefield lover.The book did give a fairly good description of the type of warfare that was conducted in Stalingrad, and the author made a good attempt at describing the psychology of the two main characters and how they interacted with each other and their environment. In the book Thorvald describes himself as a coward who hides behind the lines and steals the lives of others. He grew up as a trap shooter and was known as one of the best shooters in the German Army. A supporting character siding with the Red Army is Captain Igor Semyonovich Danilov, a reporter for the Red Star, a Russian newspaper. He joins Zaitsev at the school and on a few of his missions to report Zaitsev's heroic events and ingenious tactics as a sniper. Danilov eventually is shot down by Thorvald when he spots Thorvald through a periscope and jumps up to yell. a good candidate for the thriller of the summer award... gives a compelling and graphic sense of the heroism-filled nightmare called Stalingrad...A readable, gritty adventure story." "-- The New York Times" I loved the descriptions of the bombed-out Stalingrad, jagged and honeycombed and swarming with soldiers. The details of how the two armies worked - like the commissars who kept the Russian army toeing the Communist Party line, using newsletters, loudspeakers, and guns - also intrigued me.

I remember watching Enemy at the Gates when I was knee high to a grasshopper and loving it. It was gritty, it was dirty, and it had Ed Harris and Bob Hotchkins. In the movie the romance works, it flows. In the book... it does not. In fact it's so misplaced that it distracts the reader. I get it, this is humanity in a time of turmoil, however... the personalities conflict. I can't grasp the romantic relationship of these two. One is an American with ties to Russia through heritage who loves communism but she's arrogant and impulsive to a very dangerous degree. The other is Russian, not impulsive, patient, calculating, and a cautious sniper. I just couldn't see it call me a pessimist.Wasn't sure if I would enjoy it because it is a war novel, but it is actually a love story masquerading as a war novel - kind of. Also it was about tactics, survival, humanity, good and evil, and some very good characters. German soldiers call the battle Rattenkrieg, War of the Rats. The combat is horrific, as soldiers die in the smoking cellars and trenches of a ruined city. Through this twisted carnage stalk two men—one Russian, one German—each the top sniper in his respective army. These two marksmen are equally matched in both skill and tenacity. Each man has his own mission: to find his counterpart—and kill him.