Battle of Stalingrad, Part 1
Stalingrad. Even just the name of the city conjures up images of a brutal, months-long battle that helped change the course of the war. Professor Nash discusses the background of the battle, Hitler’s intent in attacking that part of the Soviet Union, and how the Red Army defended the area and built up the resilience to counterattack. Part 1 is fascinating, and will leave listeners yearning for Part 2! Episode 566.
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Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943
The Battle of Stalingrad was not only the psychological turning point of World War II: it also changed the face of modern warfare. From Antony Beevor, the internationally bestselling author of D-Day and The Battle of Arnhem.
In August 1942, Hitler’s huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin’s name. In the five-month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold Stalingrad at any cost; then, in an astonishing reversal, encircled and trapped their Nazi enemy. This battle for the ruins of a city cost more than a million lives. Stalingrad conveys the experience of soldiers on both sides, fighting in inhuman conditions, and of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield. Antony Beevor has itnerviewed survivors and discovered completely new material in a wide range of German and Soviet archives, including prisoner interrogations and reports of desertions and executions. As a story of cruelty, courage, and human suffering, Stalingrad is unprecedented and unforgettable.
Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor’s magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II’s most harrowing battle.
And for the “cult of the sniper,” see:
Enemy At The Gates
Enemy at the Gates (Stalingrad in France and L’Ennemi aux portes in Canada) is a 2001 war film directed, co-written, and produced by Jean-Jacques Annaud, based on William Craig’s 1973 nonfiction book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad, which describes the events surrounding the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–1943. The screenplay was written by Annaud and Alain Godard. The film’s main character is a fictionalized version of Vasily Zaitsev, a sniper and Hero of the Soviet Union during World War II. It includes a snipers’ duel between Zaitsev and a Wehrmacht sniper school director, Major Erwin König.
The cast includes Jude Law as Zaitsev, Rachel Weisz as Tania Chernova, and Ed Harris as König, with Joseph Fiennes, Bob Hoskins, Ron Perlman, Eva Mattes, Gabriel Marshall Thomson, and Matthias Habich in supporting roles.
