The Battle of Stalingrad was arguably the single most important battle of World War II. It was surely the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front, the first large-scale defeat of the vast German war machine, the defeat that forever destroyed its aura of invincibility. By telling the story of Stalingrad once again, Anthony Beevor has made military history accessible to the layman in a way that brings home the suffering of the infantryman as clearly as the aspirations and exasperations of the general. It shows how in facing the twin enemies of the Russian Army and the Russian Winter, Hitler and his field marshals made many of the mistakes made by Napoleon more than a century earlier, and added horrors that could only be the product of the 20th century with its greatest destructive power and less concern for the sanctity of human life.

Napoleon is reported to have said, “Cannons kill men,” but the cannons of the 1940s, augmented by rocket and aerial bombardment, were far more deadly than those transported almost to Moscow in 1812. Anthony Beevor gives due weight to the Primary weapons: the Stuka dive bomber, the T34 tank, the 88mm anti-aircraft gun used in an anti-tank role, and the Katyusha multiple rocket launcher called the Organ of Stalin. But this is much more a story about real men and less women, who fought and fell, many heroically, on both sides of this terrible conflict. Through amazingly thorough research, Beevor names many humble people whose stories may well have remained hidden from general readers.

Although Beevor tells the story in a way that draws the reader in and leads them to discover what happens next, the book is somehow not easy to read. Military history inevitably involves units from companies to battalions, regiments, brigades and divisions, all with lengthy designations in text and numbers, including Roman numerals, which inevitably must be repeatedly mentioned in their entirety. Add to this the long and unknown Russian names, and the diligent Western reader finds many obstacles in his way. It is a tribute to the author’s skill that one is drawn to follow through with even the most technical passages.

Normally, when reading an account of a war, the reader tends to favor one side over the other. Anthony Beevor’s book is unusual in that it is completely neutral and persuades the objective reader to adopt the same perspective. Stalingrad was a battle of wills between two all-powerful and ruthless dictators whose egos meant much more to them than the lives or well-being of their soldiers. War crimes were commonly committed by both sides and the Geneva Convention was almost completely ignored, except when it was useful for propaganda purposes. Anthony Beevor plays the role of a canny referee who spots every foul and watches every skillful move and example of outstanding conduct.