Jochen Hellbeck is a professor of history at Rutgers University and a specialist in twentieth-century Russia. His previous book, Revolution on My Mind, explored personal diaries written in the Soviet Union under Stalin. The German edition of Stalingrad won a DAMALS prize for best historical study of the year. Hellbeck runs a website, facingstalingrad.com, that features portraits and interviews taken with German and Russian veterans of the battle of Stalingrad. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich
by Jochen Hellbeck (Editor), Christopher Tauchen (Translator)
eBook
-
ISBN-13:
9781610394970
- Publisher: PublicAffairs
- Publication date: 04/28/2015
- Sold by: Hachette Digital, Inc.
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 512
- Sales rank: 360,490
- File size: 35 MB
- Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.
Available on NOOK devices and apps
Want a NOOK? Explore Now
Just days after the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad, legendary Red Army sniper Vasily Zaytsev described the horrors he witnessed during the five-month long conflict: one sees the young girls, the children who hang from trees in the park... I have unsteady nerves and I'm constantly shaking.”
He was being interviewed, along with 214 other men and womensoldiers, officers, civilians, administrative staffers and othersamidst the rubble that remained of Stalingrad by members of Moscow's Historical Commission. Sent by the Kremlin, their aim was to record a comprehensive, historical documentary of the tremendous hardships overcome and heroic triumphs achieved during the battle.
20 soldiers of the 38th Rifle Division vividly recount how they stumbled upon the commander of the German troops, Field Marshal Friederich Paulus, defeated and hiding in a bed that reeked like a latrine. A lieutenant colonel remembers the brave 20 year-old adjutant who wrapped his arms around his commander's body to protect him from a flying grenade. Working around the clock, Nurse Vera Gurova describes a 24 hour period during which her hospital received over than 600 wounded men equivalent to one every two and an half minutes. Countless soldiers endured shrapnel wounds and received blood transfusions in the trenches, but she can't forget the young amputee who begged her to avenge his suffering at Stalingrad.
This harrowing montage of distinct voices was so candid that the Kremlin forbade its publication and consigned the bulk of these documents to a Moscow archive where they remained forgotten for decades, until now. Jochen Hellbeck's Stalingrad is a definitive portrait of perhaps the greatest urban battle of the Second World Wara pivotal moment in the course of the war re-created with absolute candor and chilling veracity by the voices of the men and women who fought there.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
-
- Russia's War: A History of…
- by Richard Overy
-
- All the Kremlin's Men:…
- by Sophie A Day (Nee Nicholson-Cole)
-
- The End of Tsarist Russia: The…
- by Dominic Lieven
-
- Operation Barbarossa and…
- by David Stahel
-
- Conspirator: Lenin in Exile
- by Helen Rappaport
-
- The Retreat
- by Michael Jones
-
- Red Road From Stalingrad:…
- by Mansur AbdulinArtem Drabkin
-
- Shinsengumi: The Shogun's…
- by Romulus Hillsborough
-
- Operation Barbarossa: The…
- by Robert Kirchubel
-
- Stalin and His Hangmen: The…
- by Donald Rayfield
-
- Legends of the Samurai
- by Hiroaki Sato
-
- Stalin: The Murderous Career…
- by Nigel Cawthorne
-
- Afgantsy: The Russians in…
- by Rodric Braithwaite
-
- Operation Damocles: Israel'…
- by Roger Howard
-
- Stalin's Revenge:…
- by Anthony Tucker-Jones
Recently Viewed
“Intriguing and gripping Hellbeck's selections vividly depict the battle of Stalingrad in all its horror and heroism.” Winnipeg Free Press
“[A] compelling new history of the Battle of Stalingrad ” Washington Free Beacon
“Jochen Hellbeck recasts our understanding of the ‘Russian way' of waging war. He comes as close as will ever be possible to capturing the peculiar culture of Soviet soldiers in their devastating struggle against the German invaders, who were as feared as they were loathed.” Michael Geyer, Samuel N. Harper Professor of History, University of Chicago
“This candid and comprehensive view of the battle of Stalingrad through the eyes of participants captures the brutality these soldiers endured and adds a new dimension to recent scholarship on this most terrible of struggles.” Colonel David M. Glantz, US Army (ret.), editor-in-chief of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies
“Like no other recent book on the war, Stalingrad forces readers to look at the open wounds of others. You won't be able to avert your eyes.” Süddeutsche Zeitung