59 pages • 1 hour read
Antony BeevorStalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Dynamics of Warfare and Strategy under a Dictatorship
One of the central arguments that Beevor advances throughout Stalingrad is that the dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin had a negative impact on the military capacity of both their nations. The outsized importance of their personal opinions caused inefficient, and sometimes disastrous, decisions. The effects of these were overwhelmingly by other people than the leaders themselves, such as soldiers, civilians, and the military chain of command. These dictatorships were characterized by a prioritization of personal power over long-term strategy and humanitarian considerations, exemplified by the willingness of both leaders to engage in attritional warfare at Stalingrad.
This theme is made most apparent in Beevor’s parallel depictions of Operation Barbarossa and Operation Uranus. In both, the dictators are unconvinced by the scale of the threat facing them and so do not order their generals to take appropriate actions to prepare for it. This allows for the offensives to be met with great successes, as exemplified by Beevor’s statement that “[s]eldom had an attacker enjoyed such advantages as the Wehrmacht in June 1941” (21). In these cases, the personal flaws of the dictators—namely, misunderstanding of the situation and underestimation of their enemy—became amplified by a political system in which military professionals cannot challenge their whims. Beevor further argues that dictators have the most dangerous impact on military strategy when their generals exert the least amount of independence. The Stalinist purges of the 1930s meant generals were afraid to take on responsibility, causing slow reactions in the early days of Operation Barbarossa. Likewise, Paulus’s command of the Sixth Army weakened it as a fighting force because his respect for Hitler and the chain of command meant he did not take the initiative in preparing a mobile reserve. Beevor, describing Hitler but applicable to Stalin at times, illustrates his argument by saying they “would try, godlike, to control every manoeuvre from afar” (68). The autocratic wish for control and obsequiousness in the military command meant that the armed forces of each nation relied on the decisions of a single leader.
Operations Barbarossa and Uranus are by no means the only examples Beevor uses to show the negative impact of dictators on war-making: Stalin’s demands that the Red Army engage in large-scale winter counteroffensives weakened his army enough that Case Blue was able to gain initial success; Hitler’s wish to accelerate this success meant he split and weakened his force; and Hitler’s willingness to believe Goering doomed the Sixth Army. However, using a comparison between Operations Barbarossa and Uranus as examples aptly demonstrates that the flaws in each dictator’s war-making were systemic instead of only personal.
Although he criticizes both dictators, Beevor considers Stalin to be the better leader. Although arguably as equally ruthless and cruel as Hitler, in military strategy, Stalin was willing to listen to advice and change his approach as circumstances dictated. Stalin was willing to surrender partial autonomy to some of his generals or concede arguments to them, allowing Zhukov’s talents especially to shine through. He also found no issue with reviving military thinking he had previously disgraced by purging their opponents. This, compared to Hitler’s never-ending micromanagement and ideological obsessions, gave the Red Army a consequential advantage.
The Brutality of the Eastern Front
Beevor continually emphasizes that the war between Germany and the Soviet Union was a war of attrition. He demonstrates the nature of the war and how the Eastern Front turned into an exceptionally brutal conflict.
Beevor argues that much of the brutality stemmed from the way Nazi propaganda had sold the war to the German people. Years of insisting on the need for a Rassenkampf, or race war, against the “Russian menace” had become internalized in the Wehrmacht. Germans were persuaded to believe that they were fighting a subhuman race that would destroy Germany if given the chance. The Nazis promoted this belief so effectively that objections to the “special orders” (14), which amounted to war crimes, were sparse, and much of the army actively participated in committing them. Further, uncontrolled looting characterized the German advances because Nazi ideology presented Russian civilians as subhuman and army discipline didn’t seek to uphold the rules of warfare in favor of civilians.
The Russians behaved with comparable brutality, even toward their own civilians. The view that it was a war of extinction meant that any action to win was acceptable: People were treated as disposable, and soldiers had a higher status than civilians. Russian houses were burned to deprive Germans of them, Russian citizens were killed if they were considered to have submitted to the German invasion, and Russian soldiers were killed if they voiced doubts about the war. Beevor comments extensively on this feature of the Russian war effort, noting that it came most into play when the Russians seemed nearest to defeat, turning on each other.
Beevor shows how the war’s brutality had a lasting effect on the treatment of war prisoners. German forces used hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners as forced labor, incarcerating them in prison camps. The Nazi racial hierarchy placed Germans above “Slavs” and so justified their enslavement. These prisoners of war were treated appallingly, especially when food ran short. Russians, in turn, often refused to take prisoners, killing wounded and surrendered Germans. Of the 91,000 German prisoners officially taken by the Russians at the point of final surrender, only half survived the march to Russia and only 6,000 survived their incarceration. It is a key part of Beevor’s objective to show the brutal Battle of Stalingrad in its context, including the long-term suffering and hatred it engendered.
By frequently referencing the brutality of the war on the Eastern Front, Beevor seeks to show the impact that a war of annihilation had on morality. Each side dehumanized the other to the point where any action was morally justifiable. Anger at the mistreatment each received from the other only further increased the violence.
Morale and the Humanity of the Soldier
Running through Beevor’s Stalingrad is a parallel between real lived experiences of the battle by soldiers on the ground and how their respective regimes treated them inhumanely, as expendable tools or weapons. This contrast heightens the book’s consideration of the horrors of war and how morale was variously maintained and lost on both sides. To show soldiers as humans, Beevor draws extensively on letters and personal accounts, revealing how the extreme experiences of urban warfare and life in the Kessel impacted the soldiers who lived through it. His research reveals the importance of coping mechanisms, the internalization of propaganda, and the remarkable resilience of the human psyche when faced with unimaginable hardship and horror.
War, always a psychologically damaging experience, reached exceptional levels of brutality and hardship in the Stalingrad campaign. Both regimes were more than willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of soldiers and made decisions without regard for loss of life. Soldiers were placed in extremely dangerous and desperate situations, culminating in the Red Army’s defense of Stalingrad and the German experiences in the Kessel. Huge numbers of soldiers died from starvation and disease, as well as direct injury: In both cases, the regimes expected soldiers to endure or die, with little or no hope of support or retreat.
As Beevor shows, the dehumanization of soldiers by their regimes had a considerable impact on morale but many soldiers continued to fight throughout the battle. Soldiers used a variety of coping mechanisms, many of which were detrimental to themselves or others. Beevor focuses on the use of alcohol in the Red Army in Stalingrad, in which soldiers would go to exceptional lengths to get drunk—including drinking industrial alcohol. This provided a short-term escape for soldiers but damaged their physical and psychological health further, and eroded discipline. Soldiers also focused ideologically on how their sacrifices were part of a larger national struggle. Soviet nationalist appeals were demonstrably inspirational for many and led soldiers to link the personal safety of their loved ones with the health of the country. Beevor illustrates this point with his inclusion of a letter in which a soldier tells his wife, “I can’t distinguish where you end, and where the Motherland begins. You and it are the same for me” (200). Soldiers also took comfort in celebrating the heroes of the war. For the defenders of Stalingrad, these were often the snipers, lionized as the symbols of the army’s embedded resistance. Russian discipline was reinforced by fear, both of the enemy and, even more, of their own army. The execution of deserters spearheaded by the NKVD and tales of German atrocities combined to make any option but fighting onwards impossible. While desertions did occur, the 62nd Army remained at Stalingrad.
Beevor emphasizes various features of the German experience in the Kessel. To emphasize the humanity of the common soldier, he shows how they found comfort through traditions, each other, and a near-obsessive optimism. The celebration of Christmas within the military unit, presented as a family substitute, provided relief from stress and some sense of normality in an otherwise alien situation. Soldiers’ internalization of German propaganda provided hope that they would be relieved, despite evidence otherwise, and focused hatred outward against the Russians. Inside the Kessel, Beevor shows how the morale of a whole army can eventually break. Before and in the initial days of the final offensive against the Sixth Army, Beevor stresses that it was a capable force in which elements were losing faith, but many were committed to the fight. With the breaking of the German lines, the cumulative factors of sickness, cold, and their abandonment by Hitler, the army dissolved.
By exploring the psychological impact of the campaign on soldiers throughout both armies, Beevor shows how myriad factors went into keeping a soldier fighting in seemingly impossible conditions until eventually they were pushed beyond their capacity for it. The resilience of Soviet and German soldiers was remarkable, and Beevor’s presentation of this sheds light on both regimes’ inhumane use of their soldiers in pursuit of ideological victory.
