Stalingrad: Researching the Lighthouse
The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine means it’s unlikely any western historians will visit again for quite some while.
Stalingrad, the greatest battle of any theatre of conflict during the Second World War. That’s the story I had always been told growing up. As a nine-year-old boy in the mid-1970s, I was given as a birthday present a book of the greatest battles in history, one of which was Stalingrad. The descriptions of the bitter house-to-house fighting between the German and Soviet forces for the city named after Joseph Stalin, amid the bitterest of Russian winters (varying between -20 to -40 degrees) captivated my imagination. It continues to do so.
Antony Beevor’s bestselling book on the battle in 1998 was based on his access to the Soviet military archives – a unique window for western historians sadly now closed – as well as first-person interviews with survivors from the doomed German Sixth Army led by General Friedrich Paulus. Beevor set the benchmark high, combining a thorough but readable strategic overview with first-person testimonies, thus offering the reader a fresh insight into this iconic campaign. It rightly won major awards, but also provided a stimulus for the next generation of military historians coming through today.
Many books have been written about Stalingrad from a variety of perspectives: David M.Glantz, Joachim Hellbeck, Michael Jones and Jonathan Trigg’s books have all given some fresh perspective to it. It can, I suppose, be legitimately asked then: ‘Does the world need another book about the battle?’ As we know, it’s all about the research. If there is new material: official correspondence, personal letters, diaries, photographs, etc. that when analysed can give the reader a new insight into this seismic struggle, then of course, it needs to shared.
