The Battle for Stalingrad

Download or read book The Battle for Stalingrad written by Vasiliĭ Ivanovich Chuĭkov and published by New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston. This book was released on 1964 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The commander of the 62nd Siberian Army tells what happened during the Battle of Stalingrad, analyzing Russian military strategy and giving a bird's-eye view of how Soviet generals planned the war and Russian soldiers fought it. His account questions the myth that the Germans were beaten by the climate and the greater numbers of Russian troops. Confessing the view he held at the time, Chuikov explains the background to the orders he gave, describing in detail how he broke up the traditional military units to create myriads of small, flexible storm troops to conduct house-to-house fighting. Referring to the diaries and letters of soldiers (both Russian and German), he evokes the hell that was Stalingrad, a shattered city where soldiers were fighting in sewers, from rubble, and from holes in the frozen earth.