Pugs,
I've read it a couple of times and I highly recommend it. It's very well written and explores many of the issues that played no small part in the final outcome of the battle.
Beevor gets into the tactics and politics that lead up to, and continued through the ordeal. But he mostly focuses on the vicious way both sides fought the battle. I had only a faint notion of what happened at Stalingrad, and to read the book for the first time, I was shocked at the complete disregard each side had for not only the enemy and civilians, but for their own men. The term "war is hell" is played out on the pages of this book as Beevor details the progress and spiral of depravity that comes to signify this horrible epic. First bullets and tanks dominate, only to be replaced by disease, starvation, and for the Germans, betrayal and abandonment.
This book doesn't paint either side as right or wrong. There are no hero's, no good guys. Just two armies locked in a brutal struggle to survive, and for the most part, failing.
In short, it's a very good book, but not one for the faint of heart.
Fred
