I really liked it.
If you like non-fiction (and many people really don't), I highly recommend Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor. It is very well written, and feels almost like a novel. You will never think about the snow and hunger and fear the same way again.
Interesting. I read Stalingrad a while back, pretty crazy situation all around. My great uncle was a flight engineer/top turret gunner in a B-24 but I only met him once and never got to ask him about his war experiences. All my other relatives as far as I know were either too old or too young for WW2.
Antony Beevor's Stalingrad ranks pretty high for me - I've re-read it, and still enjoy it.
Maybe consider King Leopold's Ghost, for "what happened in the Congo".
A more recently published one would be First to Fight: The Polish War 1939 - but IMO, that's somewhat more academic.
(Links just so you have an idea of what the books look like)
Check out Antony Beevor's book Stalingrad for tons of details that will boggle the mind.
I understand now, so your definition is:
A supply crate floats over river = Not Besieged.
A supply crate thrown over wall = Still Besieged.
Well I hope it doesn't surprise you that other people don't use that cherry-picked, maximalist understanding of the word.
Historian Geoffrey Roberts in "The memoirs of Marshal Georgy Zhukov":
> "It was this southern campaign that led to the siege at Stalingrad later that year"
Stalingrad: The Fateful <strong>Siege</strong>: 1942-1943 by Historian Antony Beevor
BBC: <strong>Siege</strong> of Stalingrad
A trickle of supplies getting through doesn't stop it from being a siege. Some supplies got through to Leningrad as well but that was still a siege too. Pick any random even from history you would call a siege, and you will find some supplies getting through at some point - doesn't matter, still a siege.
The most popular historian/book on that battle actually has the word in the title itself : https://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Beevor/dp/0140284583 That is one factor that contributes to that perception. An excellent book IMO. The brutality and immensity of this battle surpasses all the other battles of World War II
Also this perception of it being a Siege is not uncommon as you often read that Stalin gave an order forbidding the evacuation of citizens, so that contributes to the sense that it was a siege. Also once Russian soldiers crossed the Volga into the battle there was no going back due to Stalin’s Order 227 so for them too it was a no exit situation. Hitler forbade any retreat to his own men trapped there regardless of bad the situation had gotten. The German soldiers coined the term 'Kessel' for the situation at Stalingrad meaning 'Cauldron'. So they were besieged in that sense as well. So both parties were cooking in the cauldron so to speak.
As for as citizen evacuation was concerned they have not found any evidence that Stalin actually gave an order like that : More on that with sources can be found in the 'Stalingrad Battle Data' group on fb here : https://www.facebook.com/StalData/posts/the-truth-on-the-evacuation-of-stalingrads-population-did-stalin-actually-forbid/920719164979231/
A couple that I've read from Antony Beevor:
Stalingrad, and its follow up book The Fall of Berlin 1945. Beevor has also written books on the Ardennes, D-Day, and an all encompassing book on WWII. I have yet to read those but can attest that his two Eastern Front focused books are fantastic
I would also highly recommend The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison Salisbury. Absolutely haunting stuff.
Not according to this book.
Antony Beevor's <em>Stalingrad</em> and <em>The Fall of Berlin 1945</em> were superb narrative histories of World War Two in the East. On the American end, the first two volumes of Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy - An Army at Dawn and <em>The Day of Battle</em> are great. I think somebody else mentioned <em>The Guns of August</em> by Barbara Tuchman. Just the first paragraph of that book is worth the price of the paperback.
If you're not into the whole military thing, <em>The Worst Hard Time</em> by Tim Egan covers the dustbowl era in the southern plains. Reads like an epic novel.
All of these suggestions prioritize craft of writing over intellectual rigor. I studied history, so I have a keen appreciation for the value (and the limits) of academic history. These books are not that sort of history, though I don't think any of them get any facts egregiously wrong. It's just that they're remarkable for being well-written - which should appeal to a fiction enthusiast - not for being pathbreaking academic treatments of their subject matter.
My personal first choice would be a history of the first World War called The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962.
If you'd like something less general, you could try Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943 by Anthony Beevor, which has lots of the kind of battlefield breakdowns that you like.
For something a little more humorous, try How to Lose a Battle by Bill Fawcet. No illustrations, but there are a lot of different (although not especially precise) accounts of interesting historical turning points.
Start with this book. It's pretty good.
Stalingrad. It's very well written, informative and well reviewed.