The Battle of Stalingrad was a disaster. The German Sixth Army consisted of over 300,000 men when it approached Stalingrad in August 1942. On 2 February 1943, 91,000 remained; only some 5,000 survived Soviet captivity. Largely due to the success of previous aerial resupply operations, Luftwaffe leaders assured Hitler they could successfully supply the Sixth Army after it was trapped. However, the Luftwaffe was not up to the challenge. The primary reason was the weather, but organizational and structural flaws, as well as enemy actions, also contributed to their failure. This thesis will address why the Demyansk and Kholm airlifts convinced the Germans that airlift was a panacea for encircled forces; the lessons learned from these airlifts and how they were applied at Stalingrad; why Hitler ordered the Stalingrad airlift despite the logistical impossibility; and seek out lessons for today’s military. The primary reason for the Stalingrad tragedy was that Germany’s strategic leadership did not apply lessons learned from earlier airlifts to the Stalingrad airlift, and the U.S. military is making similar mistakes with respect to the way it is handling its lessons learned from recent military operations.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER For millennia, Carthage’s triumph over Rome at Cannae in 216 B.C. has inspired reverence and awe. No general since has matched Hannibal’s most unexpected, innovative, and brutal military victory. Now Robert L. O’Connell, one of the most admired names in military history, tells the whole story of Cannae for the first time, giving us a stirring account of this apocalyptic battle, its causes and consequences. O’Connell brilliantly conveys how Rome amassed a giant army to punish Carthage’s masterful commander, how Hannibal outwitted enemies that outnumbered him, and how this disastrous pivot point in Rome’s history ultimately led to the republic’s resurgence and the creation of its empire. Piecing together decayed shreds of ancient reportage, the author paints powerful portraits of the leading players, from Hannibal—resolutely sane and uncannily strategic—to Scipio Africanus, the self-promoting Roman military tribune. Finally, O’Connell reveals how Cannae’s legend has inspired and haunted military leaders ever since, and the lessons it teaches for our own wars.

The bitter Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point of WWII on the Eastern Front. The relentless and unstoppable German advances that had seen the panzers sweep hundreds of miles into Russia was finally brought to a halt at Stalingrad. The elite German 6th Army was first fought to a standstill, then surrounded and forced to surrender. For the ...

In the hell that was World War II, the Eastern Front was its heart of fire and ice. Gottlob Herbert Bidermann served in that lethal theater from 1941 to 1945, and his memoir of those years recaptures the sights, sounds, and smells of the war as it vividly portrays an army marching on the road to ruin. A riveting and reflective account by one of the millions of anonymous soldiers who fought and died in that cruel terrain, In Deadly Combat conveys the brutality and horrors of the Eastern Front in detail never before available in English. It offers a ground soldier's perspective on life and death on the front lines, providing revealing new information concerning day-to-day operations and German army life. Wounded five times and awarded numerous decorations for valor, Bidermann saw action in the Crimea and siege of Sebastopol, participated in the vicious battles in the forests south of Leningrad, and ended the war in the Courland Pocket. He shares his impressions of countless Russian POWs seen at the outset of his service, of peasants struggling to survive the hostilities while caught between two ruthless antagonists, and of corpses littering the landscape. He recalls a Christmas gift of gingerbread from home that overcame the stench of battle, an Easter celebrated with a basket of Russian hand grenades for eggs, and his miraculous survival of machine gun fire at close range. In closing he relives the humiliation of surrender to an enemy whom the Germans had once derided and offers a sobering glimpse into life in the Soviet gulags. Bidermann's account debunks the myth of a highly mechanized German army that rolled over weaker opponents with impunity. Despite the vast expanses of territory captured by the Germans during the early months of Operation Barbarossa, the war with Russia remained tenuous and unforgiving. His story commits that living hell to the annals of World War II and broadens our understanding of its most deadly combat zone. Translator Derek Zumbro has rendered Bidermann's memoir into a compelling narrative that retains the author's powerful style. This English-language edition of Bidermann's dynamic story is based upon a privately published memoir entitled Krim-Kurland Mit Der 132 Infanterie Division.The translator has added important events derived from numerous interviews with Bidermann to provide additional context for American readers.

This issue of Granta is about time and about ghosts - the ghosts of our past selves, the shadows of past injuries, the ghosts of history, the ghosts in the machine. André Aciman remembers Rome Ahmet Altan on his life sentence Bernard Cooper on Ambien and sleep-eating Maggie O'Farrell on damaging her 'sacred' joint Vasily Grossman's Stalingrad, a companion to his epic Life and Fate Amos Oz in conversation with Shira Hadad Inigo Thomas on the fall of Singapore PLUS NEW FICTION from Anne Carson, Steven Dunn, Sheila Heti, Eugene Lim, Sandra Newman, Maria Reva and Jess Row POETRY from Cortney Lamar Charleston and Jana Prikryl PHOTOGRAPHY from Monika Bulaj, with an introduction by Janine di Giovanni

Some people believe that soldiers who die in combat never leave the place where they died. Read this book to find out more about ghosts of war.

In his latest work, Antony Beevor—bestselling author of Stalingrad and The Battle of Arnhem and one of our most respected historians of World War II—brings us the true, little-known story of a family torn apart by revolution and war. Olga Chekhova, a stunning Russian beauty, was the niece of playwright Anton Chekhov and a famous Nazi-era film actress who was closely associated with Hitler. After fleeing Bolshevik Moscow for Berlin in 1920, she was recruited by her composer brother Lev to become a Soviet spy—a career she spent her entire postwar life denying. The riveting story of how Olga and her family survived the Russian Revolution, the rise of Hitler, the Stalinist Terror, and the Second World War becomes, in Beevor’s hands, a breathtaking tale of survival in a merciless age.