- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 210
I just finished reading "Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad" by W. Craig. I'm not sure what the relationship is between this book and the movie, as they're extremely different. Contrary to the movie, this book focuses on numerous characters and only makes brief mention of Vasili Zaitsev and Tania Chernova. The author spent 5 years researching on 3 continents before writing the book and interviewed endless numbers of civilians and soldiers (both Russian and Axis). It's a great read - interspersed with explanations of the larger picture are accounts by soldiers of every rank about their experiences in and around Stalingrad. Craig does an excellent job of "developing" the "characters" using their own diaries, the accounts of others, and interviews with the individuals themselves. The book is very entertaining, as it's written more like a story than a dry historical account, though it's definitely not fiction.
The second book is "On the Road to Stalingrad: Memoirs of a Soviet Woman Machine Gunner" by Zoya Matveyevna Smirnova-Medvedeva. The title is a little deceiving as Zoya never actually saw combat in Stalingrad but fought at (and around) Odessa, Sevastopol, and several other areas. The story recounts her experiences both as a machine gunner and a medic. Her accounts of combat, conditions on the front lines, the relationships between soldiers and between enlisted men and officers are fantastic.
The second book is "On the Road to Stalingrad: Memoirs of a Soviet Woman Machine Gunner" by Zoya Matveyevna Smirnova-Medvedeva. The title is a little deceiving as Zoya never actually saw combat in Stalingrad but fought at (and around) Odessa, Sevastopol, and several other areas. The story recounts her experiences both as a machine gunner and a medic. Her accounts of combat, conditions on the front lines, the relationships between soldiers and between enlisted men and officers are fantastic.