Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943 (Modern War Studies(Paper))

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Customer Reviews:

This is the strongest Stalingrad book! [Posted on 2005-07-29]
Anthony Beevor's wife and publisher (the well-connected Hon. Artemis Cooper, no less) had her publicity machine whip his good book on Stalingrad into a huge international best-seller. That's perfectly okay. I liked Beevor's book very much, and do commend it to readers. But Beevor's isn't the most authoritative and analytical book on Stalingrad, that frightful, turning-point battle. Joel Hayward's book is! I'm pleased that, while it has never sold as many copies, Hayward's uniquely-conceived book has earned fantastic reviews and been quoted and acknowledged as highly-influential (and mandatory reading) by almost every subsequent writer on the eastern front, including Glantz, Erickson etc.

Hayward's book masterfully explains why, strategically, Hitler planned a major campaign in 1942 after not winning in the east during the previous year. It superbly elucidates why, even though the city of Stalingrad was never one of that major campaign's goals, Hitler then became distracted by it, to the point whereby its capture mattered more than the Caucasus oilfields he was originally, and very rationally, committed to seizing and exploiting.

Hayward's book also analyses air power and joint-service matters but always relates these in a seamless way to ground battles and operations. His book is therefore strikingly-different to all previous, army-focused books on Stalingrad (including Beevor's) which barely mentioned air power despite it dominating all successful battles during 1942, in and around Stalingrad itself, and during the air-lift.

Hayward's analysis of that increasingly-futile and tragic air-lift, and its highly skilful defeat by the Red Air force and Red Army, is by far the most original, complete, meticulously-researched (all from unpublished archival sources) and informative ever written.

I cannot recommend this original, insightful book highly enough. Buy Beevor's journalistic book, of course. But you must buy this volume if you want a thorough, analytical, scholarly work that explains why things happened and what it all meant.

A Great Book [Posted on 2006-09-19]
This book is a treasure. Saying it deals with just the Luftwaffe effort does not really address the scope of the book. In addition to the author's fabulous treatment of air operations, it has some great stuff on naval operations in the Crimea. This book is an absolute MUST for your WWII library. This guy is a lecturer at some college in New Zealand. Get him to some University in the USA!!

stopped at stalingrad [Posted on 2007-02-22]
Very thoroughly researched book. Could have explained infantry operations in a little more detail after all most of the movements of the Luftwaffe happened in direct support of infantry movement. Could have given a little bit more weightage to characteristic traits of leaders involved in action. But all in all a very lucidly written book a definite buy for anyone interested in eastern theater of WWII

Very good book [Posted on 2008-01-28]
This is a very good description of Luftwaffe Operations on the Eastern Front. It has good background information speciffically about the economic side of it. Decisions made based on oil supply's rather than military objectives. Very interesting material.
The only bad thing about this book is that the editing comes across as very sloppy. German names are often misspelled or incorrect. It is not Manstein, but von Manstein, not Bock, but von Bock, not Kluge, but von Kluge.
Also it is not Count von Sponneck but Graf von Sponneck. If you overlook those issues, it is a very good book

The Best of the Best [Posted on 2008-06-12]
You will not find a more diffinitive book on the Luftwaffe's activites in
operation Blau. I was happy to see that the siege of Sevastopol was well covered, I have found so little information in other books about that epic siege. The book does a very good job in explaining the terrible conditions at the outlying airfields trying to supply the 6th army,the lack of fuel,spare parts and the horrific weather conditions.
Hitler decided to try and take the Caucausas oil fields as well as Stalingrad. They had forces to take one,not both. They would have had much
greater success if they had just bombed the oil fields especially Baku which represented 80% of Russia's oil. Army group A and B could have bypassed Stalingrad,cutting the Volga river traffic and with a pincer movement, enveloped the Russian armies coming to the aid of Stalingrad.
Field Marshal's von Bock and List did all they could and were treated unfairly by Hitler. This book is great in showing the leadership qualities of Wolfram von Richthofen,clearly the most outstanding Lutwaffe commander of World War2.

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