Antony Beevor · 494 pages
Rating: (22.2K votes)
“German soldiers made use of Stalingrad orphans themselves. Daily tasks, such as filling water-bottles, were dangerous when Russian snipers lay in wait for any movement. So, for the promise of a crust of bread, they would get Russian boys and girls to take their water-bottles down to the Volga’s edge to fill them. When the Soviet side realized what was happening, Red Army soldiers shot children on such missions.”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
“This armchair strategist never possessed the qualities for true generalship, because he ignored practical problems.”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
“Order No. 227, more commonly known as ‘Not One Step Backwards’. Stalin made many changes, then signed it. The order was to be read to all troops in the Red Army. ‘Panic-mongers and cowards must be destroyed on the spot. The retreat mentality must be decisively eliminated. Army commanders who have allowed the voluntary abandonment of positions must be removed and sent for immediate trial by military tribunal.’ Anyone who surrendered was ‘a traitor to the Motherland’. Each army had to organize ‘three to five well-armed detachments (up to 200 men each)’ to form a second line to shoot down any soldier who tried to run away. Zhukov implemented this order on the Western Front within ten days, using tanks manned by specially selected officers. They followed the first wave of an attack, ready ‘to combat cowardice’, by opening fire on any soldiers who wavered. Three”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
“The army’s exact losses are still uncertain, but there was no doubt that the Stalingrad campaign represented the most catastrophic defeat hitherto experienced in German history.”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
“That the Soviet regime was almost as unforgiving towards its own soldiers as towards the enemy is demonstrated by the total figure of 13,500 executions, both summary and judicial, during the battle of Stalingrad.”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
“These ‘mine-dogs’, trained on Pavlovian principles, had been taught to run under large vehicles to obtain their food. The stick, catching against the underside, would detonate the charge. Most of the dogs were shot before they reached their target, but this macabre tactic had an unnerving effect. It”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
“The military authorities were concerned that soldiers going home on leave would demoralize the home population with horror stories of the Ostfront. ‘You are under military law,’ ran the forceful reminder, ‘and you are still subject to punishment. Don’t speak about weapons, tactics or losses. Don’t speak about bad rations or injustice. The intelligence service of the enemy is ready to exploit it.’
One soldier, or more likely a group, produced their own version of instructions, entitled ‘Notes for Those Going on Leave.’ Their attempt to be funny reveals a great deal about the brutalizing affects of the Ostfront. ‘You must remember that you are entering a National Socialist country whose living conditions are very different to those to which you have been accustomed. You must be tactful with the inhabitants, adapting to their customs and refrain from the habits which you have come to love so much. Food: Do not rip up the parquet or other kinds of floor, because potatoes are kept in a different place. Curfew: If you forget your key, try to open the door with the round-shaped object. Only in cases of extreme urgency use a grenade. Defense Against Partisans: It is not necessary to ask civilians the password and open fire upon receiving an unsatisfactory answer. Defense Against Animals: Dogs with mines attached to them are a special feature of the Soviet Union. German dogs in the worst cases bite, but they do not explode. Shooting every dog you see, although recommended in the Soviet Union, might create a bad impression. Relations with the Civil Population: In Germany just because someone is wearing women’s clothes does not necessarily mean that she is a partisan. But in spite of this, they are dangerous for anyone on leave from the front. General: When on leave back to the Fatherland take care not to talk about the paradise existence in the Soviet Union in case everybody wants to come here and spoil our idyllic comfort.”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
“Red Army cavalry divisions also ranged far into the rear, mounted on resilient little Cossack ponies. Squadrons and entire regiments would suddenly appear fifteen miles behind the front, charging artillery batteries or supply depots with drawn sabres and terrifying war-cries. The”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
“The biggest mistake made by German commanders was to have underestimated ‘Ivan’, the ordinary Red Army soldier. They quickly found that surrounded or outnumbered Soviet soldiers went on fighting when their counterparts from western armies would have surrendered.”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
“Stalin, whose bullying nature contained a strong streak of cowardice,”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
“Its first major task had been the liquidation of over 4,000 Polish officers in the forest at Katyn.”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943
Antony Beevor
Born place: in The United Kingdom
Born date December 14, 1946
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“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Send men that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel; of every tribe of their fathers shall you send a man, every one a prince among them.” —Numbers 13:1-2”
― Daniel Silva, quote from The Kill Artist
“Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the descending avalanche, or the spinning funnel of the tornado, yet makes no attempt to flee, is not necessarily paralyzed with fright or resigned to an unavoidable fate. He may simply be unable to believe that the message of his eyes concerns him personally. It is all happening to somebody else.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, quote from 2010: Odyssey Two
“If one thing was perfectly, crystalline clear, it was that I could take care of myself. I just kept coming and coming and coming. I was what I was.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, quote from Every Other Day
“Got 'ny sense! See here, bub, does your mother know you're out?”
― Booth Tarkington, quote from The Magnificent Ambersons
“There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the “end of time,” or of commanding forever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow. The Parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period, had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to bind or to control them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or the people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or control those who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence. Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this world, he has no longer any authority in directing who shall be its governors, or how its government shall be organized, or how administered.”
― Thomas Paine, quote from Rights of Man
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