Overly popular | Enemy at the Gates: Movie Tie-In

Good, classic book of the Stalingrad battle, NOT the film! | Enemy at the Gates: Movie Tie-In | William Craig

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	• Enemy at the Gates: Movie Tie-In William Craig Penguin (Non-Classics), 2001 - 472 pages average customer review:based on 88 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Great WWII Historical

This book is about the Battle for Stalinsburg during World War II. During the five years that the author researched the battle, he interviewed hundreds of people concerning it. This provided an accurate and detailed look at the battle. The book is about the battle for Stalinsburg, with information on how the Germans advanced and attacked the city, how the Russian forces retaliated and fought. It contains some primary documents and dialouge that occured in the battles. The book catpures the horrors and thrills of battle, for both sides. If you are looking for a movie novelization however, you may be disappointed to find that the entire movie that was based on the book was really based on the events in about five pages. Other than that,Enemy at the Gates is an exciting read and one that I wouldn't pass up.

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Overly popular

This book has a terrific story to tell, but I found it deficient in ways. There are no footnotes, and chapter notes merely cite a volume--so if one wanted to check the accuracy of what the book says one would have to check the entire cited source, rather than a page in the source! The author did a lot of interviewing, so the book is full of "war stories," some of which seem exaggerated. The book is clearly written for the non-scholar and while I like "popular" history (Richard Hough's Admirals in Collision was the best book I read in 1971) I thought this book too "popular" and a more scholarly study would have been more worthwhile reading.

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Good, classic book of the Stalingrad battle, NOT the film!

I loved the 2001 movie, "Enemy at the Gates" so much that I wanted to learn more about the true life characters in the book. This 1973 book of the same name DOES have more details, (and surprising details), of the film's main characters, but the film's main characters only take up about 6 pages, sprinkled throughout this 400+ page book.

Actually, the film's female lead character, Tania Chernova, was interviewed in person by the author, William Craig, some 30 years ago. I was quite surprised that the true life Tania was actually MORE action-oriented than the film version! So the film made her into a more passive, conventional movie heroine, rather than the sniper killer that she actually was.

Aside from movie comparisons, this was a gripping book that I couldn't stop reading. The first half focuses on the actual battle in the city of Stalingrad, which captures the feel of the movie. The second half of the book focuses on how the German army got defeated, when the battle shifted outside of the actual city, in the snow covered, open fields and plains, focusing on the German inner politics that would eventually lead to the defeat of the German army. Most of the second half of this book is not shown in the movie at all.

Overall, I was surprised that some of the more unbelievable, yet dramatic moments from the film were actually true, while even more "extreme" details of the real life people were not used at all. I am glad that I read this book, which is definitely one of the most famous accounts of the battle for Stalingrad, but the book is definitely NOT for folks who are mainly interested about what happens in the movie version only.

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Extrodinary Look at Stalingrad from a Macro and Micro View

Craig's work still reigns as one of the premier works on the battle of Stalingrad, just as historians like Cornelius Ryan claimed it would back in the early 1970's. Telling the stories of dozens of individuals in the battle, in all the horrific and menacing character that truly plagued the battle, Craig does a commendable job at writing with skill and in very readable fashion about a subject that is by its very nature, difficult to stomach. Few selections do as thorough a job in forcing you to understand the true disaster on the human level that war can be, and few episodes in human conflict have ever paralleled the unquenchable ferocity and barbarism that went hand in hand with this battle. Not only is the demonic nature of the battle presented well, but there is also a commendable military history presented that details the significance of the battle, the major personalities and the battlefield butchery that have made this battle a thing of legend. To truly comprehend the nature and scope of the battle of Stalingrad and to obtain an actual appreciation for the valor and sacrifice that went hand in hand with unimaginable, ghastly inhumanity that seems striaght from the written illustrations of Dante himself, this book is necessary reading. I give it my highest approval ratings without a second thought, though the misery the book presents forces an afterthought that I assure you, will not be forgotten. It cannot be forgotten.

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No mere sniper duel in this one . . . .

William Craig's classic on this herioic, oftentimes heartbreaking battle remains the definitive book on Stalingrad even today. Meticulously researched and based on many first-hand accounts gleaned from various sources, Craig masterfully captured the intensity and human drama that characterized what was undoubtedly the biggest, most destructive single conflict in recorded history. Sweeping in its scope, Craig still manages to keep the reader enthralled with a brisk writing style and "you are there" immediacy that rival the best contemporary suspense novels. This is a book that appeals to more than military history buffs; it is a tragic tale of valor, sacrifice, stupidity, the stubborn refusal to face reality (on Hitler's part), and human suffering. This is one of the top 25 books on my list.

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