"Book review: Blood Red Snow" Topic

Even though I am off on holiday, I could not stop posting something on my blog… This time a book review of Blood Red Snow:

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Enjoy,

Burkhard

Very interesting book!

If you want some unique, first hand accounts of Stalingrad proper from both sides, this is a great resource, "Voices From Stalingrad":

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But he wasnt actually in the cauldron right? He was in a group outside the was forced Back during Uranus? A great book written with all of the horrific details of one man's personal experiences. One of my favorite eastern front memoirs

@SBminisguy: Will take a look at the book, too. Thanks for the pointer.

@Warmaster Horus: Yes you are right, he was not in the cauldron itself.

Cheers,

Burkhard

Btw, this is less a plug than an explanation. I did a Stalingrad supplement for the NUTS skirmish system that focuses on 16th Panzer, and it was really interesting (and frustrating) to research it and provide a relatively accurate picture of what happened to that division. It's one of the few German units that saw action from Fall Blau into the Tractor Factory, and to the Kessel, and had a number of troops escape. The campaign is set loosely around the 64th PzrGdr of 16.Pzr, which saw from 30%-50% of its men escape the pincers that closed near Kalach. Doing the maps and campaign sequence was a challenge because the Germans spelled Russian town names wrong, some of the towns don't exist anymore, and not all of the areas they campaign in are mentioned in a way that makes it easy to understand where it happened.

So it was a combo of using accounts like the books mentioned here, using the single official history book (light on detail), and pouring through Glantz's mega-history on Stalingrad and other books, and checking different maps (Glantz' almanacs, Google Earth, etc.) to piece it together. I'm quite happy that I've probably written up the most coherent history for gamers of 16.Pzr's campaign at Stalingrad.

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There's also a free scenario posted at the Yahoo! Group for Two Hour Wargames from the book called "Fillipov at the Bridge" in which a small Russian strike force rode captured German tanks up to the Bridge at Kalach, seized it and held it long enough to be reinforced, closing the Kessel.

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The most annoying thing happened to me a couple of years ago.my grandmothers best friend had died a couple of days before. She commented to me how much she would miss the conversations with him, except for his endless stories about Stalingrad. So I asked her if he had been there and she told me that he had been a staff Major on von Paulus staff, that he had been wounded shortly beforemthe capitulation and had actually been flown out on the very last plane to leave the Kessel… Would I have loved to plug that mans mind with amtape recorder running had I known!

Wow!

Sensational book. A must have. And a good review