Ukrainian ironies and parallels accrue on almost every page throughout Iain MacGregor’s splendid new account of the Battle of Stalingrad – ironies that, of course, he could never have foreseen while the book was being written, although he notes the beginnings of the Ukraine war in his introduction and epilogue. Vladimir Putin’s crazed and bungled invasion has put the Russian armed forces back in the international spotlight and the verdict is both shaming and shocking.
The Red Army heroes of yesteryear who fought in the titanic conflict that raged in and around Stalingrad between September 1942 and the end of January 1943 would not recognise their successors. The drunken, terrified, mutinous conscripts who are being asked to fight in Putin’s self-glorifying war would seem utterly alien to them. The contrast between the martial myth of Stalingrad and the present tawdry – though still lethal – reality is astounding.
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