Customer Reviews

An Infantryman in Stalingrad: From 24 September 1942 to 2 February 1943

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is of the highest quality, from its hard cover, to its glossy pages, to the photographs and historical records. This is one of the most detailed account of urban warfare in Stalingrad I have read. The book is fast-paced, easy to follow, thoroughly researched, and extremely informative. I could not put this book down and learned more about the streetfighting in Stalingrad than from all the other books I have read combined. If you want to learn about the horrific fighting in Stalingrad from a first-person perspective, this is the highest quality work I have encountered. I recommend it to anyone with an interest on the subject and can assure you that you will not be disappointed. A first class historical work all the way. Impressive!

(On a side note, I specifically looked for the author emphasizing that he was only doing his job and only found one reference. So, I have to respectfully disagree with the other reviewer who stated that this was a repeat issue.)

Well, I ordered this book right from the publisher on his site.
This book is a translation from the German copy, and was done really well as it flowed with no problems.
I found this book excellant with pictures and maps. The publisher has air shots of the city and has super-impossed lines/boundaries where the author was. I found this to make the story really easy and INTERESTING to follow. When the author describes a certain building ie" the transformer" there is air shots with the transformer in them and you are able to see what the author saw. Nicely done with photos of other commanders and vehicles though there isn't a lot of them. In no way does this detract from the book.
If the author talks about a certain soldier, the publisher has researched them and gives the dates of birth and fate ie: died in Stalingrad or survived the war etc. I found this also informative though the author made a few mistakes with names.....
The only part that was sort of repeated was the author continuously repeating that they were doing their job. The battle descriptions are also very well described and you can feel yourself in the battle or in the cold bunker with him.
The book ends with the author waiting to surrender and I found myself wanting to know more about his survival in the POW camps and the end of war. Instead of fighting it out to the last bullet he decides to go back to the wounded after he finds out they are to be left to their fate.
HIGHLY recommended !!!!

The book is a pleasure to own. Publishers don't often take the time to produce a book this well. It has high quality pages and presented nicely.

It's a gem of information. Very well researched. Farily well written. The best first hand account of the battle I am aware of.

As I am an avid reader of any literature relating to the battle for Stalingrad, I can't rate this book high enough.
Many of my Russian relations fought, or were used as translators, during the battle, hence the interest in accounts from either side.

What is so significant about this book is the picture that is painted by the interaction between the battle orders, maps, and personal accounts. Extremely poignant image. Movement orders, mundane daily (relatively) contact / battle reports all complement the junior officers perspective of warfare in an inhospitable climate.
The inevitable camaraderie that builds up within fighting units at the front line is admirably portrayed. Along with the interaction between incompetence, inefficiency, intolerable conditions, and the sheer bloody hard work that is the burden of the modern Infantryman. Holl buffers as much of this from his troops as possible, and earns their respect as a result.
In summary, this book combines personal information of the fighting on the front line with factual data in a way that is addictive to read.

The value of this book is not in that it portrays the full scope of the battle of Stalingrad. Such books can be written by anyone (even you or I)if we wish to access the German and Russian archives. This book's value and unique qualities lie in that it covers one persons memiors and experiences over a part of the battlefield. It can never be replicated, which is especially important given only 5,000 german solidiers surrounded at Stalingrad made it home.

It is well written and easy to read. The original work is enhanced by pictures, maps and historic data provided by the translators. Given it was written about 25 years after the event it is very detailed and accurate. I'm not sure if it was written from a diary but it gives a day by day account of Holl's experiences as a narrative. It doesn't get affected, as other books do, by "visionary" writing such as forboding about possibly being surrounded. It is written as if it were based only on the knowledge of that day, not subsequent events. He is proud soldier but not a Nazi apologist.

It begins with Holl's return and leading of the attack at the mouth of the Tsarita gorge to the banks of the Volga. His unit is then swithed to a quiter zone but called on to clear out a russian pocket. Then the entrapment and the desperate retreat back to the city. The writing is dispassionate; but is still full of feeling for the conditions of the time. Holl leaves his story immediately before his surrender. It would have been nice to know what happened to him (how long was he a POW?) but that is not the purpose of the book.

I have over a 100 2WW memiors. This is one of the best. It is a must have for any one interested in Eastern front combat.

This is the second book that we owe thanks to Jason Mark for his meticulous research and efforts.It follows naturally from his first work, a history of the destruction of the 24 Panzer Div. at Stalingrad - "Death of the Leaping Horseman", going from the Divisional scale down to the individual scale. They should be read together.

While it is a memoir of a soldier who was there, in his own words, Mr. Mark's research expands and develops the account with maps, documents, cross references to the personalities referred to by Holl, and photographs. It makes for a professionally produced memoir and an invaluable reference for serious researchers and students of that battle.

You won't find heart wrenching torment,soul searching or soaring prose in Holl's memoir - he is very matter-of-fact and, if anything, downplays the terrible events and suffering involved. However, that does not detract from the recounting. This is not a sensational telling but solid, factual and in that way, authoritative and very moving account.

Again, I thank Jason D. Mark for bringing Adelbert Holl's memoirs to us. Its a perfect "collaberation".

This is a book that I highly recommend, especially for Stalingrad buffs. Its about Adelbert Holl, a 23 year old Leutnant coming back to duty after recuperating from a severe chest wound. He is in charge of the remains of 7th Company, 276th IR of 94th ID. He arrives at Stalingrad in late September and describes the daily action he takes and sees around him as he strives to reach the Volga River. His heroic account stirs the mind and heart and helps us understand, at least a little, how awful the conditions were for both sides. The author also shows fragments of daily after action reports which were enlightening.
In addition to this dramatic story there are 24 maps that shows where and what the objectives were. In addition to the maps there were a number of aerial photos that also shows Stalingrad and helps you to follow the story. Besides the aerial photos, there are other photos that shows the remains of the city and the men fighting in it. At the end of the book there are a number of documents but they were in German and not much help to me.
There is also a listing of Leutnant Holl's career that includes medals won, promotions earned and wounds received. The book closes with an index of soldiers described in the book.
If I hadn't read "Island of Fire" recently, I would have given this book 5 stars. Its really good and though the format is different than the other book, its not on the same quality level. Still, I believe most people would enjoy this story.

I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it for anyone who is interested and familiar with WW II/Eastern Front. I have read several excellent historical accounts of the Battle of Stalingrad, but those dealt mostly on a macroscopic level - in the cold, analytical facts (which are fascinating in and of themselves). They always left me wondering about the human side of things. This book was delivered on a much more microscopic level - and from the point of view of the defeated.

This book was an excellent supplement to my earlier readings on the subject and I would certainly recommend it as such.

If you already have a good understanding of the battle of Stalingrad, then this book is worth reading. It is one soldier's experience, and does not discuss the big picture. There are lots of maps, many created out of aerial photographs. The maps and the sit-reps give one a good sense of what the author is talking about. He does not overly dramatize and is quite matter-of-fact. Nevertheless, one gets a good idea of just how awful the conditions were.

In the wake of Theodor Plievier (1969) the epic battle for Stalingrad has been re-told in the past ten years or so by several eminent historians like Anthony Breevor (1999), Geoffrey Roberts (2002) and Michael Jones (2007). Therefore one might ask what added value there might be in yet another book on the same subject, in this case "An Infantryman in Stalingrad" by Adelbert Holl. My conclusion is that the material offered in this book is interesting enough for reading. Where other books present the full scope of the battle with emphasis on the strategic and operational interactions of armies, divisions and regiments, in which the individual soldier is often reduced to a simple cogwheel in the war machinery, this book tells the day-to-day story of an infantryman in the ruins of the city. As a consequence the horizon of the story is often limited to the factory behind the next block or the houses across the street. The momentous battle of the 6th Army is reduced to the struggle of a Wehrmacht officer to stay alive and to keep his men alive while fulfilling his duty. This book, a diary actually, covers the period of 23 September 1942, when Holl reports back from convalescence leave to his battalion commander, up to and including 1 February 1943, when he is waiting for captivity with a few other survivors.
When I started reading this book I wondered if the author would reveal anything about his motives for serving in the Wehrmacht and to what extent he would justify the invasion of Russia, which brought so much misery to the population. Holl is surprisingly quiet on these moral issues, even in hindsight. He only tells us that he took the oath for Führer, Volk und Vaterland voluntarily at the age of 18 and that he considered it his duty to fulfill this oath in the belief that the free world should be protected from the curses of Bolshevism. It is scary to realize that similar distorted views on certain groups in our society are still the driving forces behind the atrocities that fill our newspapers today. As if nothing has been learned from history. The positive side of this lack of reflection is that the character of the narrative, which is very much matter-of-fact, is not weakened by attempts to justify the actions described in the book.
The publisher deserves credits for the quality of this book. The translation is excellent and the text is richly interspersed with illustrations and maps, many in the form of aerial photographs. Additional information is provided in the form of footnotes. In my experience military history books often suffer from a lack of clear maps in places where they would be helpful for a better understanding of the military movements described in the text. That is not the case in this book where maps are abundant and always on the right spot.
Conclusion: Contents are interesting and presentation is excellent. A recommendation for readers interested in the history of the Nazi-Soviet war from 1941-1945.