Stalingrad, August 1942—the brutal siege of the city begins.
For six months, Stalingrad is the center of a titanic struggle between the Russian and German armies, the bloodiest campaign in mankind's long history of warfare. The outcome is pivotal. If Hitler's forces are not stopped, Russia will fall. And with it, the world.
With razor-sharp prose and brilliant historical accuracy, David L. Robbins brings the reader right into the thick of this monumental battle, in a novel so authentic, it could almost be true....
German soldiers call the battle Rattenkrieg, war of the rats. The combat is horrific, as victories are measured in meters and soldiers die in the smoking cellars and trenches of a ruined city. Through this twisted carnage stalk two men—one Russian, one German—each the top sniper in their respective armies. These two marksmen are equally matched in both skill and tenacity. And each has his own mission....
The young Russian sniper's credo of "one man, one bullet" has established his reputation as the Red army's top long-distance assassin. Nicknamed the Hare, he's been put in charge of an impromptu sniper school, training both men and women to kill with chilling precision.
To counter this threat, the Headmaster, leader of the Nazis' elite sniper school, is flown to Stalingrad. Each has been given similar orders—to find and kill his counterpart. And the extraordinary duel begins....
Complicating matters is an American woman, Tania Chernova, trapped in Russia at the start of the war, who has come to Stalingrad from the Russian resistance. Seeking vengeance against the German army, the defiant American joins the Hare's team of snipers, becoming one of his most talented assassins—and possibly his greatest weakness.
An electrifying novel based on a true story, this is the harrowing tale of two adversaries who will know each other intimately by the climax of their own private war; two soldiers whose story is the saga of Stalingrad itself and whose fortunes will help decide the fate of a world at war.
Fast-paced and explosive, War of the Rats is a stunning amalgam of deepest history and thrilling fiction.
David L. Robbins grimly recounts the merciless determination of the German and Soviet combatants of the battle of Stalingrad in War of the Rats. Drawing from real events, Robbins tells the story of one of the battle's most pivotal contests: the famous sniper duel between Chief Master Sergeant Vasily Zaitsev and S.S. Colonel Heinz Thorvald. Zaitsev, a cunning Siberian hunter hardened by Stalingrad's butchery, has formed an impromptu sniper school in the midst of the battle, training his comrades to kill with implacable efficiency. The hundreds of bodies left in their wake prompt the Nazi leadership to send Thorvald, the cold-blooded master of the Wehrmacht's elite sniper academy, to assassinate the Soviet prodigy. Robbins's nerve-wracking prose depicts the two adversaries as they pursue their private war across a twisted hellscape of burning tanks and gutted factories. In the novel's most impressive section, Robbins leaps between the thoughts of Zaitsev and Thorvald as they struggle, in their final battle, to put the crosshairs on each other's head. A war novel that reveals the shrewd savagery in human nature, War of the Rats vividly reveals why the Germans referred to the fighting at Stalingrad as Der Rattenkrieg. --James Highfill
From Publishers Weekly
Set in the rubble of Stalingrad during WWII, Robbins's second novel hinges on a dramatic mano a mano confrontation between a Russian sniper and his German counterpart during a pivotal stretch of the historic 1942 siege. Vasily Zaitsev is "The Hare," a hunter from the Ural Mountains with deadly skills as a chief master sergeant in the Red Army. His proficiency as a marksman attracts considerable attention from both sides, starting when his Russian bosses put him in charge of a "sniper school" to supplement the front-line soldiers. Zaitsev and his students have so much success against the Nazis that the Germans deploy a master sniper of their own, SS Colonel Heinz Thorvald (aka "The Headmaster"), to assassinate Zaitsev and turn the tide in the battle for Stalingrad. The beleaguered city itself becomes a character in the struggle as Zaitsev and Thorvald attempt to outmaneuver one another. Stalingrad also harbors a pair of lovers, as Zaitsev conducts a passionate affair with fellow sniper Tania Chernova, the headstrong daughter of New York-dwelling Russian immigrants. Tania joins the fight for Russia after she travels to Minsk in hopes of rescuing her grandparents, only to watch them die at the hands of the Germans. Robbins does a brilliant job of dissecting the unique mindset and steely emotions that snipers must possess and painting the battle scenes, but none of the primary characters escapes war novel clich?s. The final confrontation takes a while to play out, but once Robbins (Souls to Keep) gets to the heart of the matter, he presents a riveting account of a battle within a battle, and the sniper motif proves an ideal vehicle to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of both sides. Agent, Marcy Posner. (July) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
David L. Robbins was born in Richmond, Virginia, on March 10, 1954. He grew up in Sandston, a small town east of Richmond out by the airport. His father was among the first to sit behind the new radar screens in the air traffic control tower. Both his parents, Sam and Carol, were veterans of WWII. Sam saw action in the Pacific, especially at Pearl Harbor.
In 1976, David graduated from the College of William & Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia, with a B.A. in Theater and Speech. He didn't know what to do for a living, having little real theatrical talents, so he decided to attend what he calls the "great catch-basin of unfocused over-achievers": law school. He received his Juris Doctorate at William and Mary in 1980. Robbins practiced environmental law in Columbia, S.C. for a year to the day (his father demanded back the money for law school if David practiced less than one year - he quit two weeks before the anniversary but got Sam to agree that two weeks of accumulated vacation could be included) before turning his energy to a career as a freelance writer in 1981. He began writing fiction in 1990.
Robbins has published nine novels: Souls To Keep, a cosmic love story (published by HarperCollins in 1998); War Of The Rats, set during the battle of Stalingrad (published by Bantam in 1999; the basis for the movie Enemy At The Gates); The End of War, about the fall of Berlin at the end of WWII (Bantam in 2000); Scorched Earth, placed in the American South, about a church burning and contemporary racism (Bantam, 2002); Last Citadel, set during the great tank battle of Kursk on the Eastern Front of WWII (Bantam, 2003), Liberation Road, a tale of the battle for France in WWII told through the perspectives of two minorities in the U.S. Army, a black truck driver and a rabbi chaplain (Bantam, 2005) The Assassins Gallery, (Bantam, 2006,) an alternate history political thriller supposing the assassination of FDR in 1945, and The Betrayal Game, a sequel to The Assassins Gallery revolving around the events of the Bay Of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 and the CIA's many attempts to kill Fidel Castro. His latest novel, Broken Jewel (Simon & Schuster, 2009) is set in the Philippines in early 1945, at the Los Baños internment camp. The novel involves the rescue of 2100 Americans before their execution by the Japanese, and the story of a Filipina "comfort woman." Broken Jewel was described by Kirkus (starred review) as "...a remarkable story, brilliantly told."
The audio version of War Of The Rats was nominated for an Audie, as one of the top three unabridged novels of 2000. Likewise, the audio of Last Citadel was named one of Library Journal's top 3 recordings of 2005. His books have appeared on the NY Times Bestseller list, and been published in sixteen languages. For his wartime novels, David has been referred to by Kirkus as "the Homer of World War II."
Robbins resides in Richmond, Virginia. He is an accomplished guitarist, playing blues for years, but now he studies Latin classical. At six feet six inches tall, he stays active with his sailboat, shooting sporting clays, weightlifting, and traveling to research his novels. He is a founding co-chair of the James River Writers, a non-profit organization in his hometown of Richmond that helps aspiring writers and students work and learn together as a writing community. He has taught at Virginia Commonwealth, and as writer-in-residence at his alma mater, the College of William and Mary. Currently, he is the chairman and co-founder of the non-profit Podium Foundation, an organization which has created a literary journal, arts website, and several literacy programs for Richmond Public High School students (PodiumFoundation.com). His website address is Davidlrobbins.com.
I was expecting somewhat more from this novel than it delivered. The setting was excellent, and I have no problem with the "pro-Russian" slant which offended some other readers -- it was, after all, written from the Russian protagonists' perspective. Keeping in mind the Commissars' propagandic exploitation of Soviet heroes, I found the "noble" portrayals of the Red Army appropriate and realistic. Some of the technical discrepancies were distracting, but in general not enough to ruin it for this reader. It's a novel, after all, a fictionalized account of real historical events and people. (Zaitsev's training of his "hares" is well-documented, although it's questionable whether the "famous" duel ever actually occurred.) What damages the book, in my opinion, is the sappy love-story. It really detracts from the gritty realism of the Battle of Stalingrad. I'm glad the character of Tanya was included, since many female combatants fought and died for their Motherland. I wish she had been written as the Ukrainian upon whom her character was based; maybe the author felt that an American presence was needed to "connect" his American readers to a Soviet conflict. But the "hot-to-trot" seductiveness of Tanya dishonors the sacrifices of Zaitsev's real women snipers, who had no time for bed-hopping antics. And the "romantic" scenes were simply unbelievable -- (lovemaking after crawling through the muck of a sewer? after lying in wait for hours in the freezing snow?)-- and so excruciatingly clumsily written that this reader was actually embarrassed for the characters. Moreover, the sexual situations undermine the real Tanya's war record: she was already a partisan and sniper before meeting Zaitsev, and scored some 81 kills in avenging her family. (For more accurate depiction of the contributions of Soviet women to the Great Patriotic War, read "On the Road to Stalingrad", K.J. Kottam's translation of the memoirs of a woman machine-gunner; or "Night Witches", Bruce Myle's story of Soviet female combat-aviators.) The romantic interludes also degrade the characterization of Vasya Zaitsev, the sniper. Here is a real-life person and a legendary hunt in an embattled city, which hold fascination aplenty, with no need for superfluous embellishment. Overall, I enjoyed the book because of my interest in the War on the Eastern Front, my love for Russia and her people, and my appreciation for the exploits of Vasiliy Zaitsev. I wish the author had paid a little more attention to the details of battle and a little less to the "matters of the heart". What could have been an extraordinary, exciting read was ultimately reduced to entertaining fluff. This is a good book with which to occupy your time during a 12-hour airflight.
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WAR OF THE RATS is a superb novel of combat. Combat in a theater of World War II that most Americans, dismally familiar only with the fighting role of the US in the Pacific and Europe, know little about - the Russian Front. Specifically, in this book, the Battle of Stalingrad at the end of 1942.
Chief Master Sergeant Vasily Zaitsev ("The Hare") is an expert sniper in the 62nd Army, that force of the Red Army desperately maintaining a toehold in Stalingrad, under siege by the German 6th Army. Zaitsev is so good at his job that he is ordered to establish a sniper school. One of his students is Tania Chernova, an American woman of Russian descent fighting to avenge the execution of her grandparents at the hands of the Nazis. The graduates of The Hare's training become so proficient at killing Germans that the morale of the 6th Army's front-line troops is seriously threatened. Zaitsev becomes a Red Army hero and a winner of the Order of Lenin. As a counter, the Reich's most expert sniper, SS Colonel Heinz Thorvald ("The Headmaster"), is flown from Germany into the Stalingrad battle. His orders - to find and kill The Hare.
There is no superlative too extravagant to describe this book. At 470 pages in paperback, I absorbed it at one sitting on a flight from Washington, DC to Los Angeles. Zaitsev, Chernova and Thorvald were all actual combatants in Stalingrad. Their roles, as well as the movements of both the German and Russian forces in the battle as a whole, are facts lifted from historical sources researched by the author, David Robbins. The insight Robbins gives the reader into the skills and training of the military sniper is absolutely riveting. The action is gritty and realistic. The characters are finely drawn.
One measure of a novel's excellence is its ability to inspire the reader to delve further into the subject. I've just added to my Amazon.com Wish List a history of the Stalingrad siege.
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 starsA compelling story of life and death, love and hate., August 13, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: War Of The Rats (Hardcover)
Set in the hell of the Battle of Stalingrad, Mr. Robbins give us a novel that poignantly explores what it means to preserve one's humanity in a bitter struggle for survival. Not a simple "war story" or a Tom Clancy-like obsession with the technical details of warfare--although plenty abound in this book--"The War of the Rats" vividly confronts us with real people caught up in a desparate effort to cling to life and love. Robbins brings us an intimate portrait of the human condition set against the broader canvas of the devastation of war at its most brutal . His characters are real; the narrative is gripping; and the satisfaction one feels on reading the book is immense. Robbins brings home, through the device of a sniper duel between the master snipers of the Red Army and the SS, what Stalingrad meant to those who fought the battles and bled and died in the greatest single confrontation of World War II. Despite whatever minor technical flaws one may find in the novel, Robbins is a master of his craft. His achievement will be come a classic of the genre alongside "The Red Badge of Courage" and "All Quiet on the Western Front."
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First Sentence:
NIKKI MOND LOOKED OUT OF THE TRENCH INTO a smeared gray dawn. Read the first pageKey Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
shooting cell, railroad mound, master sniper, little sniper, sniper unit, comrade commissar, sniper school, chief master sergeant, trench floor, jumping man, two snipers, chest shot
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Red Army, Mamayev Kurgan, Red October, Sixth Army, Tractor Factory, Comrade Zaitsev, New York, Vasily Zaitsev, Pavlov's House, Viktor Medvedev, Sixty-second Army, Atai Chebibulin, Colonel Thorvald, Heinz Thorvald, Nikolay Kulikov, Christmas Eve, General Chuikov, Lieutenant Ostarhild, Ninth of January Square, Sergeant Medvedev, Fortress Stalingrad, Order of Lenin, Comrade Stalin, Solechnaya Street, Soviet Union
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