The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: The Hidden Truth at the Centre of WWII's Greatest Battle

The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: The Hidden Truth at the Centre of WWII's Greatest Battle
Part of Eastern Front Fortnight (4) on WW2TV
With Iain MacGregor

To the Soviet Union, the sacrifices that enabled the country to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II are sacrosanct. The foundation of the Soviets’ hard-won victory was laid during the battle for the city of Stalingrad, resting on the banks of the river Volga. To Russians it was a pivotal landmark of their nation’s losses, with more than two million civilians and combatants either killed, wounded, or captured during the bitter fighting from September 1942 to February 1943. Both sides endured terrible conditions in brutal, relentless house-to-house fighting.

Within this life-and-death struggle, Soviet war correspondents lauded the fight for a key strategic building in the heart of the city, “Pavlov's House,” which was situated on the frontline and codenamed “The Lighthouse.” The legend grew of a small garrison of Russian soldiers from the 13th Guards Rifle Division holding out against the Germans of the Sixth Army, which had battled its way to the very center of Stalingrad. A report about the battle in a local Red Army newspaper would soon grow and be repeated on Moscow radio and in countless national newspapers. By the end of the war, the legend would gather further momentum and inspire Russians to rebuild their destroyed towns and cities.

This story has become a pillar of the Stalingrad legend and one that can now be analyzed and told accurately. In his book: The Lighthouse of Stalingrad, Iain MacGregor sheds new light on this iconic battle through the prism of the two units who fought for the very heart of the city itself. Iain MacGregor traveled to both German and Russian archives to unearth previously unpublished testimonies by soldiers on both sides of the conflict.

Iain MacGregor has been an editor and publisher of nonfiction for thirty years working with esteemed historians such as Simon Schama, Michael Wood and James Barr. He is himself the author of the acclaimed oral history of Cold War Berlin: Checkpoint Charlie and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Express, as well as the Spectator and BBC History magazines. As a history student he has visited East Germany, the Baltic and the Soviet Union in the early 1980s and has been captivated by modern history ever since. He has published books on every aspect of the Second World War. Iain is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives with his wife and two children in London.
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The Lighthouse of Stalingrad by Iain MacGregor
USA https://bookshop.org/a/21029/97819821...
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