'Breakout at Stalingrad' earns its place beside classics of war literature

The original version of an autobiographical novel written by a German soldier, and recently discovered in Soviet archives, offers a unique perspective of the epic World War II siege from the soldiers

For the most part, the English-reading World War II buff depended on books from writers on the Allied side, mostly British and American. A few German accounts were available in translation — generals’ memoirs, Albert Speer’s self-serving mea culpa, Joseph Goebbels’ diaries and the turgid Mein Kampf, among others. Revelatory books like Twilight of the Gods (2004) and We Will Not Go to Tuapse (2016), both from SS volunteers on the Eastern Front, came to English-language readers only recently.
 
Breakout at Stalingrad, published this January, is another offering from an Eastern Front veteran but it is not, strictly speaking,