THE BATTLE FOR STALINGRAD

Subtitled ""The Story of the Battle for Stalingrad"", this is a volume of war memoirs which should carry more weight than most; the author is present Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Land Forces and a member of the Communist Party's Central Committee. The book proper does comprise a convincing, if somewhat stiff, account of that tremendously valiant, costly, and crucial victory. But it is in the approach, and also in a lengthy, vehement postscript, that American readers should find themselves most interested. Denouncing all ""reactionary bourgeois falsifiers of history"" every step of his way, Chuikov has set out to prove, or else ram down his readers' throats, two related ideas: that Russia defeated Hitler, not merely with her weather and great fanatic waves of ill-equipped troops, but with superior military skill and intelligent courage; secondly, that ""the principal military events"" of World War II ""took place on the Soviet-German front"", not in western Europe and the Pacific. That the author can, for example, shout lustily about the ""treachery"" of Munich and totally ignore the Hitler-Stalin Pact does not invalidate his argument; but certainly such tactics aren't conducive to fruitful debate.