In response to Steve’s Corner bleg on World War II books, I’ll offer up a classic of the genre: Heinz Schroter’s Stalingrad. I read it in paperback as a kid and found it revelatory and fascinating. It covers not just the epic battle itself but the broader strategic maneuverings that led to it and followed it.

The story goes that Schroter, a German veteran of the battle, was ordered to prepare an account of it for publication by the propaganda ministry. When Joseph Goebbels received Schroter’s careful and honest account, he refused to publish it. Only in the late 1950s did the author get it published, first in German and later in English translation.

Perhaps it isn’t the greatest account of Stalingrad or the Eastern Front as a whole. But it is unique — and I admit to a bit of nostaglia about discovering it as a curious kid.

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn‘t point out that today offers another important anniversary in military history: the abandonment of Atlanta by Gen. John B. Hood’s Army of Tennessee in 1864. Hey, I would have left Atlanta, too. The traffic was getting just horrendous.