Retreat From Moscow

A gripping and authoritative revisionist account of the German Winter Campaign of 1941–1942 Germany’s winter campaign of 1941–1942 is commonly seen as its first defeat. In Retreat from Moscow, a bold, gripping account of one of the seminal moments of World War II, David Stahel argues that instead it was its first strategic success in the East. The Soviet counteroffensive was in fact a Pyrrhic victory. Despite being pushed back from Moscow, the Wehrmacht lost far fewer men, frustrated its enemy’s strategy, and emerged in the spring unbroken and poised to recapture the initiative. Hitler’s strategic plan called for holding important Russian industrial cities, and the German army succeeded. The Soviets as of January 1942 aimed for nothing less than the destruction of Army Group Center, yet not a single German unit was ever destroyed. Lacking the professionalism, training, and experience of the Wehrmacht, the Red Army’s offensive attempting to break German lines in countless head-on assaults led to far more tactical defeats than victories. Using accounts from journals, memoirs, and wartime correspondence, Stahel takes us directly into the Wolf’s Lair to reveal a German command at war with itself as generals on the ground fought to maintain order and save their troops in the face of Hitler’s capricious, increasingly irrational directives. Excerpts from soldiers’ diaries and letters home paint a rich portrait of life and death on the front, where the men of the Ostheer battled frostbite nearly as deadly as Soviet artillery. With this latest installment of his pathbreaking series on the Eastern Front, David Stahel completes a military history of the highest order.

How well do we know the people we marry? Is it wrong to decide it’s time to be honest? Is love enough to save a family? In The Retreat from Moscow, William Nicholson, the celebrated author of Shadowlands, tells the powerful story of a husband who decides to be truthful in his marriage, and of the wife and son whose lives will never be the same again. Edward and Alice have been married for thirty-three years. He is a teacher at a boys school, perfectly at home with his daily crossword and lately engrossed in reading about Napoleon’s costly invasion of Moscow. She is an observant Catholic, exacting and opinionated, and has been collecting poems about lost love for a new anthology. Jamie, their diffident thirty-two year old son, is visiting for the weekend when Edward announces he has met another woman. With the coiled intensity of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing and the embracing empathy of Edward Albee’s best family dramas, The Retreat from Moscow shines a breathtakingly natural light on the fallout of a shattered marriage.

This account of Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia, in the words of those who experienced it, offers “a brilliant insight into men at war” (David G. Chandler, author of The Campaigns of Napoleon). Hundreds of thousands of men set out on that midsummer day of 1812. None could have imagined the terrors and hardships to come. They’d been lured all the way to Moscow without having achieved the decisive battle Napoleon sought—and by the time they reached the city, their numbers had already dwindled by more than a third. One of the greatest disasters in military history was in the making. The fruit of more than twenty years of research, this superbly crafted work skillfully blends the memoirs and diaries of more than a hundred eyewitnesses, all of whom took part in the Grand Army’s doomed march on Moscow, to reveal the inside story of this landmark military campaign. The result is a uniquely authentic account in which the reader sees and experiences the campaign through the eyes of participants in enthralling day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour detail.

Unlike most novels about Napoleonic wars, Henty gives a vivid picture of the horrors of war, sufferings of people who take part in the battles at the extreme weather conditions, whether it is a severe Russian winter or a burning heat of the Sahara Desert. Thus, a reader gets to know the real price of victory and defeat. "Through the Russian Snows" gives a detailed account of the battles near Smolensk and Borodino. Yet, the reader is entertained by surprising plot curves and a happy ending with a taste of bitter engrossment. The story tells about two separated brothers who meet at the battlefield. One of them, an English gentleman imprisoned in France, was offered to join the army in the war against Moscow in exchange for freedom. The other brother was sent to Russia with the allied army to fight against Napoleon's troops. "At Aboukir and Acre" tells about the defense of the two Egyptian cities from an unexpected viewpoint. The main character saves the life of the son of the Arab chief and joins the tribe to help them fight against the French army. Both stories are far from the beaten path and will be attractive to anyone seeking an objective picture of the epoch.

Adam Zamoyski’s bestselling account of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and his catastrophic retreat from Moscow, events that had a profound effect on European history.

As soon as Napoleon and his Grand Army entered Moscow, on 14 September 1812, the capital erupted in flames that eventually engulfed and destroyed two thirds of the city. The fiery devastation had a profound effect on the Grand Army, but for thirty-five days Napoleon stayed, making increasingly desperate efforts to achieve peace with Russia. Then, in October, almost surrounded by the Russians and with winter fast approaching, he abandoned the capital and embarked on the long, bitter retreat that destroyed his army. The month-long stay in Moscow was a pivotal moment in the war of 1812 the moment when the initiative swung towards the Tsar's armies and spelled doom for the invading Grand Army yet it has rarely been studied in the same depth as the other key events of the campaign.Alexander Mikaberidze, in this third volume of his in-depth reassessment of the war between the French and Russian empires, emphasizes the importance of the Moscow fire and shows how Russian intransigence sealed the fate of the French army. He uses a vast array of French, German, Polish and Russian memoirs, letters and diaries as well as archival material in order to tell the dramatic story of the Moscow fire. Not only does he provide a comprehensive account of events, looking at them from both the French and Russian points of view, but he explores the Russians' motives for leaving, then burning their capital. Using extensive eyewitness accounts, he paints a vivid picture of the harsh reality of life in the remains of the occupied city and describes military operations around Moscow at this turning point in the campaign.

From the author of The Battle: A novel that brings French history to life as Napoleon moves in on Russia—where the ultimate test awaits. The French army stands at the gates of Moscow. Exhausted and demoralized, Napoleon’s men are a mere fraction of the four-hundred-thousand-strong force that crossed the river Niemen in the summer, just three months earlier. Still, the sight of this famous city feels like a triumph and a chance, at last, to enjoy a conqueror’s spoils. The emperor expects to be met by city elders bearing tokens of surrender, but no one appears—Moscow has been evacuated. Napoleon, oblivious to the predicament before him, sends to Paris for comic novels and imagines that it is only a matter of time before Tsar Alexander sues for peace . . . In a novel that “brings a keen immediacy to the harrowing events” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), what follows is a waiting game—and, ultimately, a decision—that will brutally test the survival of twenty thousand soldiers and the resolve of a man hell-bent on power.