The Spanish Civil War

I have almost finished "The Battle for Spain" by Antony Beevor. It's been a cracking book. I can now see why the war was such a biggie.

How the Russians managed to beat the Nazis in WWII is beyond me - they were so totally hopeless in Spain, it makes your eyes water. I guess they simply had more troops to throw away, and they threw them away with gusto.

I have also read "Stalingrad" by Beevor. All I need now is a copy of "Berlin". I've read part of it by borrowing a copy from someone else, but I want to read the whole thing now.

Having read Stalingrad, I find it hard to see why some "experts" were saying that the battle for Baghdad was going to be a second Stalingrad. What rubbish. There's all sorts of reasons why the Germans screwed up Stalingrad, and most of them are not to do with street fighting in a major city. Just because Baghdad is also a big city, doesn't mean that the yanks were going to get bogged down in street fighting and lose the war. Yes, it's easy to say that in hindsight, but anyone with half an idea of what happened at Stalingrad could see it was utter crap.

Beevor was out here recently for a writers festival. I wanted to see him speak, but was too sick with the flu to go. Pity. He writes a good book.