Stalingrad

In October 1942, a Panzer officer wrote 'Stalingrad is no longer a town... Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure'.

As Antony Beevor famously shows, the battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front. The citizens of Stalingrad endured unimaginable hardship; the battle, meanwhile, was brutally destructive to both armies. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, was the first defeat of Hitler's territorial ambitions in Europe, and the start of his decline and fall.

Exhaustively researched and incorporating eyewitness accounts, soldiers' letters and other archival documents, Beevor tells an extraordinary story of civilian bravery, tactical genius and carnage, providing a powerfully humane account of one of the bloodiest battles in history.