Antony Beevor's Stalingrad is a harrowing look at one of history's darkest
moments. 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'. 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, with fierce
hand-to-hand fighting in each room of each building, 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. An extraordinary story of
tactical genius, civilian bravery, obsession, carnage and the nature of war
itself, Stalingrad will act as a testament to the vital role of the soviet war
effort.