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.

'Captivating . . . Jingoistic statues never pay a proper tribute to the dead, but honest books, like this one, certainly do' Vitali Vitaliev, Guardian 'Antony Beevor gained access to the unplumbed records, and he reveals the full awfulness and human cost of the conflict with scholarly verve and deep sympathy. The pity of war has seldom been rendered so well' Ben Macintyre