In October 1942, a panzer officer wrote `Stalingrad is no longer a 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.