Stalingrad in the Second World War has become a by-word for misplaced military endeavour - and courage, endurance, heroism beyond all human belief. Joachim Wieder survived the German collapse, and the subsequent years in Soviet captivity, to write his memoir of the battle in 1962. It was no routine account; he found it necessary to re-examine what motives drove the Germans on in the face of hopeless odds, why orders were issued that could only lead to certain death, the lies promulgated by high command, the whole morass of unjustified and pointless conflict. This is an absorbing evaluation of war, revised in 1993 in the light of later information on the battle, and available now in English for the first time. It was the first German book on Stalingrad to be published in the Soviet Union.