Secrets of the Dead

Deadliest Battle

Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was the largest troop offensive in military history. And the Battle of Stalingrad is arguably the deadliest single battle the world has ever seen. The eventual Russian victory has long been lauded as a shining example of Stalin's military genius. He is said to have baited a much more powerful and technologically advanced German army with a carefully executed withdrawal, then caught the Nazis unprepared in a vicious city-block-by-city-block counterattack that decimated the German forces. By the time the battle was over, more than 1 million lives had been lost and the course of the war had been permanently altered. But 70 years after the battle was fought, newly uncovered documents, survivor accounts, and stunning archival footage are revealing a very different picture of a forced retreat, not a tactical one, and of fiercer fighting in the countryside that has previously been suggested. Secrets of the Dead: Deadliest Battle tells the true story of the battle that turned World War II, and established the Soviet Union as a world superpower for the looming Cold War.