On 2 February 1943, having been defeated at Stalingrad and surrounded by the Russian Army, 91,000 starved and exhausted soldiers of the German Sixth Army finally surrendered. By 1945 only 6,000 of these were still alive - and only a handful ever returned from Russia. Heinrich Gerlach was one of the survivors. From the moment of surrender he began to collect the personal stories of hundreds of his fellow prisoners: everyone from generals to veteran infantrymen to boys who had only just left the Hitler Youth. The result is a horrifying and uniquely authentic novel about the battle of Stalingrad, describing in detail one of the defining events of the twentieth century.