Stalingrad Battle Atlas: Volume I

"Flames reached hundreds meters high, buildings collapsed and steel melted down: it seemed everything would be destroyed in this inferno, yet men kept on fighting."
This depiction by Major-General Aleksandr Rodimtsev, 13th Guards Division Commander, refers to the first German assault in the city on 14 September 1942. The fighting in Stalingrad indeed presented exceptional features. There eventually converged the essentials of the war in the East, not only a clash of armies and ruthless ideologies but also one of civilizations, where the invaders were not seeking to conquer another vassal state but to erase an entire culture from the face of the world.

Seventy years after, the release of new material from the Soviet archives finally allows to contemplate a detailed, exact study of the conflict, including new outstanding opportunites for mapping each single day of this terrible struggle.

This first volume of the Stalingrad Battle Atlas series covers 30 days of combat within the city. Built upon the latest disclosed archival data, it addresses strategic and tactical levels and features entirely new maps for each day of active operations during this period. Synthesizing a wide range of documents and sources, this chronological atlas seeks to reach the maximal degree of precision in describing historical reality, rendering it through a standardized set of instruments: timeline, order of battle, unit strength returns, situation maps, contextual photos, quotes from key actors. It can be used as a reference manual for searchers, as well as a guide for those who want to know the basics: Who, When, Where.

In 2015 the Russian Federal Archive Agency, in cooperation with the Ministry of Defense, the Russian Historical Society and the German Historical Institute in Moscow publically released €œBestand-500€, a large archival fund of seized German records from the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the Oberkommando des Heeres and Heeresgruppe B. This new edition of the Stalingrad Battle Atlas series thus benefits from the most substantial set of available wartime documents.

Main features:

o Order of Battle & Strength Returns
o Tactical & Strategic Maps
o Unit Positions with daily updates

A new perspective of the legendary battle on the Volga