Later chapters of MacGregor’s book benefit hugely from the previously unpublished memoirs, diaries, and letters of German Major General Friedrich Roske. They provide an excellent insight into the truly dire situation the Wehrmacht faced that Christmas, taking refuge in their dugouts as loudspeakers set up by the Soviets taunted them about their looming defeat. Within this life-and-death struggle for the heart of the city and situated on the frontline was a key strategic building, codenamed: 'The Lighthouse'. Here, a small garrison of Red Army guardsmen withstood German aerial bombardments and fought off daily assaults of infantry and armour. Red Army newspaper reports at the time would be seized upon by the Moscow media needing to place a positive spin on the fighting that had at one point looked beyond salvation. By the end of the war, the story of this building would gather further momentum to inspire Russians to rebuild their destroyed towns and cities until it became the legend it is today, renamed after the simple sergeant who had supposedly led the defence - 'Pavlov's House'.

Splendid. . . . MacGregor writes with great fluency and narrative drive, and his account of the context to the battle and the complexity of its fraught swings of fortune and misfortune is compellingly terse." — New Statesman (UK)MacGregor retells [this story] with impressive skill and relish . . . closely researched and enormously engaging." — Sunday Times (UK) Within this life-and-death struggle, Soviet war correspondents lauded the fight for a key strategic building in the heart of the city, “Pavlov’s House,” which was situated on the frontline and codenamed “The Lighthouse.” The legend grew of a small garrison of Russian soldiers from the 13th Guards Rifle Division holding out against the Germans of the Sixth Army, which had battled its way to the very center of Stalingrad. A report about the battle in a local Red Army newspaper would soon grow and be repeated on Moscow radio and in countless national newspapers. By the end of the war, the legend would gather further momentum and inspire Russians to rebuild their destroyed towns and cities.

The story, particularly of the Lighthouse, shows us just how tenaciously a people will fight when their land, and indeed their homes, are being overrun by a foreign aggressor. As MacGregor pointedly reminds us, it is a lesson that at least one of Stalin’s successors appears to have forgotten. REVIEW BY CALUM HENDERSON The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: the hidden truth at the centre of WWII’s greatest battle Stunning. History at its very best: a blend of impeccably researched scholarship, genuinely revelatory primary sources, and a beautifully written narrative’– James HollandThe Kremlin had signed his public obituary celebrating his military and political deeds, with First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, though himself too ill to attend the funeral, sending his key men from the Central Committee to pay homage alongside local Volgograd Party dignitaries. As the easterly breeze cut through the gathering crowd waiting along the banks of the river, some sitting in trees and atop parked buses to get the best view, the most senior men in the Soviet Union had flown in from Moscow, and now they stood solemnly next to Chuikov’s coffin, lying in state in the Central House of the Soviet Army on Suvorovskaya Square. The head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, gazed past Chuikov’s family and the honor guard around his coffin, toward the double-fronted glass doors. The crowd was pressing toward the entrance to get a better look. Next to him stood Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, lost in his thoughts. Representing the Soviet Armed Forces was the defense minister Dimitry Ustinov, who amiably talked to the younger man on his right, a rising star of the Party, recently elevated to secretary of the Central Committee—Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. However, MacGregor’s real coup is not so much the exposure of the propaganda-myth of “Pavlov’s House” but the access he was given to the unpublished letters and memoirs of a German officer who was present at the battle from its inception to its end. Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Roske is almost a Wehrmacht Officer from central casting. Cultured, intelligent, an able and dedicated soldier, his observations on Stalingrad add first-person authenticity to the familiar history of the battle. Furthermore, he officiated at the surrender of General Paulus, and his meticulous observations of the process are superbly and uniquely detailed. It was this appalling pile-up of corpses that began to chill spines throughout the German High Command. Paulus watched in horror as his best men were cut down and replaced by rookies – easy prey for the Soviet snipers, who were themselves the subject of much mythologising in the months and years to come. What few civilians were left in Stalingrad hunkered down with their occupiers for the winter. Neither had any food. As one Valentina Savelyeva, then just five, remembered, ‘we ate clay and nothing but clay… my mother would throw away the bits that were soaked in blood.’ The only source of water was the scorched Volga.

Brezhnev had long admired Chuikov, the “Legendary One.” While he himself had made his way up the ladder during the Great Patriotic War as a political commissar, it had not stopped him from inflating his own contribution to the war effort, awarding himself the military honors that commanders such as Chuikov had spilled blood for. Both men had endured an uneasy relationship with Brezhnev’s predecessor as first secretary—Nikita Khrushchev. Brezhnev respected Chuikov’s bluntness, and laughed at the way he had publicly questioned where Khrushchev had been during the fighting in Stalingrad. 12 And more important, Brezhnev had counted on his support when the time came to oust the erratic leader and take control of the Central Committee himself in 1962. He owed Chuikov. Roske himself played an important role in the surrender of the Sixth Army at the end of January. He was subsequently imprisoned for 12 years, returning to West Germany in 1955 – before killing himself the following year. His boss, Paulus, famously refused to commit suicide after Hitler disingenuously promoted him to Field Marshal. He too was captured and became something of a Soviet propagandist for the remainder of the war. It very nearly worked. With their path cleared by the merciless aerial bombing of Generaloberst Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen (cousin of the Red Baron), Army Group B, the bulk of which was formed by the German Sixth Army, commanded by Friedrich Paulus, reached deep into the city – as far as the banks of the Volga – by early September. Key landmarks, such as the State Bank, the Univermag Department Store, and one of the city’s main railway stations, fell into German hands. Soon, it was joked, the Berlin to Stalingrad express would be up and running. Toe holdAn enthralling and insightful look into the most decisive battle of the Second World War - The Lighthouse of Stalingrad sheds new light on the heroic work of those who fought and died as we mark its 80th anniversary.