In June 1941, the jaws of the German war machine clamped onto the Soviet Union, with German soldiers - the Third Reich's teeth - slicing through the Red Army, encircling and killing and capturing. Before the end of the year, the Red Army halted the German blitzkrieg and saved the Soviet Union. It was a defining moment of World War II and a defining moment of military history - a defining moment of what it meant to go to war in the twentieth century, with an army designed to devastate, to kill, to enslave butting heads with an army decapitated by Stalin's purges. For the next six months, German armies fought toward Moscow but ultimately failed to seize that objective, from the Black Sea in the south to Leningrad in the north. More than just a pivotal moment of World War II, more than just the beginning of the Eastern Front, the campaign toward Moscow - Germans versus Soviets in a no-holds-barred battle for the soul of Europe - speaks to what it meant to be a soldier in World War II. (Far more soldiers, German and Russian, fought and died on the Eastern Front than the entire U.S. war effort.) In a book drawing from hundreds of soldiers' accounts, and thousands of letter and diaries, Stahel and Luther tell the story of Operation Barbarossa but also the story of men at war in the twentieth century.

First published in 1957 and out of print for decades, Moscow Tram Stop is a classic of World War II on the Eastern Front. Heinrich Haape was a young doctor drafted into the German Wehrmacht just before the war began. He was with the spearhead of Operation Barbarossa, tasked with taking Moscow, when it invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Mere hours into the attack, Haape and his fellow soldiers learned the hard way that the Red Army fought with otherworldly tenacity even in defeat. The rapid advance of the early days slowed during the summer, and Haape's division did not begin the final push on Moscow until October. It was a hard slog, plagued first by rain and mud, then by cold and snow. By early December, German forces had reached the gates of the Soviet capital but could press no farther. By winter's end, Haape's battalion of 800 had been reduced to a mere 28 soldiers. The doctor's account is enthrallingly vivid. The drama and excitement never slacken as Haape recounts his experiences from the unique perspective of a doctor, who often had to join in the fighting himself and witnessed the physical and psychological toll of combat.