The third volume in Nik Cornish's photographic history of the Second World War on the Eastern Front records in vivid visual detail the sequence of Red Army offensives that pushed the Wehrmacht back across Russia after the failure of the Operation Citadel, the German attack at Kursk. Previously unpublished images show the epic scale of the build-up to the Kursk battle and the enormous cost in terms of lives and material of the battle itself. They also show that the military initiative was now firmly in Soviet hands, for the balance of power on the Eastern Front had shifted and the Germans were on the defensive and in retreat. Subsequent chapters chronicle the hard-fought and bloody German withdrawal across western Russia and the Ukraine, recording the Red Army's liberation of occupied Soviet territory. Not only do the photographs track the sequence of events on the ground, they also show the equipment and the weapons used by both sides, the living conditions experienced by the troops and the devastation the war left in its wake.

The Soviet victory over the Germans at Stalingrad was decisive for the war on the Eastern Front and for the Second World War as a whole, and the story of the long, bitter battle on the banks of the Volga has fascinated historians ever since. While it has been the subject of countless histories, memoirs and eyewitness accounts, the gruelling reality of the battle on the ground, in the shattered streets and buildings of the city, has rarely been recorded photographically. And this is the great strength of Nik Cornish's selection of unforgettable images. He documents every aspect of the fighting - the dreadful conditions endured by the soldiers, the jagged outline of the ruined city, the harrowing daily routine of street fighting and close-quarter combat, the casualties and the dead, and the battle behind the lines - the tremendous effort made by the Germans and the Soviets to sustain their men in what had become a fight to the death. But perhaps most memorable of all, the photographs give us glimpses of the lives and deaths of soldiers on both sides who participated in one of the most terrible battles in history.

Imperial Russia's massive, if finally fatal contribution to the Allied war effort of 1914-17 involved huge numbers of men and some of the greatest battles of the war. The defeat at Tannenburg in 1914, and Brusilov's successful 1916 offensive against the Austro-Hungarians, were major events which had far-reaching effects on the Western fronts; and the attempts to keep the war effort going after the fall of the Tsar greatly influenced the course of the Bolshevik Revolution. This volume provides illustrated detail on the range of varied and colourful uniforms worn by the troops who played central roles in these events, many of which appear exotic to western eyes.

The partisan war in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944 has been the subject of considerable political manipulation in the decades following 1945. In great part this was due to the need to project the image of a country united behind Joseph Stalin and the Communist regime when the truth was much more complex than that. The opening weeks of Operation Barbarossa had exposed the lack of unity in the Soviet Empire as nationalist and anti-Communist groups emerged in the western provinces such as Belo Russia, Galicia, Bukovina, Ukraine and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Consequently it was vital for the survival of the Soviet Union that such groups were countered in situ and that the authority of Moscow was maintained in what were known as the Occupied Territories. During the summer of 1941 plans, dormant since the 1930s, for the conduct of partisan warfare behind the lines of an invading force were resurrected. The plans were intended to make life for the invaders as problematic as possible by acts of sabotage, but most important of all to maintain the physical presence of Soviet authority.