Hitler thought he could conquer the city named after Stalin. Stalin issued a proclamation that anyone who surrendered, or retreated, would be shot.

The lives of ordinary people, trapped in the middle of this tyrannical quest, were reduced to unimaginable horror. Most people died. Those who survived were sustained by little more than the human will to live. That they lived at all is astonishing. Their haunting stories are at once pathetic and terrifying.

Out of the city’s rubble emerged a "Hero of the Soviet Union." His name was Vasily Zaitsev. This is his story.