**'[An] arresting and deeply researched new book' The New Yorker'Essential reading . . . Hellbeck masterfully explains what made World War II on the Eastern front so destructive and why this matters today. A tour de force' Paul Hanebrink, author of A Specter Haunting EuropeIn the Nazi imagination, the USSR was the most powerful Jewish organization in the world. They called it ‘World Enemy No. 1’.**The shocking number of Soviet citizens who lost the...

We are, once again, a world at war. Geopolitical elites are deploying the implacable forces of ethnocentric hatred and religious nationalism; ordinary people are paying a fearful price. Not for the first time: this has been the characteristic pattern of war for more than a century. Every selection in this anthology (except for the timeless Aeneid) casts light on modern war, observed or directly experienced. Most are grounded in particular places—Stalingrad, Halberstadt, Budapest, ...