But as the days turned into weeks, the mood of these starving, exhausted, diseased and demoralised men changed. If the early letters home were defiant, the last ones were desperate. As they prepared to face the final Russian onslaught, a few still clung to the hope their Führer would send help. Hitler acknowledged their plight by abstaining from champagne at dinner.

The author uses unemotive language in his assessments of Hitler and Stalin, but it’s obvious that he thinks both were utter nutters. Before a single Nazi jackboot crossed the Russian frontier, a paranoid Stalin had already done away with the cream of his general staff.

Meanwhile, Hitler’s management skills shouldn’t have got him further than running a bratwurst stall in Mönchengladbach. Certain of a swift victory in the Russian campaign, he refused to provide winter clothing for his own troops. We’re left to contemplate the pride of the Reich going into battle wearing fur coats and woolly hats donated by the German public.

The book concludes with a chapter on the aftermath of the siege, but I could have done with more about Stalingrad beyond the bombing, and something of its pre-battle history.

And yes, I know Stalingrad was primarily about the clash of two armed forces, but surely some of the finer points of military strategy could have been sacrificed for more on the civilians?  A thousand of them, mostly women and children, somehow survived the siege of Stalingrad, and their stories will have been every bit as gripping as those on the front line.

Long before the term was coined, Stalingrad defined “shock and awe”. It was a turning point that saved Stalin’s bacon at home and earned him new respect abroad, with far-reaching consequences for us all. Over a million of the 26 million Soviets killed in the Second World War died at Stalingrad. The staggering scale of the loss gave the Soviet leader an emotional blackmail card to play when it came to dividing up the spoils of war in 1945.

As a battle, Stalingrad left its mark on the world. As a book, Stalingrad had a similar effect on me. Battle-weary and out of ammo, I’ve had to surrender this review and concede defeat. I’ve got post-war fatigue.