In June of 1941, two years after signing a on-Aggression Pact, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Within six months, the Russians lost a thousand miles and three million men—and in, 1942, the relentless German Wehrmacht swept into Stalin’s namesake city, Stalingrad. Combat seethed in the city streets, ten thousand Soviet soldiers died in one day fighting for a single hill. Now, in mid-September 1942, Hitler orders a final offensive’ to capture Stalingrad. Yet on October 7th, the German army pauses. As General von Richthofen, commander of the Luftwaffe, writes in his diary: “Absolute quiet at Stalingrad.” After months of combat, a sudden silence rises on the eastern front. But why?