Part 5 in the eight-part series Grand Strategy of World War II
Presented by Michael Howard

Summer 1942. Adolf Hitler still believes in total victory. From now on he takes personal control of the German Army and sets up another attack on the Russian front.
This is meant to be the final crushing blow-but Hitler gets it wrong and at Stalingrad a battle develops which is to last four months. The Russians - soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians with their backs to the Volga - resist in house-to-house, room-to-room, hand-to-hand fighting.
Then they counter-attack and the Germans are surrounded. It is the beginning of the end for the Third Reich.
Tonight Michael Howard analyses the build-up and the conduct of the Battle of Stalingrad, and the even more vital Russian victory in the massive tank battle at Kursk.
('When victory came we didn't really notice it': pages 8-9)