On 23 August 1942, 330,000 men of the German Sixth Army broke through Soviet defences outside the city of Stalingrad. It seemed as if nothing could prevent the fall of the city. Yet two months later, the Germans were locked in a deadly battle of attrition amid a wasteland of human carnage and pulverised rubble. Their offensive, which would become known as the ‘Rat War’, had become a murderous close-contact struggle.

We reveal how Hitler’s master plan to undermine the Soviet Union ground to a halt in the shattered ruins of Stalingrad. We combine extraordinary aerial reconnaissance photographs taken during the course of the battle with the latest in computer technology to create a three dimensional model of the city. Forgotten for over sixty years, these unique aerial images have been unearthed in the recently reopened archives of the former Soviet Union. The decisive battle of the Eastern Front can now be seen unfolding step by bloody step.

As the centrepiece of his Eastern strategy, Hitler ordered his armies to strike south in order to seize the vital oilfields of the Caucasus region. In order to do this, they needed to capture Stalingrad and secure their northern flank. When the Panzers reached the city on the river Volga, they were on the border of Asia itself.

However, for more than a hundred gruesome days, the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad made the German Sixth Army pay in blood for every inch of ground they won. The fast-moving tank columns of the Blitzkrieg were replaced been by savage hand to hand combat in a maze of ruined factories, shops and apartment blocks.

Outnumbered and outgunned, the men of the Red Army suffered appalling losses. However, by clinging to their positions they were able to draw the Germans into a fatal trap. As the Arctic conditions of the Russian winter paralysed German supply lines, Stalin unleashed an overwhelming counterattack which completely encircled the doomed Sixth Army.

With archive film, dramatic re-enactments and powerful eye witness testimony from both Russian and German veterans, we recount the incredible story of an epic battle which altered the entire course of World War Two.