During the bitter winter of 1942/3 the German army was encircled far to the east in Stalingrad by overwhelming Russian forces. With reinforfements beaten back and failing air supplies, they surrendered in February 1943. They fought to the last few men, rather than the last man as ordered by Hitler. This defeat was a turning point of the Second World War.
My grandfather learnt years later from eye witness accounts that his son was one of those few in the last pocket of German resistance before final surrender. He liked to believe that his son would have broken out and escaped imprisonment in Russia, but most of the final few simply vanished.
I was inspired by this family history, together with my experiences during business trips in Siberia, to imagine what would have happened to some of those young German men who reached the Gulag.
Beyond Stalingrad is not a true story, but I hope it serves to illuminate a truth of what really did happen to some young lives, blown like leaves in a gale.
