To be sure, the German army's failure to defeat Russia in 1941 was a setback of huge proportions. Russia had time on its side, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of troops and tanks, whereas the almost million casualties the Wehrmacht itself had suffered could not be quickly replaced. Still, in summer 1942 Germany was poised to strike the death-blow. The German command was confident that the Wehrmacht's speed, led by its armored Panzer divisions and dominant Luftwaffe, and superior tactics would again allow it to surround and destroy the Red Army in a series of "Kesselschlachts," or "cauldron battles of annihilation."

Instead, it was the cream of the German army that was destroyed in a Kesselschlacht of its own making. The tide turned against Hitler, never to flow back: after Stalingrad, everything the Third Reich did was essentially delaying the inevitable.

Its historic significance alone gives Stalingrad extraordinary resonance. But what makes it a truly tragic epic are two additional factors: Hitler's obsessive, increasingly maniacal role, which moves the whole drama into the realm of black absurdity, and the sheer, endless, almost ungraspable horror of the battle itself, in which thousands of men died to gain, literally, 10 or 15 yards of smashed concrete. Together, these elements create a monster that seems to have grown out of the deepest, darkest places of the 20th century soul -- as if a serial killer had become god.

Antony Beevor's extraordinary "Stalingrad," now available in paperback, does not indulge in such metaphors. It doesn't need to. His epic builds slowly and overwhelmingly, allowing the tragic arc of the entire tale to reveal itself -- from the diplomatic deceptions in Berlin as "Barbarossa" was launched on a beautiful June day to the grim fate, a year and a half later, of the 90,000 starving German prisoners marched off through the snow to almost certain death. Deeply researched using German and Russian archives, it is at once comprehensive and utterly compelling. Beevor writes a straight, unornamented prose that is far more powerful than any rhetoric could be: This is a story that needs only to be excavated, not created. Yet you can feel his compassion. No better Virgil could be imagined for this guided tour of hell.

The battle of Stalingrad lasted more than six months, from the August aerial assault that began to turn the city on the Volga into rubble (and provided the Russian troops with ready-made defensive positions, as well as severely limiting the use of German armor) to Nazi Field Marshal Paulus' surrender on Feb. 2. It was the longest sustained battle of the war, and the bloodiest. And Beevor's book, like all great histories focusing on concentrated periods of time, gives you the sense of the fatality of each day, each attack.

Especially telling are the thousands of anecdotes and facts that he weaves into his vast tale, like the monsters peering out in a Bosch painting. Some examples:

In his account of a German doctor who was flown into the Kessel (the doomed, encircled German position in and around Stalingrad) to figure out why German troops had begun to suddenly die without diagnosable illnesses (it turned out they were starving to death), Beevor notes, "Such was the shortage of wood in this treeless waste that fork or crossroads along the snowbound route was marked by the leg from a slaughtered horse stuck upright in a mound of snow. The relevant tactical sign and directional arrow were attached to the top of this gruesome signpost."

As the German troops advanced into Russia, they would sometimes notice a dog running toward their tanks with an odd-looking stick attached to its body. The Russians had strapped high explosives to the dogs and trained them with food to run under tanks; the stick would cause the explosives to detonate.

As the battle began to turn against the Germans, the Soviet radio broadcast this amplified propaganda message: "Every seven seconds a German soldier dies in Russia." If rounded up to nine a minute, that figure works out to 540 an hour, 12,960 a day, 90,720 a week, 388,800 a month. It is not that inaccurate. By comparison, it should be noted that in all of World War II -- Pearl Harbor to Okinawa, the Battle of the Bulge to D-day, Anzio to Guadalcanal -- the United States lost 300,000 men.

The Germans fired 25 million rounds of ammunition in September alone.

Over 10,000 civilians, including 994 children, were found after the battle to have survived in the twisted rubble of the city. Of those children, only nine were reunited with their parents. An American aid worker described them: "'Most of the children,' she wrote, 'had been living in the ground for four or five winter months. They were swollen with hunger. They cringed in corners, afraid to speak, or even look people in the face.'"

Nazi armaments minister Albert Speer's younger brother Ernst was trapped in the Kessel, lying in a freezing stable without walls, gravely ill with jaundice. Speer's desperate mother called Speer and, sobbing, begged him to use his influence to get him out. But the guilt-wracked Speer, who had placated Ernst by promising he would get him transferred to France when the campaign was over, could do nothing: Hitler had ordered senior officers not to use influence on behalf of relatives. "Now the last letter from Ernst in Stalingrad said that he could not stand watching his fellow patients die in the field hospital," writes Beevor. "He had rejoined his comrades in the front lines, despite his grotesquely swollen limbs and pathetic weakness." When another officer entered the Kessel in January, no trace of Ernst or any of his unit could be found: His last communication was his letter, which the anguished Speer described as "desperate about life, angry about death, and bitter about me, his brother."

In the brutal Nov. 12 battle to keep the Germans from breaking through to the Volga, "only one man survived from the marine infantry guarding the regimental command post. His right hand was smashed and he could no longer fire. He went down into the bunker, and on hearing that there were no reserves left, filled his cap with grenades. 'I can throw these with my left hand,' he explained. Close by, a platoon from another regiment fought until only four were left alive and their ammunition ran out. A wounded man was sent back with the message: 'Begin shelling our position. In front of us is a large group of fascists. Farewell comrades, we did not retreat.'"

During the battle an incredible 13,500 Russian troops, caught in the act of retreating, deserting or surrendering, were executed, either summarily or after a trial, by their own officers or by the NKVD (the notorious Communist security police), who were posted yards behind the front lines. "Red Army soldiers were also deemed guilty if they failed to shoot immediately at any comrades seen trying to desert or to surrender to the enemy. On one occasion in late September, when a group of Soviet soldiers surrendered, German tanks advanced rapidly to protect them from fire directed at them from their own lines." This information was long suppressed by the Soviet Union and only became public with the opening of state archives a few years ago.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"