Meat Grinder

Few battles of the Second World War were as brutal as those fought around the Rzhev Salient, yet the campaign is far less familiar than the sieges of Leningrad or Moscow. Soldiers on both sides nicknamed it 'The Meat Grinder' because of the losses it demanded. The salient was a stretch of forest and marsh in the heart of Russia, and millions of men fought and died there.

Historian Prit Buttar, a specialist in the Eastern Front of World War II, turns to a region that Western historians have mostly overlooked. He explains why this sodden terrain mattered to the German Army, which saw in it a path for renewing its advance on the Soviet capital and a chance to reverse the course of the war.

Drawing on first-hand accounts from German and Russian soldiers, Buttar follows the four major Red Army offensives launched against the salient. Each was repulsed at heavy cost, with total casualties, including the killed, wounded and missing, exceeding two million. The Germans were finally forced to withdraw from the salient in March 1943.

The book also draws on recent research to show how the Red Army learned from these defeats. Buttar traces how the Soviet command's analysis of its failures at the time contributed to its victory over Army Group Centre in the summer of 1944, which cleared the road to Berlin.