The Hinge: Stalingrad and El Alamein

CHAPTER 9 · JUL 1942–FEB 1943 · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

Look at the map: November 1942 is the Axis high-water mark — from the Atlantic to the Volga, from Norway’s North Cape nearly to the Nile. It will never be this large again. Three battles in three weeks, thousands of kilometers apart, turn the tide together.

The turn: Operation Uranus, 19–23 November.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.