A stunning military novel, unconditionally recognized as a classic of the genre. The terrible truth about one of the most brutal battles of the Great Patriotic War. The bloody horror of the Eastern Front through the eyes of the Germans. Early 1942. The remnants of the retreating Wehrmacht units are surrounded in the city of Kholm by superior forces of the Red Army. For 105 days, the German garrison repulsed the desperate attacks of the Soviet infantry and tanks, bleeding to death, losing only more than a third of the personnel killed in the Kholmsky "cauldron" (in fact, all the rest were wounded), but fulfilling Hitler's "stop order": "to provide fanatically stubborn resistance to the enemy" and "hold the front until the last soldier...."