Siege

The events are real, the characters are fictional, the suffering and sacrifice are authentic–and unforgettable

On January 21, 1942, more than five thousand exhausted German soldiers– fragments of retreating units–found themselves surrounded in the arctic northern Russian town of Cholm. Trapped in an area barely two kilometers wide, the freezing, starving men held out for 105 days, repelling endless infantry attacks and dozens of tank assaults. Fifteen hundred Germans died before relief finally arrived on May 5, but for those still able to fight, an even worse ordeal lay ahead–the siege of Fortress Velikiye Luki.

Following the fates of three ordinary Germans through these epic struggles, Russ Schneider captures the ferocity and titanic cruelty of a war that pushed men to the very edge of madness. Millions perished on the Russian Front during World War II. Siege is a searing testament to the forgotten men who strove valiantly, if in vain, against impossible odds.

Russ Schneider studied the Russo-German War for years before undertaking his books, teaching himself German to be able to expand his research. He published two collections of short stories, Madness Without End: Tales of Horror from the Russian Wilderness and Demyansk: More Tales from the Russian Wilderness. His work of nonfiction, Gotterdemmerung 1945: Germany’s Last Stand in the East, was a Military Book Club main selection in 1998. Schneider died in 2000 at the age of forty-three.