I wouldn't recommend Beevor's account of the battle for Stalingrad to the faint-hearted. The accumulation of horrifying details does little to engender any kind of positive view of humanity. And there are moments when even a hardened sceptic like myself has to reread a sentence to try and assimilate the implications of the plain fact being spelled out.
For some reason this one hit me hard this morning: Sonderkommando 4a, following the Sixth Army's advance, had reached Nizhe-Chirskaya in the wake of XXIV Panza Corps on 25 August, and promptly massacred two truck-loads of children, 'the majority aged between six and twelve.'
I think it's the word promptly that somehow intensifies the horror of the unthinkable.
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