In Europe

shoot old men.” That left my father a broken man.
    ‘Of my hundred classmates in Munich – I was from the class of 1937 – seventy-five did not live through the war. Of the twenty-five who did, ten were too traumatised afterwards to lead a normal existence. Fifteen of the hundred actually made it through in one piece.’

    Only the river has remained the same. The slow river flowing endlessly past this stretch of city, this river broad as a lake in which city children bob around like corks, and across which great paddle steamers move day and night, from town to town.
    In the centre of Volgograd, one of those ships is now waiting at the quay. Girls are walking along the waterfront, on the top deck a few women in bikinis are lying in the evening sun, grandmothers sit at the railings with their knitting, the final passengers drag their suitcases up the gangplank, the ship's horn blasts, everyone clambers on board and off it goes, across this endless, glistening water.
    Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, has something grim about it, and at the same time something lethargic. You can cross the street here while carrying on a conversation, for the only traffic is the occasional black car. At the airport, the worn wooden check-in desks are deserted. Sparrowsfly around in the big departure hall, twittering and chirping. Luggage is piled up beside the loading platform: here, baggage handling is apparently self-service.
    There is only one recreational vessel on the Volga this evening, for the rest every boat has its Rhyme and Reason. For the first time since the start of my trip, my mobile blacks out: GSM has not arrived in Volgograd. There is almost no advertising to be seen. The city is full of encouraging slogans and portraits, as though nothing has changed in the last few decades.
    Volgograd is the ideological bulwark of communism, the fortress of the old order amid advancing decadence. Here the party leaders are still firmly in the saddle. The red flags wave, the parks and lawns are immaculate, black marketeers get around by bike. Every evening Comrade Lenin rises up on the Volga, in gigantic neon letters. Like cawing phantoms, hundreds of crows skim the treetops of the big memorial park.
    Canned partisan anthems bray from the loudspeakers. But, a little further along, the Pepsi Cola café fights back with music of its own. A girl is being chased around by a few boys there, they catch her, drag her to the fountain, a little later I see her walk away, dripping, laughing bravely, a girlfriend in her wake. The house music throbs across the rippling water – this, too, is Volgograd.
    For this city the war began one unexceptional Sunday in summer. Dozens of families were picnicking on the Mamayev Kurgan, the huge Tartar burial mound by the river, where the war memorial now stands. The air-raid sirens sounded, but almost no one paid any attention; they had sounded so often before, and for no good reason. It was only when the anti-aircraft guns began to rattle that the picnickers became startled. And once the Luftwaffe had begun its attack, there was nowhere for them to go.
    The bombardment of Stalingrad on Sunday, 23 August, 1942 was one of the severest in the Second World War. The Heinkels laid a carpet of bombs across the whole city. The factories and wooden houses along the western edge went up like torches; the tanks at the oil depot exploded into huge pillars of fire; the modern white apartment complexes, the pride of the city, were blown apart. Anyone who was not in a bomb shelter did not survive. Around 40,000 men, womenand children were burned alive, suffocated or buried beneath the rubble.
    Meanwhile, the 16th Armoured Division of General Paulus’ 6th Army moved almost unchallenged across the surrounding steppe. The photos and film clips speak for themselves: blond and tanned soldiers, laughing faces, flashy sunglasses as though on a holiday outing, commanders standing straight as ramrods in the turrets of their tanks, their troops impatiently waving their arms onward.‘As far as the eye can see, armoured cars and tracked vehicles are rolling across the steppe,’ an eyewitness wrote of that summertime advance. ‘Pennants wave in the dusky evening light.’
    The landscape through which the German soldiers moved was of unmatched rustic charm: white houses with straw roofs, little cherry orchards, horses at pasture. In every village they could glean an armful of chickens, ducks or geese. Every kitchen garden and