The Nazis were a horrible, evil force in the world, but there's no denying their military was a well-organized machine that was difficult to beat. But when the 6th Army marched on Stalingrad in 1942, with the ultimate goal of defeating the Soviet Union, it wasn't enemy troops that led to their defeat.

It was nature.

The harsh Russian winter accomplished more than the USSR, with all of its military acumen, could do.

Ian Baxter, in Images of War: The Destruction of 6th Army at Stalingrad, provides a stark, up-close look at the 6th Army's road to certain victory -- that ended in a crushing defeat. (And yes, the omission of the "the" in the book's title irks me more than it should.)

The text provides plenty of background information and the narrative needed to understand the various troop movements that led to that final conclusion. The photos really bring it home; readers get an eye on soldiers on the march, the gear they used and their efforts to protect themselves from enemy fire and, perhaps more importantly, the unrelenting winter conditions that brought the Nazi ambitions in the East to an end.

One photo, for instance, shows a column of German prisoners shuffling "along a snowy road following their surrender. These men were totally demoralised after 199 days of brutal combat. Virtually all were marched off to prison camps either suffering from exhaustion or frostbite; many collapsed and died on the way." Two pages later, under another photo of the captives, Baxter notes that the Russians "took many photos of the demoralised prisoners ... to demonstrate that the Germans were not invincible."

That was good news to a war-weary world. Baxter's book is a detailed examination of those 199 days, explaining clearly how and why the Germans were defeated.