Last Letters from Stalingrad

Last Letters from Stalingrad (German: Letzte Briefe aus Stalingrad) is an anthology of letters from German soldiers who took part in the Battle for Stalingrad during World War II. Originally published in West Germany in 1950, the book was translated into many languages, and has been issued in numerous editions. The German High Command wished to gauge the morale of the troops of the encircled 6th Army, so they allowed the soldiers to write and send the letters which became the basis for Last Letters from Stalingrad. The letters were then impounded, opened, stripped of identification and sorted by content, before eventually being stored in archives.