The Battle for Warsaw, 1939-1945 : Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives

During the Second World War five brutal battles were fought in and around Warsaw.

Each proved to be dramatic, decisive and bloody, and in this volume of the Images of War series Anthony Tucker-Jones records them all in graphic detail. The first occurred in 1939 when the Polish army was defeated by the German invaders, and five years of occupation followed.

The second was sparked by the Jewish Ghetto Uprising in 1943 which was ruthlessly suppressed by 1,200 SS troops and led to the deaths of 13,000 people.

In the third the Red Army's advance was beaten back at the gates of the city in the summer of 1944 and the fourth was fought at the same time when the Nazis crushed the rising of the Polish Home Army and sought to destroy the city in an act of revenge.

The failure of the rising consigned the country to decades of communist rule. The photographs and the detailed narrative give the reader a powerful impression of the experience of the people of Warsaw during this tragic period in their history and document the widespread devastation the fighting left in its wake.