The Washington Post calls Sven Hassel "a brilliant storyteller," and his series of novels about life in Hitler's army have sold in the millions.

It stood at the top of the hill, dominating the Russian landscape, menacing and impenetrable: the O.G.P.U Prison. Although they had no tanks to protect them, Porta and his fellow fighters were told to take it in any way they could-with machine guns, flamethrowers, entrenching tools, their bare hands if need be. But although they were used to war with its death and vile savagery, O.G.P.U. Prison was something different. This place was a hell they hadn't encountered before, a bastion, an inferno that rained blood and butchery on Porta, the Legionnaire, Tiny, Barcelona and the men of the Panzer battalion.