NO EXIT

NO EXIT: 1942 - Part Two: The Turning Point follows the final five months of the year in which the direction of the Second World War began, slowly and uncertainly, to change.

In August 1942, American Marines landed on Guadalcanal. In North Africa, British forces stopped Rommel at El Alamein. Allied troops came ashore in Morocco and Algeria. On the Eastern Front, the German advance reached Stalingrad and the Volga-only to become trapped in one of the most destructive battles in history. In November, the Soviet counteroffensive closed around the German Sixth Army.

Yet military reversal did not mean deliverance.

Across occupied Europe, deportations continued. Ghettos were emptied. The killing centers operated at full intensity. Millions of people remained imprisoned within a system whose machinery of persecution and murder was becoming more efficient even as Germany's military position began to weaken.

Drawing upon diaries, letters, newspapers, military reports, broadcasts, and other contemporary accounts, The Turning Point follows the war as it was experienced by those living through it: soldiers and civilians, victims and perpetrators, those who sensed that something was changing and those who could not yet know what that change would mean.

By the end of 1942, the Axis still controlled enormous territories. The fighting was far from over. Stalingrad had not yet fallen. Europe remained under occupation.

But the world of January 1942 was gone.

The ring had not opened.

Yet for the first time, it had begun to break.