During the Second World War, five fierce battles were fought in and around Poland. Each proved to be dramatic, decisive, and bloody. In the volume of the Images of War series, Anthony Tucker-Jones records all these battles graphically.

The first battle took place in 1939, when the Polish army was defeated by the German invaders, followed by five years of occupation. The second was triggered by the Jewish Ghetto Uprising in 1943, which was harshly suppressed by 1,200 SS soldiers, resulting in the deaths of 13,000 people. In the third battle, the Red Army's advancement was repelled at the city gates in the summer of 1944, while the fourth occurred at the same time, with the Nazis crushing the Polish Home Army's uprising and seeking to destroy the city as an act of revenge. The failure of the uprising doomed the country to decades of communist rule.

The photographs and detailed narration offer the reader a powerful impression of the experience of the people of Warsaw during this tragic period in their history, capturing the extensive destruction left behind by the battles.