In the early summer of 1941, Operation Silberfuchs was underway as General Eduard Dietl led German mountain soldiers from Norway through Finland to the Russian border. But while the weather conditions worsened, the Russians' resistance increased. Three bloody efforts to force the river Litza were repulsed, becoming a nightmare for the inadequately equipped German soldiers. In this gripping account of a little-known theater of the war, Alf Reidar Jacobsen describes the heavy fighting that would lead to Hitler's first defeat on the Eastern Front.