Forty years ago, Vasily Peskov’s publication about Marshal Zhukov in Komsomolskaya Pravda became a real event. The newspaper was passed from hand to hand, read aloud, and the conversation was reprinted by foreign publications. According to the journalist, his main task was to thoroughly introduce to people a man who had unjustly and undeservedly fallen into disgrace from power, but, of course, he wanted to know what Zhukov thought about the past terrible war. Then Georgy Konstantinovich received thousands of letters. This was confirmation: the people remember him, love him, understand his huge role in the war, are proud of him. In this book by the famous writer and journalist, Lenin Prize laureate, the war is revealed to the reader from different sides: from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Headquarters and from the trenches. His heroes - from the marshal to the soldier of the Great Patriotic War - are people of amazing destinies and great courage. These are marshals Zhukov and Vasilevsky, writer Konstantin Simonov, hero pilot Mikhail Devyatayev, who organized an escape from a fascist concentration camp by hijacking a plane from a secret base, front-line intelligence officers and privates... The letters of nineteen-year-old Sergeant Pavlenko are piercing in their drama and frankness. The author tells in an exciting and simple way what the war meant for the people of his generation, whose adolescence was during the war years.