In 1921, when Dzhugashvili had reached the age of fourteen, he was brought to Moscow, where his father had become a leading figure in the Bolshevik government, eventually becoming head of the Soviet Union.

Disregarded by Stalin, Dzhugashvili was a shy, quiet child who appeared unhappy and attempted suicide several times as a youth.

Sent to the front, he was captured and imprisoned by the Germans and died at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1943 after his father refused to make a deal to secure his release.

[b] A few months after Dzhugashvili's birth, his father was involved in a high-profile Tiflis bank robbery, and the three of them fled to Baku to avoid arrest.

[14] He graduated from the Institute of Transport in 1935, and for the next couple years worked as a chimney-sweep engineer at an electric plant factory named after his father.

Stalin became enraged at the idea and in response Dzhugashvili attempted suicide, shooting himself in the chest and narrowly missing his heart.

[13] While Alliluyeva and Svetlana helped Dzhugashvili, Stalin is reported to have brushed off the attempt by saying "He can't even shoot straight.

"[17] Dzhugashvili spent several months in the hospital recovering from this ordeal, though the couple did ultimately marry and moved to Leningrad.

Stalin ensured that Dzughashvili and Artyom Sergeyev, his adopted son and fellow artillery officer, went to the front lines.

[23] Serving as a lieutenant with a battery of the 14th Howitzer Regiment of the 14th Tank Division near Vitebsk, Dzhugashvili was captured on 16 July during the Battle of Smolensk.

[24][29] Meltzer, his wife, was not immediately told the news and, suspicious of her motives and the idea that Dzhugashvili surrendered, Stalin had her arrested.

[29] In an attempt to conceal his identity, Dzhugashvili apparently removed his officer's insignia and tried to pass as a soldier, although he was soon recognised and transferred to the Abwehr (German military intelligence) for interrogation.

[31] During the interrogation, Dzughashvili openly criticised his division and other units of the Red Army, saying they were unprepared for the war, and further commented that military commanders behaved poorly.

[31] He felt that the United Kingdom was weak and had "never helped anyone", while praising Germany, noting it was the only major empire left and that the "whole of Europe would be nothing" without it.

Although his wife and her family were ethnically Jewish, Dzughashvili was also openly anti-Semitic, claiming Jews "trade, or aspire to careers in engineering, but they do not want to be workers, technicians, or peasant laborers.

[33] He was subsequently moved to a guarded villa in Berlin, where Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, hoped to use him on Russian-language radio broadcasts.

[29] Upon hearing of his son's death, Stalin reportedly stared at his photograph; he would later soften his stance towards Dzhugashvili, saying he was "a real man" and that "fate treated him unjustly.

[33] After the war, British officers in charge of captured German archives came upon the papers depicting Dzhugashvili's death at Sachsenhausen.

The British Foreign Office briefly considered presenting these papers to Stalin at the Potsdam Conference as a gesture of condolence.