The Liberation War of 1971 was the delta's third big shock of the twentieth century. After the devastating famine of 1943/4 and the Partition of 1947, it was now armed conflict that engulfed the delta. Telling the story of the war is not easy because so many things were happening at the same time – and so much is still fiercely contested. There is a vast literature on what came to pass between March and December 1971, ranging from news reports and propaganda to victims' diaries, military and political memoirs, academic studies, creative writing and films and inquiry commission reports. What emerges is a multilayered story. The main thread is the armed struggle between the Pakistan armed forces and East Bengali nationalists. But interwoven with this chronicle of national liberation are many other themes: the victimisation of specific groups (women, Hindus, ethnic minorities); local vendettas and the settling of personal scores; tensions between nationalists of different hues; regional variation in violence and destruction as well as in population displacement; and thousands of stories of personal courage and sacrifice. Equally important is the fact that the war was part of two larger geopolitical games: the rivalry between India and Pakistan and the struggle between the Cold War superpowers. It is these that splashed the conflict across the front pages of the world press throughout 1971 and turned ‘Bangladesh’ into a household word all over the globe. Never before, or since, has the Bengal delta attracted so much international attention.