In the years following the Civil War, plans were drawn up to build a major set of fortifications along the Russian western border. Work began in 1926, leading to a front that stretched over 2,000km from the Baltic to the Black Sea. By the time of the outbreak of World War II, the defences of the Stalin Line, as it was known, were largely complete – but were also now too far behind the new Soviet border to be of any use in potential offensives. Stalin took steps to create a new defensive line inside Poland, which came to be known by the name of the Soviet Foreign Minister, Molotov. This book details the development of these lines, and the fighting that took place around them in 1941.
In the years following the Civil War, plans were drawn up to build a major set of fortifications along the Russian western border. Work began in 1926, leading to a front that stretched over 2,000km from the Baltic to the Black Sea. By the time of the outbreak of World War II, the defences of the Stalin Line, as it was known, were largely complete – but were also now too far behind the new Soviet border to be of any use in potential offensives. Stalin took steps to create a new defensive line inside Poland, which came to be known by the name of the Soviet Foreign Minister, Molotov. This book details the development of these lines, and the fighting that took place around them in 1941.
The full story of the first and only time American and Soviets fought side-by-side in World War II At the conference held in in Moscow in October 1943, American officials proposed to their Soviet allies a new operation in the effort to defeat Nazi Germany. The Normandy Invasion was already in the works; what American officials were suggesting until then was a second air front: the US Air Force would establish bases in Soviet-controlled territory, in order to "shuttle-bomb" the Germans from the Eastern front. For all that he had been pushing for the United States and Great Britain to do more to help the war effort--the Soviets were bearing by far the heaviest burden in terms of casualties--Stalin, recalling the presence of foreign troops during the Russian Revolution, balked at the suggestion of foreign soldiers on Soviet soil. His concern was that they would spy on his regime, and it would be difficult to get rid of them afterword. Eventually in early 1944, Stalin was persuaded to give in, and Operation Baseball and then Frantic were initiated. B-17 Flying Fortresses were flown from bases in Italy to the Poltava region in Ukraine. As Plokhy's book shows, what happened on these airbases mirrors the nature of the Grand Alliance itself. While both sides were fighting for the same goal, Germany's unconditional surrender, differences arose that no common purpose could overcome. Soviet secret policeman watched over the operations, shadowing every move, and eventually trying to prevent fraternization between American servicemen and local women. A catastrophic air raid by the Germans revealed the limitations of Soviet air defenses. Relations soured and the operations went south. Indeed, the story of the American bases foreshadowed the eventual collapse of the Grand Alliance and the start of the Cold War. Using previously inaccessible archives, Forgotten Bastards offers a bottom-up history of the Grand Alliance, showing how it first began to fray on the airfields of World War II.
The classic and “utterly engrossing” study of Stalin’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb during the Cold War by the renowned political scientist and historian (Foreign Affairs). For forty years the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Then, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, David Holloway pulled back the Iron Curtain with his “marvelous, groundbreaking study” Stalin and the Bomb (The New Yorker). How did the Soviet Union build its atomic and hydrogen bombs? What role did espionage play? How did the American atomic monopoly affect Stalin's foreign policy? What was the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders? David Holloway answers these questions by tracing the dramatic story of Soviet nuclear policy from developments in physics in the 1920s to the testing of the hydrogen bomb and the emergence of nuclear deterrence in the mid-1950s. This magisterial history throws light on Soviet policy at the height of the Cold War, illuminates a central element of the Stalinist system, and puts into perspective the tragic legacy of this program―environmental damage, a vast network of institutes and factories, and a huge stockpile of unwanted weapons.
"Valentin M. Berezhkov was an important part of Josef Stalin's inner circle, where he found himself at center stage of international diplomacy. In his capacity as interpreter for both Stalin and Molotov, he was present when the fateful meeting leading to the Munich Pact took place; when Hitler negotiated the nonaggression agreement with Molotov; when Germany declared war on Russia; at the historic meeting where the Allies formed a united front against the Axis; and at the 1943 Teheran conference. Like a fly on the wall, he observed everything, including Stalin's fear of Hitler. When Berezhkov met with the German leader, the latter was so taken aback with his perfect use of the German language that he refused to believe the interpreter was a Russian native." "Berezhkov may be one of the last survivors of the events that shaped the destiny of Russia and the world. He personally observed how the major leaders of this century related to each other and the circumstances in which they found themselves."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
From the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler’s and Stalin’s politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century. Americans call the Second World War “the Good War.” But before it even began, America’s ally Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, German and Soviet killing sites fell behind the Iron Curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single story. With a new afterword addressing the relevance of these events to the contemporary decline of democracy, Bloodlands is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history and its meaning today.
Robert Conquest uses fresh and dramatic material, which has only recently become available, to give further depth and breadth to his history of the momentous years between 1934 and 1939, when millions of people died in Stalin's purges. First publiished in 1968 to universal critical acclaim, this definitive account of Stalin's Terror is reissued with a new introduction which revists the book in light of glasnost.
