THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

2025 marks the 80th anniversary of VE Day. Read and remember the history that led to this important moment.

'This book is his best yet . . . Dimbleby’s work is in a different league, told with such skill and judgment' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

A gripping and authoritative account of the year that sealed the fate of the Nazis, from the bestselling historian

June 1944: In Operation Bagration, more than two million Red Army soldiers, facing 500,000 German soldiers, finally avenged their defeat in Operation Barbarossa in 1941. The same month saw the Allies triumph on the beaches of Normandy, but, despite the myths that remain, it was the events on the Eastern Front that sealed Hitler's fate and destroyed Nazism.

In his new book, bestselling historian Jonathan Dimbleby describes and analyses this momentous year, covering the military, political and diplomatic story in his evocative style. Drawing on previously untranslated German, Russian and Polish sources, we see how sophisticated new forms of deception and ruthless Partisan warfare shifted the Soviets’ fortunes, how their triumphs effectively gave Stalin authority to occupy Eastern Europe and how it was the events of 1944 that enabled Stalin to dictate the terms of the post-war settlement, laying the foundations for the Cold War . . .