The battle for Moscow was the biggest battle of World War II -- the
biggest battle of all time. And yet it is far less known than
Stalingrad, which involved about half the number of troops. From
the time Hitler launched his assault on Moscow on September 30,
1941, to April 20, 1942, seven million troops were engaged in this
titanic struggle. The combined losses of both sides -- those
killed, taken prisoner or severely wounded -- were 2.5 million, of
which nearly 2 million were on the Soviet side. But the Soviet
capital narrowly survived, and for the first time the German
"Blitzkrieg" ended in failure. This shattered Hitler's dream of a
swift victory over the Soviet Union and radically changed the
course of the war.
The full story of this epic battle has never been told because
it undermines the sanitized Soviet accounts of the war, which
portray Stalin as a military genius and his people as heroically
united against the German invader. Stalin's blunders, incompetence
and brutality made it possible for German troops to approach the
outskirts of Moscow. This triggered panic in the city -- with
looting, strikes and outbreaks of previously unimaginable violence.
About half the city's population fled. But Hitler's blunders would
soon loom even larger: sending his troops to attack the Soviet
Union without winter uniforms, insisting on an immediate German
reign of terror and refusing to heed his generals' pleas that he
allow them to attack Moscow as quickly as possible. In the end,
Hitler's mistakes trumped Stalin's mistakes.
Drawing on recently declassified documents from Soviet archives,
including files of the dreaded NKVD; on accounts of survivors and
of children of top Soviet military and government officials; and on
reports of Western diplomats and correspondents, "The Greatest
Battle" finally illuminates the full story of a clash between two
systems based on sheer terror and relentless slaughter.
Even as Moscow's fate hung in the balance, the United States and
Britain were discovering how wily a partner Stalin would turn out
to be in the fight against Hitler -- and how eager he was to push
his demands for a postwar empire in Eastern Europe. In addition to
chronicling the bloodshed, Andrew Nagorski takes the reader behind
the scenes of the early negotiations between Hitler and Stalin, and
then between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill.
This is a remarkable addition to the history of World War
II.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
