Stalin's Role in World War II: A Comprehensive History

Timothy Paul Young: In my opinion one of the three most useful books to be written on recent Russian history. It helps synthesize an understanding of the American military history and why we kept having wars for the rest of the 20th century. Depressing, but valuable information.

United States on Nov 23, 2023

José L. Fdez.: Lectura necesaria para desmitificar y entender qué es el estalinismo y el enorme daño que hizo a Europa y que aún 70 años después sigue haciendo a países como Cuba.

Spain on Aug 13, 2023

Andrew: Excellent writings.

Canada on Jun 14, 2023

Amazon Customer: Substitute Putin's name for Stalin and you have the carbon copy!

United Kingdom on Dec 21, 2022

Eric Grover: Historian Sean McMeekin’s Stalin’s War is a riveting, revisionist history of World War 2, drawing on previously-classified Soviet archives. It’s Stalin- rather than Hitler-centric and takes some of the luster off the Big Three.

McMeekin makes a persuasive case the Soviet Union won WW2, takes the lionized Churchill down a peg, and reveals FDR’s conduct as cringeworthy.

Stalin was cut from a different cloth. He bifocally and ruthlessly pursued current and post-war objectives. Russia under the cloak of the USSR finished the war a superpower and was the only major belligerent that gained territory and vassal states. And, the Soviets amassed enormous industrial assets and technology from US Lend-Lease gifts and by looting occupied lands. While the Soviet Union suffered horrendous losses, Stalin, hailed as the Vozhd (leader), who’d murdered millions of his own countrymen and conquered subjects, didn’t lose a wink of sleep over it.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain observed the Soviets didn’t share Western values, were “afraid of Germany and Japan, and would be delighted to see other people fight them.” Stalin said it was in the USSR’s...

United States on Mar 20, 2022

Writing Historian: Sean McMeekin's core thesis is that historians have focused far too much on Adolf Hitler's role in the Second World War. Indeed, he even questions the commonly understood definition of "Second World War" as starting on 1 September 1939 with the Nazi invasion of Poland. McMeekin contends, with some justification IMHO, that the term "Second World War" deserves a broader (and less Euro-centric) interpretation. The author sets out to convince readers that WW2 started in the Far East in 1931 and continued until later 1945, with few breaks in the conflict. That interpretation allows McMeekin to focus on the single world leader who directed his nation's policies throughout that lengthy period: Joseph Stalin.

During the period 1931 t0 1945, the Soviet Union seemed hellbent on involving itself, indeed on occasion it actually fomented wars and played, albeit behind the scenes, part in sustaining the fighting between other nations. Stalin's motivation for that policy stemmed from two factors: His paranoid delusion that the western world would (in his eyes "once again" in light of the Anglo-American-Japanese intervention against the Bolsehviks) band together to stifle modern communism...

United States on Aug 22, 2021

Ultima Thule: Sean McMeekin is an American historian, focused on European history of the early 20th century, especially regarding the origins of the First World War, and the role of Russia and the Ottoman Empire. He is a Professor of European History and Culture at Bard College, New York.

The author’s latest work, Stalin’s War is a weighty hardback of 831 pages, divided into 6 parts and 34 chapters. There are two sets of photo plates of 12 pages each and 24 good quality black and white maps although they are not listed separately in the contents. The map illustrating the Battle of Berlin (p.618) shows the British 2nd Army as the “British Ninth Army”. The author uses end notes, although often amplifies his text with footnotes. There is a bibliography of primary and secondary sources and an index.

The author’s revisionist thesis is that from the late 1930s the political objectives of the Soviet Union, Stalin’s, were morally reprehensible and that Roosevelt (and to a lesser extent Churchill) failed from 1941 onwards to use the leverage provided by lend-lease to act as a brake on the acquisitive ambitions of this anti-democratic state once they became apparent. This was...

United Kingdom on Aug 02, 2021

tolkein: Although I've rated this 4 stars, for reasons I'll come to, you should buy and read this if you've any interest in the Second World War. I'd always admired Roosevelt (FDR), but this book, I think, clearly showed his blindness to Stalin's true nature, willingness to listen to Stalin's agents in his administration, coupled with his grave illness from at least 1942 onwards. Some of it is difficult to read, because of my preconceptions. Reading it, I am now convinced that (a) Stalin intended an offensive war against Germany from July 1941, forestalled accidentally, by Barbarossa, (b) that Stalin would have lost in 1941 if it had not been for Allied aid (ungratefully received) - 10% of the armour facing Germany outside Moscow was British supplied, never mind the planes, steel, aluminium, etc and (c) from 1943 onwards, around 50% of German war output was facing the Allies in the West (divisions in western Europe, Luftwaffe defending Germany, 1.2 m Germans defending against the air war, etc). See also Heinz Magenheimer (Hitler's War) and Payson O'Brien (How the War was Won). Without this effort, always denied by Stalin, and denigrated by his apologists in the West, the Soviet Union would...

United Kingdom on Jul 02, 2021