Stalin's folly : the tragic first ten days of World War II on the Eastern front / Constantine Pleshakov.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pleshakov, Konstantin.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Eastern Front.

World War, 1939-1945.

Stalin, Joseph, 1878-1953.

Stalin, Joseph.

Physical Description:

326 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

Summary:

On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched a massive three-pronged attack on the Soviet Union, and within ten days his troops were well within reach of Moscow. It was a daring move, given that the two countries had an alliance, but historians have long considered Stalin's response even more stunning: during the invasion, the mighty Soviet military stood in place while its soldiers were slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands.

Stalin's Folly is a harrowing account of the German invasion that offers fresh insights into the mind of a brutal dictator and the twentieth century's defining war.

Drawing on a wealth of newly available documents, from classified Politburo papers and memoirs of key generals to diplomatic cables and secret police memos, the Russian historian Constantine Pleshakov paints a startling portrait of Stalin, one of history's most feared despots, as a vulnerable and paralyzed leader. Refusing to believe that the Germans would strike first, despite repeated warnings, he continued to supply them with war materiel in the days before the attack, then tied his generals' hands in the crucial first hours of the invasion. For more than a week, while Hitler rolled over Soviet territory, Stalin cowered in his dacha, leaving the country rudderless and - as Pleshakov reveals here - nearly losing power. In essence, he abandoned the army.

The results were horrifying. One in six soldiers was killed in the first few days of fighting, the air force was virtually wiped out on the ground, and hundreds of thousands of Russians were murdered in their flight to the interior - or left under brutal Nazi control. Ultimately, the Red Army's effort to regain the territory lost in those first ten days cost more than ten million Soviet lives.

A taut hour-by-hour account of the first ten days of war on the eastern front, Stalin's Folly sheds light on an enigmatic and ruthless figure while providing a new and far deeper understanding of Russian history.

Contents:

1 War Game 19

2 On the Eve 59

3 The Attack 98

4 Disaster in the West 130

5 Hope in the South 154

6 The Loss of Byelorussia 198

7 Their Master's Voice 228.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [305]-311) and index.

ISBN:

0618367012

OCLC:

57311665