Saving Stalin
Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Cost of Allied Victory in Europe
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
During World War II, the Allied leaders banded together, forged a great victory--and created a new and dangerous post-war world.
In the summer of 1941, Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt's trusted advisor, arrived in Moscow to assess whether the US should send aid to Russia as it had to Britain. Unofficially, he was there to determine whether Josef Stalin--the man who had killed over six million Ukrainians during the 1930s--was worth saving.
In this riveting and sweeping narrative, author John Kelly chronicles the turbulent wartime relationship between the great leaders--Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin--and military commanders of America, Britain, and the Soviet Union. Faced with the greatest challenge of the century, the Allied leaders and their war managers struggled against a common enemy--and each other. The story behind how victory was forged is an epic story, rich in drama, passion and larger-than-life personalities. The Allies eventually triumphed, but at what cost?
Using his trademark character-rich writing style and focusing on unique, unknown, and unexplored aspects of the story, Kelly offers a fresh perspective on the decision-making that changed the course of the war--and the course of history.
Saving Stalin brings to vivid life the epic story of the century's greatest human catastrophe. It is an unforgettable master work in historical narrative.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Kelly (Never Surrender) offers a solid look at the evolving relationships among FDR, Churchill, and Stalin that led to their cooperation to defeat Germany in WWII. Kelly begins in June 1941, as Hitler violates the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact by invading the Soviet Union. After some initial German successes, Stalin's forces managed to stall the advance, which was hampered, according to Kelly, by the Nazis' hubristic expectations that the campaign would be over quickly, rendering the need to supply German troops with winter-appropriate clothing and gear superfluous. Kelly details high-level discussions among Allied leaders in Washington, D.C., Moscow, and Yalta, and is particularly good at conveying how victory over Hitler was far from inevitable. He describes numerous instances that could have altered the course of WWII, such as when a navigational error almost brought Churchill's plane within range of German anti-aircraft guns in January 1942, but ends the book rather abruptly with Stalin's May 1945 victory speech, offering little insight into the postwar dynamics among the U.S., U.K., and Soviet Union. Occasionally overwrought prose ("soldiers began to grab death by the waist and dance her across the sodden fields just for the thrill of it") distracts from Kelly's firm grasp of the history and the personalities involved. The result is an enjoyable but nonessential account of the alliance that won WWII.
