Europe, East

Sean McMeekin is a professor of history at Bard College in upstate New York. Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II is McMeekin’s latest book that focuses on Josef Stalin’s involvement in World War II. This well-researched and well-written book uses new research in Soviet, European and American archives to prove that World War II was a war that Stalin had wanted—not Adolf Hitler. A remarkable feature of Stalin’s War is McMeekin’s documentation showing the extensive aid given by the United States and Great Britain to support Soviet Communism during the war. This article focuses on the lend-lease and other aid given to the Soviet Union during World War II which enabled Stalin to conquer most of Eurasia, from Berlin to Beijing, for Communism.

Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin. The Eastern Front, 1941-1945, by John Mosier, Simon & Schuster, New York, 470 pages, 2010. Numerous histories of the titanic 1940s armed struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union have been presented to the mainstream reading public over the last half century or so, and for the most part they follow…