Stalin's War Tragedy and Triumph, 1941-1945 [Hardcover]

The Eastern Front was chaos, blood, and destruction on an unimaginable scale. Yet, one man dominated itStalin. Edwin Hoyt brings the reader into this maelstrom from the web center of the great tyrant whose paranoia set the Soviet Union up for near destruction but who yet transformed himself into the able warlord who beat the Wehrmacht to death.The story of the Soviet Union's struggle to victory in World War II is a gripping one and Hoyt retells it with the observant eye of an historian and the narrative drive of a novelist. By the end of Stalin's War it is chillingly clear that the Soviet dictator was as much at war with his own people as he was with the Nazis.Fast paced and informative, Stalin's War sustains the author's track record. It is one of Hoyt's best.This is a powerful horror story about the chaotic, wasteful, war-waging by a dictator who was every bit as murderous as Adolf Hitler. Hoyt's insights into Stalin's mind and into his extravagantly ruthless methods, which caused the quite unnecessary deaths of millions of his own people (let alone his enemies and allies), provides a vivid and unusual contribution to the history of World War II on the enormous Russian Front.As usual Hoyt can be relied upon to give an exciting, anecdotal account of difficult military and naval subjects. In Stalin's War he excels himself. An excellent read, heartily recommended.Hoyt's new book on World War II examines the war from the viewpoint of the Soviet leader, Josef Stalin. Hoyt takes into account how the dictator weakened his own armed forces with purges before the war, yet how after Germany's attack he became immersed in the fight against the Nazis.The battlefields of the USSR witnessed the most devastating confrontations of World War II. In every one of those battles, Communist dictator Josef Stalin exercised his influence, meddling with (and executing) his generals, hurling unprepared armies into pure chaos, and meeting with his Western allies to divide the world uplÃ$