In this magisterial work, the fruit of more than a decacle's research, Chris Bellamy provides, in one volume, a mocdern history of the greatest and most hideous land-air conflict in history. It was a war fought by all elements of society, absolute because both sides aimed to exterminate their opponent,to destroy their political existence and each shed almost all of the customary restraints that had traditionally applied in conflicts between 'civilized' nations.

Between 1941 and 1945, on the Eastern Front, the greater part of the land and associated air forces of Nazi Germany and its allies were ultimately destroyed by the Soviet Union in what its people, and those of its fifteen successor states, called, and still call, the Great Patriotic War.

The battle on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945 was arguably the single most decisive factor of World War II, fixing the course of world history over the next half century. Now, drawing on sources newly available since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, historian and journalist Chris Bellamy presents the first full account of this deadly conflict.

Bellamy outlines the lead-up to the war—in which the fragile alliance between Hitler and Stalin was unceremoniously broken—and takes us headlong into the hostilities. He presents a shocking picture of battle in which the traditional restraints of “civilized” warfare were shed. He makes clear how the Soviets quickly rallied against Hitler, choosing homegrown despotism over foreign domination in a struggle that the Russian people call the Great Patriotic War.

Bellamy charts the early gains of the German army, whose advances into Soviet territory were brought to a halt in Moscow in the winter of 1941, and whose defeat was sealed in the Battle of Stalingrad, the most merciless campaign of the bloodiest front. He shows how Soviet men—and women—joined to fight a war whose casualties were later steeply underestimated by their government, and how even the true death toll, at 27 million, does not take into account the millions of lives on both sides that lay shattered in the aftermath.

Finally, Bellamy examines the far-reaching consequences of the battle’s outcome—the reverberations of which are still felt today—and argues that the cost of victory was ultimately too much for the Soviet Union to bear.

A magisterial study, and an essential addition to our understanding of contemporary world history.

List of illustrations, figures and tables

KeU to map symbols and abbreviations

Preface and acknowledgements

1 Flight of the rabid wolff the long-term impact of the war in the East

2 Absolute and total war

3 A cruel romance': the Nazi-Sovist alliance and Soviet expansion, August to November 1939

4 Further Soviet expansion and cooperation with Germanu, November 1939 to June 1941

5 Who planned to attack whom, and how?

6 The war's worst-kept secret

7 Iron road east: the country, the forces

8 Barbaroeea unleashed, and the battles of the frontiers

9 Kremlin at war

10 Winning oneself to death

11 Midnight in Moscow

12 Black snow

13 White night: Leningrad, September 1941 to February 1944

14 The 'Grand Alliance'

15 To the edge of the abyss: the worst year - 1942

16 From defence to attack the Caucasus, Stalingrad and Mars

17 Kursk, and a new professionalism

18 Destroying the Wehrmocht. Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic:reasserting Soviet control

19 Victory

20 New world order

Select bibliography

Notes and references

Index