Thunder in the East : the Nazi-Soviet war, 1941-1945

The battles in Russia played the decisive part in Hitler's defeat. Gigantic, prolonged, and extremely bloody, the Russian front contrasted with the general nature of fighting on other fronts. The Russians fought alone in their theater of war and, since Stalinist Russia was radically differently different from its liberal democratic allies, they fought with an independent strategy while Hitler and the German high command conceived and carried out the Russian campaign as a singular "war of annihilation." This penetrating, broad-ranging report of this vast conflict investigates the Wehrmacht and the Red Army and the command and production systems that organized and sustained them. It includes a range of themes and political aspects and includes a wealth of new studies and source materials which have become available in the post-Cold War, post-Communist world.