The Red Army and the Second World War

Alexander Hill completed both his undergraduate education and doctorate at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, and has taught military history and Russian history at the University of Calgary for more than a decade. During his tenure at the University of Calgary, he has published two other books, The War behind the Eastern Front (2005), on the Soviet partisan movement in north-west Russia during the Second World War, and The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941–1945: A Documentary Reader (2009), as well as many journal articles on the Soviet Union during the Second World War.

'[Hill] offers a tightly written account that integrates battlefield events, organizational, tactical and technological innovation, and political and command changes that enabled the Red Army to survive the disaster of 1941, beginning a long and costly recovery that would lead it to Berlin four years later. This is an important read for anyone with an interest in the Second World War or military reform.' Albert A. Nofi, Affairs Symposium

• Introduction; 1. Of horses and men: the Red Army of the late 1920s; 2. Tanks, aircraft and 'deep battle': the Red Army transformed, 1928–1936; 3. The 'enemy' within: the Red Army during and in the aftermath of the great purges, 1937–1940; 4. More than manoeuvres: Red Army experience in Spain and at Lake Khasan; 5. Khalkin Gol; 6. Keeping up with the Schmidts and the Suzukis: soviet military equipment and the small wars of the 1930s; 7. Voroshilov's 'lightning' war: the Soviet invasion of Poland; 8. The Finnish debacle; 9. Reform and the road to war; 10. Barbarossa: from Minsk to Smolensk; 11. Barbarossa: from Smolensk to Moscow; 12. The end of 'Typhoon'; 13. Lost opportunity; 14. More men, women and machines; 15. 'Not a step back!'; 16. Change at the top; 17. Stalingrad and Uranus; 18. The wrath of the Gods; 19. The defence of the Kursk salient and the battle for Prokhorovka; 20. To the Dnepr and beyond; 21. The ten Stalinist blows of 1944; 22. The end in sight; 23. The fall of Berlin and the end of the Reich; Conclusion; Appendix 1. The destruction of the upper echelons of the RKKA in 1937–1941; Appendix 2. Soviet armoured strength and serviceability in the Western military districts of the Soviet Union as of 1 June 1941; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.