Alan Moorehead – författare

Part of the SECOND WORLD WAR VOICES series in partnership with the podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk, presented by comedian Al Murray and bestselling historian James Holland.With a new introduction by James HollandEclipse was the code name given by the Allies to the occupation of Germany. Moorehead's book describes his experiences in Sicily and southern Italy in 1943, which culminated in the capture of Rome. He tells the electrifying story of D-Day, the liberation of Paris, and the Allied advance through northern France and Belgium, the crossing of the Rhine.The author reconstructs, in terrifying detail, the collapse of Germany, the wholesale destruction, mass surrenders, and the unimaginable horrors of the concentration camps.

The Russian Revolution dismantled the ancient Tsarist autocracy and led to the rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II and the old regime was replaced in February 1917. In the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a Bolshevik (Communist) government.The Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, appointed themselves as leaders and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918.Civil war erupted among the ‘Reds’ (Bolsheviks), the ‘Whites’ (anti-socialist factions), and non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for several years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922.In this book Alan Moorehead gives a brilliant account of these formative events. This not only remains the most readable account of the revolution, but sheds fascinating light on the Western view of the Soviet Union at the time of writing during the Cold War.