Earl F. Ziemke – författare

Supported in large part by evidence released after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this book follows the career of the Red Army from its birth in 1918 as the designated vanguard of world revolution to its affiliation in 1941 with 'the citadel of capitalism', the United States. Effectiveness of leadership and military doctrine are particular concerns here, and Josef Stalin is the dominant personality.On the basis of the Russian Civil War (1918-20), the Red Army began to bill itself as 'an army of a new type', inherently superior to all others. However, in late 1920, the Poles trounce it soundly. Later, Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) reveals widespread obsolescence in armament and equipment. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 gives Germany and the USSR a free hand to act against Poland. However, slack performance by the Red Army in the unopposed occupation of eastern Poland and the bungled war with Finland in the winter of 1939-40 necessitate sweeping military reforms. Germany was an enemy in 1918, ally in the 1920s, enemy again in 1933, ally again in 1939, and the enemy once more in 1941, following the German invasion on 22 June 1941. This brings on a catastrophe that by the year's end has consumed nearly the entire pre-invasion Red Army. The United States' entry into the war on 7 December 1941 and the Red Army's subsequent recovery raise the question: Who won the Second World War?

Supported in large part by evidence released after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this book follows the career of the Red Army from its birth in 1918 as the designated vanguard of world revolution to its affiliation in 1941 with 'the citadel of capitalism', the United States. Effectiveness of leadership and military doctrine are particular concerns here, and Josef Stalin is the dominant personality.On the basis of the Russian Civil War (1918-20), the Red Army began to bill itself as 'an army of a new type', inherently superior to all others. However, in late 1920, the Poles trounce it soundly. Later, Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) reveals widespread obsolescence in armament and equipment. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 gives Germany and the USSR a free hand to act against Poland. However, slack performance by the Red Army in the unopposed occupation of eastern Poland and the bungled war with Finland in the winter of 1939-40 necessitate sweeping military reforms. Germany was an enemy in 1918, ally in the 1920s, enemy again in 1933, ally again in 1939, and the enemy once more in 1941, following the German invasion on 22 June 1941. This brings on a catastrophe that by the year's end has consumed nearly the entire pre-invasion Red Army. The United States' entry into the war on 7 December 1941 and the Red Army's subsequent recovery raise the question: Who won the Second World War?

Supported in large part by evidence released after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this book follows the career of the Red Army from its birth in 1918 as the designated vanguard of world revolution to its affiliation in 1941 with ''the citadel of capitalism'', the United States. Effectiveness of leadership and military doctrine are particular concerns here, and Josef Stalin is the dominant personality.On the basis of the Russian Civil War (1918-20), the Red Army began to bill itself as ''an army of a new type'', inherently superior to all others. However, in late 1920, the Poles trounce it soundly. Later, Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) reveals widespread obsolescence in armament and equipment. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 gives Germany and the USSR a free hand to act against Poland. However, slack performance by the Red Army in the unopposed occupation of eastern Poland and the bungled war with Finland in the winter of 1939-40 necessitate sweeping military reforms. Germany was an enemy in 1918, ally in the 1920s, enemy again in 1933, ally again in 1939, and the enemy once more in 1941, following the German invasion on 22 June 1941. This brings on a catastrophe that by the year''s end has consumed nearly the entire pre-invasion Red Army. The United States'' entry into the war on 7 December 1941 and the Red Army''s subsequent recovery raise the question: Who won the Second World War?

Contains 92 illustrations and 45 maps of the Russian Campaign.A brilliant modern history of the German invasion of Russia to their bloody crushing defeat by the re-invigorated Russian forces at the siege of Stalingrad.During 1942, the Axis advance reached its high tide on all fronts and began to ebb. Nowhere was this more true than on the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union. After receiving a disastrous setback on the approaches to Moscow in the winter of 1941-1942, the German armies recovered sufficiently to embark on a sweeping summer offensive that carried them to the Volga River at Stalingrad and deep into the Caucasus Mountains. The Soviet armies suffered severe defeats in the spring and summer of 1942 but recovered to stop the German advances in October and encircle and begin the destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in November and December. This volume describes the course of events from the Soviet December 1941 counteroffensive at Moscow to the Stalingrad offensive in late 1942 with particular attention to the interval from January through October 1942, which has been regarded as a hiatus between the two major battles but which in actuality constituted the period in which the German fortunes slid into irreversible decline and the Soviet forces acquired the means and capabilities that eventually brought them victory. These were the months of decision in the East.

Contains 72 illustrations and 42 maps of the Russian Campaign.After the disasters of the Stalingrad Campaign in the Russian winters of 1942-3, the German Wehrmacht was on the defensive under increasing Soviet pressure; this volume sets out to show how did the Russians manage to push the formerly all-conquering German soldiers back from Russian soil to the ruins of Berlin.Save for the introduction of nuclear weapons, the Soviet victory over Germany was the most fateful development of World War II. Both wrought changes and raised problems that have constantly preoccupied the world in the more than twenty years since the war ended. The purpose of this volume is to investigate one aspect of the Soviet victory-how the war was won on the battlefield. The author sought, in following the march of the Soviet and German armies from Stalingrad to Berlin, to depict the war as it was and to describe the manner in which the Soviet Union emerged as the predominant military power in Europe.