Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War: A Modern History - Tapa dura

"Sobering. . . . A global view presented with remarkable clarity." --"The Boston Globe" "Probably the best account of the Eastern Front we shall see until President Putin relaxes his newly imposed restrictions on foreign access to the files. . . . Bellamy has made a tremendous contribution to the record of Russia's struggle, for which future historians will owe a debt." --"The Sunday Times" (London) "Bellamy's treatment is authoritative, his judgments thorough and exacting, and his prose robust." --The "Daily Telegraph" (London)

There have been many individual accounts of particular moments in the vicious war between the Nazi regime and the Soviet behemoth, but none which sets out to tell the full and dreadful story of that absolute war: absolute because both sides aimed to 'exterminate the opponent, to destroy his political existence' and total because it was fought by all elements of society, not simply the armed forces, but civilians - men, women, children - too. Chris Bellamy, Professor of Military Science at Cranfield University, is one of the world's leading experts on this subject and has been working on this book for almost a decade. It benefits from his remarkable insight into strategic issues as well as exhaustive research in hitherto unopened Russian archives. It is the definitive study of what the Soviets called - and what their fifteen successor states still call - the Great Patriotic War.