Sean McMeekin is Professor of History at Bard College, New York. For some years he taught at Bilkent University, Istanbul. His books include the highly successful The Berlin-Baghdad Express (Penguin), The Russian Origins of the First World War and The Ottoman Endgame (Penguin).
A terrific read ... McMeekin is a superb writer. There isn't a
boring page in the book. His breadth of approach, taking in events
from Manchuria to Greece, as well as the main fronts, is refreshing
... When he is angry McMeekin can be magnificent.
*The Times*
Gripping, authoritative, accessible and always bracingly
revisionist.
*Simon Sebag Montefiore*
McMeekin's approach in Stalin's War is both original and refreshing
and the book is written with a wonderful clarity.
*Antony Beevor*
Impressive, well researched and very well written ... McMeekin
invites the reader to look at the history of the war from a vantage
point rarely taken and appreciate the many tragedies and sad
ironies of the grand alliance as it took shape and functioned
during the war ... A new look at the conflict, which poses new
questions and provides new and often unexpected answers to the old
ones.
*The Guardian*
An accomplished, fearless and enthusiastic "Myth-buster", McMeekin
hunts out the mistaken explanations of the past ... The story of
the war itself is well told and impressive in its scope, ranging as
it does from the domestic politics of small states such as
Yugoslavia and Finland to the global context ... McMeekin is right
that we have for too long cast the second world war as the good
one. His book will make us re-evaluate the war and its
consequences.
*Financial Times*
A sweeping reassessment of World War II seeking to "illuminate
critical matters long obscured by the obsessively German-centric
literature" on the subject ... Yet another winner for McMeekin ...
Brilliantly contrarian history.
*Kirkus*
McMeekin draws from recently opened Soviet archives to shed light
on Stalin's dark reasoning and shady tactics ... Packed with
incisive character sketches and illuminating analyses of military
and diplomatic maneuvers, this is a skillful and persuasive
reframing of the causes, developments, and repercussions of
WWII.
*Publishers Weekly*
Brilliantly inquisitive ... This book makes the case that Adolf
Hitler was within a whisker of winning the Second World War and
failed to do so only because President Roosevelt came to the rescue
of Joseph Stalin, Hitler's nemesis.
*National Review*
This book is a mammoth achievement in every sense.
*Michael Brendan Dougherty, author of My Father Left Me
Ireland*
Sean McMeekin's new book fills a massive gap in the historiography
of World War II. Based on exhaustive researches in Russian and
other archives, his examination of Stalin's foreign policy explores
fresh avenues and explodes many myths, perhaps most significant
being that of unwittingly exaggerated emphasis on 'Hitler's war'.
He shows conclusively that the two tyrants were equally
responsible, both for the outbreak of war and the appalling
slaughter which ensued.
*Nikolai Tolstoy*
Stalin's War is above all about strategy: the failure of Roosevelt
and Churchill to make shrewd choices as World War II played out.
McMeekin brilliantly argues that instead of weighting the European
and Pacific theatres to favour their own interests - and weaken the
inevitably antagonistic Soviet Union - FDR and Churchill left the
most critical parts of Asia unguarded while they ground down the
German army, a decision that favoured Stalin's interests far more
than their own.
*Geoffrey Wawro*
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