Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My copy arrived early and I plowed right in. I had read some of the UK reviews, which piqued my interest. It is easy to see why Stalin’s War has raised eyebrows! McMeekin flays more than the usual quotient of sacred cows. The Roosevelt and Churchill myths, for example, with the author shedding some long overdue light on the former’s penchant for indulging Stalin and the latter’s willingness to sacrifice British military interests for the greater good of the Soviet war effort. Nor is it just the Western Allies who suffer in the telling: McMeekin’s focus on Stalin’s opportunistic aggression and war crimes is certain to put off some Russian readers; his Polish ones will likely not much care for the attention given that country’s opportunistic seizure of Czech territory after Munich. Indeed, with the exception of a handful of unusually prescient (but tragically impotent) military and political advisors, no one really comes off well in McMeekin’s story! And that is how it should be, or so this reader was persuaded after reading the book. McMeekin has doubtless done the book’s reception no favors by alienating such a broad array of constituencies. Stalin’s War will nevertheless come as a delight to those willing to look on the war with fresh eyes. Vigorously argued and thoroughly documented, including a good deal of new and, as yet, largely neglected Soviet archival material, the book offers a spirited corrective to the many grubby certainties with which our understanding of the Second World War has over the years become encrusted.