Thunder in the East; The Nazi-Soviet War 1941-1945

London: Hodder Arnold, 2007. Paperback Edition Published 2007 [stated]. First printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good. xxvi, 502 pages. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. List of Abbreviations. List of Code Names. General Editor's Preface. Preface. Chronology. Glossary. Notes. Select Bibliography. Index. There is slight cover wear. . Evan Mawdsley (born 1945) is a British historian and former Professor of International History at the University of Glasgow's School of Humanities. He is currently a Professorial Research Fellow. He specializes in Russian history and the history of World War II. Born in 1945, he earned a bachelor of arts degree from Haverford College in Pennsylvania in 1967 and a Ph.D. from the School of Slavonic Studies of the University of London in 1972. He began work at the University of Glasgow in 1970, becoming a professor of modern and international history there in 1999. Mawdsley published his first book, The Russian Revolution and the Baltic Fleet: War and Politics, February 1917-April 1918, in 1978. In 2007 Mawdsley published Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945. The account looks at the confrontation between the Nazi forces and the Soviet Union toward the end of World War II, considered to be the largest continuously fought land battle in history. Mawdsley approaches the battle on a number of levels, discussing strategic plans of the various armies, the actions of individual soldiers, and the significance and outcomes of specific battles in a number of cities. Benjamin Schwarz, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, found the book to be "crisply written." Schwarz commented that "this exceptionally precise and judicious work, now the authoritative general history, is especially useful." The battles in Russia played the decisive part in Hitler's defeat. Gigantic, prolonged, and bloody, they contrasted with the general nature of the fighting on other fronts. The Russians fought on their own in "their" theater of war and with an independent strategy. Stalinist Russia was a country radically different from its liberal democratic allies. Hitler and the German high command, for their part, conceived and carried out the Russian campaign as a singular "war of annihilation." This riveting new book is a penetrating, broad-ranging, yet concise overview of this vast conflict. It investigates the Wehrmacht and the Red Army and the command and production systems that organized and sustained them. It considers a range of further themes concerning this most political of wars. Benefiting from a post-Communist, post-Cold War perspective, the book takes advantage of a wealth of new studies and source material that have become available over the last decade. Readers from history buffs to scholars will find something new in this exciting new book.