Soviet World War Ii

A lone squadron. A frozen front. And the might of the Soviet Union overhead. When Stalin’s bombers strike without warning, Finnish pilot Veikko Niemi leads his understrength squadron into the teeth of the Soviet onslaught. With nothing but outdated Fokker D.XXIs and frozen courage, Niemi launches daring intercepts against overwhelming odds. But a new threat emerges, Colonel Kozlov, a methodical Soviet commander who turns the air war into a calculated game of attrition. As the temperature plummets and tensions rise, Veikko must adapt or watch his men vanish into the frost and fire. Blood ...

Roza Shanina was an exceptional, legendary sniper during World War II, a brave female-soldier known for her beauty, high moral qualities and shooting accuracy. She was credited with fifty-nine confirmed kills, including twelve soldiers during the Battle of Vilnius. And she also kept a diary – a document unique in its content, which reveals to the world the unknown side of war. Translated for the first time into the English language by a professional translator, the war diary of Roza Shanina is a unique piece of history, since diaries were strictly prohibited in the Soviet military in an ...

Flying combat missions in wartime is always dangerous. But imagine doing so in a slow, rickety biplane, at night, with no lights or navigational equipment of any kind. Sound impossible? It wasn't for the Soviet Night Witches. This unit of incredibly brave women flew hundreds of missions to attack German forces on the front lines during World War II. Learn all about these brave women and how their skill and courage in battle helped defeat the Nazis to win the war.

November 30th, 1939 INVADED by the Soviet Union! Finland must mount a desperate defense against overwhelming odds. Outnumbered and outclassed, the world expected the tiny Nordic nation to quickly succumb to the Communist juggernaut. Instead the saga of David versus Goliath was reimagined into Finnish farmers and woodsmen standing firm against Soviet steel. This is the story of Hale’s war, a young man who grew up farming, and hunting the frozen forest of his northern home. Taught from a young age by his father to hunt and trap, Hale has grown into a master woodsman. Not yet eighteen ...

Bloomsbury presents To Besiege a City by Prit Buttar, read by Leighton Pugh. '[An] excellent account.' - Richard Overy, The Telegraph Shortlisted for the Military History Matters Book of the Year Award 2024 A ground-breaking history of the siege of Leningrad, masterfully brought to life by a...

A gripping history of the Nazi invasion of Poland, the true onset of World War II “Exemplary...About as good as military history can be.” —Timothy Snyder, New York Times For Americans, World War II began in December 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Europe, the war began on...

As the end of the Second World War in Europe looms, a new conflict is in its early stages: who will control Europe when the war ends? Soviet double-agent 'Archie' is now a British diplomat in the United States, feeding information on the Special Relationship back to Moscow Centre. Meanwhile...

Hitler vs Stalin: The Clash of Two Tyrants and the Battle for Europe Hitler vs Stalin dives deep into the brutal and complex rivalry between two of history’s most infamous dictators, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. This gripping narrative explores their rise to power, contrasting ideologies, and the devastating impact their regimes had on the 20th century. From the shadowy halls of Berlin and Moscow to the blood-soaked battlefields of the Eastern Front, this book reveals how their personal ambitions, political strategies, and ruthless decisions shaped the fate of millions and changed the ...

A long-awaited English translation of the groundbreaking oral history of women in World War II across Europe and Russia—from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post The Guardian NPR The Economist Milwaukee...

Vasiliy Chuikov offers a detailed history of the Battle of Stalingrad. He was there. Chuikov's account of the battle was first published in 1962. That book was translated into English and published as The Battle for Stalingrad in 1965. This book, Stalingrad: Battle of the Century, is a translation of Chuikov's 1975 edition, a very different work. I have now re-edited my translation and eliminated some mistakes. No translation is ever perfect. There is no doubt that Stalingrad was a turning point in World War II. It was, perhaps, a turning point in human history. Adolf Hitler's psychopathic ...

KATYA OF THE RED SKY Yekaterina Budanova and the Soviet Women Fighter Pilots of World War II By Adam Langweiler She was born into poverty in a small Russian village. She became a factory worker, learned to fly, became an instructor—and then went to war in a Yak fighter against the Luftwaffe. Yekaterina “Katya” Budanova was one of the most remarkable combat pilots of the Second World War. Yet while fellow Soviet fighter pilot Lydia Litvyak became internationally famous, Budanova’s extraordinary story has remained comparatively obscure. Katya of the Red Sky restores her to the center ...

A powerful, unsparing new history of World War II, recasting the conflict as a brutal struggle for survival among declining and ascendant imperial powers In popular memory, the Second World War was an unalloyed victory for freedom over totalitarianism, marking the demise of the age of empires...

NIGHT WITCHES The Women Who Terrorized the Wehrmacht and Vanished from History They flew wooden biplanes through darkness. They had no radios, no armor, no parachutes. They were teenagers given obsolete aircraft and impossible missions. And they terrified the most powerful military machine in Europe. In 1941, as Nazi forces swept across the Soviet Union, Marina Raskova convinced Stalin to do the unthinkable: deploy women as combat pilots. What emerged was the 588th Night Bomber Regiment—young women flying 1920s crop-dusting biplanes on nocturnal bombing raids against German positions. The...

Of the 30 million who fought in the eastern front of World War II, 8 million died, driven forward in suicidal charges, shattered by German shells and tanks. They were the men and women of the Red Army, a ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe's most lethal fighting force and by 1945 had defeated it. Sixty years have passed since their epic triumph, but the heart and mind of Ivan - as the ordinary Russian soldier was called-remain a mystery. We know something about how the soldiers died, but nearly nothing about how they lived, how they saw the world, or why they fought. 

Finland has too few pilots, too few fighters, and no margin for mistakes. December 1939. The Winter War has become a frozen battle of endurance in the skies above Finland. Soviet bomber formations grow larger by the day, and every raid forces the Finnish Air Force to spend blood, fuel, and machines it cannot replace. Lieutenant Veikko Niemi has survived the first brutal weeks of the war, but survival has not made the fight easier. His old Fokkers are battered. His pilots are exhausted. And his mechanics, working with scrap metal, frozen tools, and stubborn hands, will stop at nothing to ...

He ruled through terror and myth, shaping the twentieth century with brutality and ambition. From his rise as a revolutionary outsider to his domination of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin forged an empire of fear that scarred generations. Stalin: The Red Tsar and His Terror is a definitive biography that traces Stalin’s life from obscurity in Georgia to absolute power in Moscow, from his role in defeating Hitler to the machinery of purges, famine, and the Gulag. Drawing on survivor testimonies, archival evidence, and modern scholarship, this book reveals not only how Stalin ruled, but how...

Bloomsbury presents Generalship on the Eastern Front, 1941–45: A Study in Command by Robert Forczyk, read by Elliot Chapman A comprehensive evaluation of generalship on the most important front in World War II. The war on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945 was the largest sustained air-ground...

"The Last Days of Budapest is a masterpiece. Immaculately researched, it is packed with large-than-life characters and revelations about the unknown espionage history of the Second World War…. This is history as it should be written: utterly engrossing." -Malcolm Brabant, author of the New...

New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.

SISTERS OF THE YAK Marina Raskova’s Forgotten Women Fighter Regiment of World War II When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, thousands of women volunteered to fight. Among them were pilots. Under the leadership of legendary aviator Marina Raskova, the Soviet Union created three remarkable women’s aviation regiments. One became famous as the Night Witches. Another flew the powerful Pe-2 dive bomber. The third nearly disappeared from history. Sisters of the Yak tells the story of the 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment, the Soviet women who trained on Yak fighters and took to the ...