Russia Military History

The Eastern Alliance has suffered multiple crushing defeats in the Pacific, and the tide seems to be turning against them. The Allies turn their attentions to the Russian Far East, but are they pushing ahead of themselves? After a series of tragic events in America, will the country come together or fracture apart? The US economy has now been fully retooled for war, but will it be enough to overcome the enemy forces that seek to destroy the nation? Battlefield Russia is the highly anticipated fifth book in the action-packed Red Storm military thriller series.

In this book, the first to draw from recently released archives, Robert Conquest gives us Stalin as a child and student; as a revolutionary and communist theoretician; as a political animal skilled in amassing power and absolutely ruthless in maintaining it. He presents the landmarks of Stalin's rule: the clash with Lenin; collectivization; the Great Terror; the Nazi-Soviet pact and the Nazi-Soviet war; the anti-Semitic campaign that preceded his death; and the legacy he left behind.

Enter Averell Harriman: a railroad magnate and, at the start of the war, the fourth-richest man in America. At Roosevelt’s behest, he traveled to Britain to serve as a liaison between the president and Churchill and to spearhead what became known as the Harriman Mission. Together with his fashionable young daughter Kathy, an unforgettable cast of British diplomats, and Churchill himself, he would eventually manage to wrangle Stalin into the partnership the Allies needed to defeat Hitler.

In late November 1942, Soviet forces surrounded Paulus' Sixth Army in a pocket outside the Russian city of Stalingrad. In response the Germans planned a relief operation, Operation Winter Storm, intended to break through the Soviet forces and open the pocket, releasing the encircled units. The 6th Panzer Division was the spearhead of the German relief force. The attack started on December 12th, 1942 and was aborted on December 23rd after heavy Soviet counterattacks. This failure sealed the fate of the German 6th Army in Stalingrad.

To the Soviet Union, the sacrifices that enabled the country to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II were sacrosanct. The foundation of the Soviets’ hard-won victory was laid during the battle for the city of Stalingrad, resting on the banks of the Volga River. To Russians, it is a pivotal landmark of their nation’s losses, with more than two million civilians and combatants either killed, wounded, or captured during the bitter fighting from September 1942 to February 1943. Both sides endured terrible conditions in brutal, relentless house-to-house fighting.

Stephen Ambrose describes how the Army Air Forces recruited, trained, and chose those few who would undertake the most demanding and dangerous jobs in the war. These are the boys -- turned pilots, bombardiers, navigators, and gunners of the B24s -- who suffered over 50 percent casualties.

In April 1945, German troops withdrawing from the Seelow Heights were encircled by the Soviet Army near the small town of Halbe, south-east of Berlin. Rather than surrender, their orders were to attempt to break out, westward, and join up with the German twelfth Army. A brutal battle ensued, with an estimated 30,000 German and 20,000 Russian soldiers killed, along with thousands of civilians.

The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Reich in January 1945. Political instructors rammed home the message of Wehrmacht and SS brutality. The result was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known, with tanks crushing refugee columns under their tracks, mass rape, pillage and destruction. Over seven million fled westwards from the terror of the Red Army. Antony Beevor reconstructs the experiences of those millions caught up in the nightmare of the Third Reich's final collapse.

History remembers the Soviets and the Nazis as bitter enemies and ideological rivals - the two opposing totalitarian regimes of World War II whose conflict would be the defining and deciding clash of the war. Yet for nearly a third of the conflict's entire timespan, Hitler and Stalin stood side by side as partners.

In this new edition of his popular 2014 work, Mark Galeotti traces the progress of the wars in Chechnya, from the initial Russian advance through to urban battles such as Grozny, and the prolonged guerrilla warfare in the mountainous regions. Bringing the book up to date, including a revised introduction and new content on the Kadyrovtsy’s role in Russia’s other conflicts, Galeotti assesses how the wars have torn apart the fabric of Chechen society and their impact on Russia itself.

Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony was first played in the city of its birth on August 9, 1942. There has never been a first performance to match it. Pray God, there never will be again. Almost a year earlier, the Germans had begun their blockade of the city. Almost a year earlier, the Germans had begun their blockade of the city. Already many thousands had died of their wounds, the cold, and most of all, starvation.

The inside story of how America's enemies launched a cyberwar against us - and how we've learned to fight back. In this dramatic audiobook, former assistant attorney general John P. Carlin takes listeners to the front lines of a global but little-understood fight as the Justice Department and the FBI chases down hackers, online terrorist recruiters, and spies.

In 1941 Hitler's armies blocked the last roads leading into Leningrad. What followed was one of the most horrific sieges in history. When the German High Command encircled Leningrad it was a deliberate policy to eradicate the city's civilian population by starving them to death. As winter set in and food supplies dwindled, starvation and panic set in.

Mansur Abdulin fought in the front ranks of the Soviet infantry against the German invaders at Stalingrad, Kursk, and on the banks of the Dnieper. This is his extraordinary story. His vivid firsthand account of a ruthless war on the Eastern Front gives rare insight into the reality of the fighting and into the tactics and mentality of the Red Army's soldiers.

World War I and the Russian Revolution together shaped the 20th century in profound ways. In The End of Tsarist Russia, acclaimed scholar Dominic Lieven connects for the first time the two events, providing both a history of the First World War's origins from a Russian perspective and an international history of why the revolution happened.

This audiobook exposes the misconceptions, half-truths, and outright lies that have shaped the still dominant but largely mythical version of what happened in the White House during those harrowing two weeks of secret Cuban missile crisis deliberations. A half-century after the event it is surely time to demonstrate, once and for all, that RFK's Thirteen Days and the personal memoirs of other ExComm members cannot be taken seriously.

"Vanished is a scientific, political, environmental, and medical thriller where the action begins from the first line and doesn’t let up until the very end. It’s a page-turning rollercoaster ride and is highly recommended." Readers' Favorite A ship washes ashore in the Philippines without a single crew member aboard. All residents of an alpine village disappear without a trace. Connecting the two events is the appearance of strange, metallic spheres and scorch marks in both locations. An NSA team led by agents Alton and Mallory Blackwell discover a link between the disappearances and a ...

In 1992 Vasili Mitrokhin defected to England and brought along an extensive archive of military intelligence from the Soviet Union. A career KGB officer who served as chief archivist for its foreign operations, Vasili Mitrokhin became disillusioned with the Soviet system and its constant repression of dissidents at home and abroad. Determined to preserve the truth, he secretly compiled a detailed record of the agency's worldwide espionage network...

In a damning, inspiring, and breathtaking narrative of what is likely to be a turning point for Europe—and the world—Guardian correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Luke Harding reports firsthand on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When, just before dawn on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched a series of brutal attacks, Harding was there, on the ground in Kyiv. But this senseless violence was met with astounding resilience—from, among others, the country’s embattled president—and the courage of a people prepared to risk everything to preserve their nation’s freedom.

This DIA report examines a resurgent Russia’s military power to foster a deeper understanding of its core capabilities, goals, and aspirations in the 21st century. The resurgence of Russia on the world stage - the Crimean Peninsula, destabilizing Eastern Ukraine, intervening on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and shaping the information environment to suit its interests - poses a major challenge to the United States. Moscow will continue to aggressively pursue its foreign policy and security objectives by employing the full spectrum of the state’s capabilities.