The American state, the fascists and the Soviet Union’s ex-revolutionaries
In
Cold War Exiles and the CIA: Plotting to Free Russia, published by Oxford University Press last year, Benjamin Tromly, a professor of history at University of Puget Sound, explores the relationship between America’s post-war spy agencies and anti-communist Russian and Soviet émigrés dedicated to regime change in the USSR.
His work contains extensive evidence of the machinations of the fascists with which the US government was working and the willingness of former socialists to work alongside the far-right to promote the anti-Soviet cause. Yet the book’s considerable strength is also at times a weakness. Tromly traces in detail the twists and turns in the reactionary, backstabbing, at times buffoonish, politically tragic, and frequently ineffective efforts of émigrés jockeying for money and political influence. But the author does not make sense of all the evidence. In the final analysis, what
Zhukov Strikes Back: How the Red Army Finally Halted Hitler s 1941 Invasion
Hitler s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union nearly succeeded until a counterattack, combined with a brutal winter led to ultimate victory for the USSR.
Here s What You Need to Know: The Soviets would push the Germans back, but they were far from destroyed.
Smolensk Russia, Headquarters, German Army Group Center (AGC), December 3, 1941; Army Group commander, 61-year-old Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock is a troubled man.
The day before, he had told his field army commanders who were attacking Moscow that the enemy was close to breaking. Today he wasn’t so sure. Today the Army Group’s 4th Army, directly west of Moscow, had gone over to the defensive. The army commander, 59-year-old Generalfeldmarschall Günther von Kluge, halted the attack because his troops were simply exhausted and could go no farther.