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The 1941 Battle of Moscow-unquestionably one of the very most decisive battles of World War II-marked the first strategic defeat of the German armed forces in their seemingly unstoppable march across Europe. The Soviets lost many more people in this one battle than the British and Americans lost in the entire Second World War. Now, with authority and narrative power, Rodric Braithwaite tells the storyplot in large part through the average person encounters of ordinary Russian women and men. The narrative is defined firmly against the backdrop of Moscow and its own people, from early 1941, when the Soviet Union was still untouched by the war raging to the west. We see how-despite scores of secret intelligence-the breaching of the border by the Wehrmacht in June took the united states by surprise, and how, when the Germans pushed to Moscow in November, the Red Army and the capital's inhabitants undertook to guard their city, finally, in the wintertime of 1941–1942, turning the Germans back on the city's very outskirts. Braithwaite's dramatic, richly illustrated narrative of the military action offers telling portraits of Stalin and his generals. By interweaving the non-public remembrances of soldiers, politicians, writers, artists, workers, and schoolchildren, he gives us an unprecedented knowledge of the way the war influenced the lifestyle of Moscow and of the extraordinary bravery, endurance, and sacrifice-both voluntary and involuntary-that was required of its citizens.
