The fall of Berlin [antikvár]

FOREWORD Until a few years ago, books on the Second World Wat ^ by Western authors outnumbered those emanatmg from Russian sources by perhaps nine to one. Students of the war on the Eastern Front had to make do largely with the bulky volumes of the official History of the Great Patriotic War, limited in value through its many ideological distortions. While the Anglo-American warlords were pouring out their memoirs, their Russian counterparts—generals who had had at their command more men than any other belligerent nation—remained silent. Now the tables have been turned, the ratio of books published roughly reversed. A flood of military literature has been appearing in Russia, and even the greatest soldier of them all—Marshal Zhukov—^has at last broken his silence. Although of very varying quality, some of these recent books are so frank and outspoken that they will in time require a complete rewriting of Soviet war history. They continue to offer the Russian-speaking historian a veritable El Dorado, and it is sad for the rest of us that only relatively few find English translators. When a work by as prominent a Russian soldier as Marshal Chuikov is published in the West, it is an event of great importance. The first volume of the Marshal's memoirs. The Battle for Stalingrad, which dealt with the Battle of Stalingrad of 1941-2, was—^in my opinion—one of the most significant accounts on the Second World War to emerge from any country. His latest book, which takes vii