Marshal Kk Rokossovsky

Download or read book Marshal K.K. Rokossovsky written by Boris Sokolov and published by Helion. This book was released on 2015-03-19 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author Boris Sokolov offers this first objective and intriguing biography of Marshal Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky, who is widely considered one of the Red Army's top commanders in the Second World War. Yet even though he brilliantly served the harsh Stalinist system, Rokossovsky himself became a victim of it with his arrest, beatings and imprisonment between 1937 and 1940. The author analyzes all of Rokossovsky's military operations, in both the Russian Civil War and the Second World War, paying particular attention to the problem of establishing the real casualties suffered by both armies in the main battles where Rokossovsky took part, as well as on the Eastern Front as a whole. Rokossovsky played a prominent role in the battles for Smolensk, Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, Belorussia, Poland, East Prussia and Pomerania. While praising Rokossovsky's masterful generalship, the author does not shy away from criticizing the nature of Soviet military art and strategy, in which the guiding principle was "at all costs" and little value was placed on holding down casualties. This discussion extends to the painful topic of the many atrocities against civilians perpetrated by Soviet soldiers, including Rokossovsky's own troops. A highly private man, Rokossovsky disliked discussing his personal life. With the help of family records and interviews, including the original, uncensored draft of the Marshal's memoirs, the author reveals the numerous dualities in Rokossovsky's life. Despite his imprisonment and beatings he endured, Rokossovsky never wavered in his loyalty to Stalin, yet also never betrayed his colleagues. Though a Stalinist, he was also a gentleman widely admired for his courtesy and chivalry. A dedicated family man, women were drawn to him, and he took a 'campaign wife' during the war. Though born in 1894 in Poland, Rokossovsky maintained that he was really born in Russia in 1896. This Polish/Russian duality in Rokossovsky's identity hampered his career and became particularly acute during the Warsaw uprising in 1944 and his later service as Poland's Defense Minister. Thus, the author ably portrays a fascinating man and commander, who became a marshal of two countries, yet who was not fully embraced by either.

Download or read book Stalin's General written by Geoffrey Roberts and published by Random House Incorporated. This book was released on 2012 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major profile of the Soviet general credited with a decisive role in key World War II victories compares his legend with his achievements while surveying his eventful post-war experiences as Krushchev's disgraced defense minister. 15,000 first printing.

Download or read book Blood on the Shores written by Viktor Leonov and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 1994-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Arctic Circle to the shores of Japan, Russia's most famous naval scout describes his deadly missions in the Soviet Navy's World War II version of the U.S. Navy's SEALs. In the only book on the subject, Leonov tells how these elite recon troops acquired their special skills to beat Hitler's 20th Mountain Army.

Download or read book Marshal of Victory written by Geogry Zhukov and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-01-13 with total page 1256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complete and unredacted autobiography by Stalin’s star general, chronicling his many campaigns throughout WWII. At Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin—as well as virtually all the principal battles on the Eastern Front during the Second World War—Georgy Zhukov played a major role. He was Stalin’s pre-eminent general throughout the conflict, and he chronicled his brilliant career as he saw it in this essential text. Here, Zhukov reveals intriguing insights into who he was, both as a man and as a commander. He also delves into the military thinking and decision-making at the highest level of the Soviet command—making this volume essential reading for anyone studying the conflict in the east. This edition of the memoirs, which were first published in heavily censored form, features an introduction by Professor Geoffrey Roberts in which he summarizes the additional material omitted from previous editions. He also provides, in an appendix, a translation of Zhukov’s account of the 1953-7 period as well as an interview with Zhukov that has previously not been available in English.

Download or read book Operation Barbarossa written by Jonathan Dimbleby and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in the United Kingdom by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, under the title: Barbarossa: How Hitler lost the war.

Download or read book Battle for Belorussia written by David M. Glantz and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 796 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuing his magisterial account of the Eastern Front campaigns, the writer cited by The Atlantic as “indisputably the West's foremost expert on the subject” focuses here on the Red Army's operations from the fall of 1943 through the April 1944. David M. Glantz chronicles the Soviet Army's efforts to further exploit their post-Kursk gains and accelerate a counteroffensive that would eventually take them all the way to Berlin. The Red Army's Operation Bagration that liberated Belorussia in June 1944 sits like a colossus in the annals of World War II history. What is little noted in the history books, however, is that the Bagration offensive was not the Soviets' first attempt. Battle for Belorussia tells the story of how, eight months earlier, and acting under the direction of Stalin and his Stavka, three Red Army fronts conducted multiple simultaneous and successive operations along a nearly 400-mile front in an effort to liberate Belorussia and capture Minsk, its capital city. The campaign, with over 700,000 casualties, was a Red Army failure. Glantz describes in detail the series of offensives, with their markedly different and ultimately disappointing results, that, contrary to later accounts, effectively shifted Stalin's focus to the Ukraine as a more manageable theater of military operations. Restoring the first Belorussian offensive to its place in history, this work also reveals for the first time what the later, successful Bagration operation owed to its forgotten precursor.

Download or read book Myths and Legends of the Eastern Front written by Boris Sokolov and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2020-01-19 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This English translation of the original Russian work is thought provoking, challenging the ‘official’ version of what happened” during World War II (Firetrench). The memory of the Second World War on the Eastern Front—still referred to in modern Russia as the Great Patriotic War—is an essential element of Russian identity and history, as alive today as it was in Stalin’s time. It is represented as a defining episode, a positive historical myth that sustains the Russian national idea and unites the majority of Russian citizens. As a result, as Boris Sokolov shows in this powerful and thought-provoking study, the heroic and tragic side of the war is highlighted while the dark side—the incompetent, negligent and even criminal way the war was run—is overlooked. Although almost eighty years have passed since the defeat of Nazi Germany, he demonstrates that many of the fabrications put forward during the war and immediately afterwards persist into the present day. In a sequence of incisive chapters he uncovers the truth about famous wartime episodes that have been consistently misrepresented. His bold reinterpretation should go some way towards dispelling the enduring myths about the Great Patriotic War. It is necessary reading for anyone who is keen to understand how it continues to be distorted in Russia today.