Mr. Groom paints a vivid portrait of men caught between the vise jaws of military necessity and political reality. Anecdotes about their personal lives, such as Stalin’s tumultuous family relationships and FDR’s struggle with polio, bring color to leaders we remember through black-and-white photographs and newsreels. Churchill is a character tailor-made for Mr. Groom’s style, and he captures the English lion’s genius for inspiration in bold, beautiful strokes ... Stalin, by contrast, rarely betrays warmth or humor to offset the monstrous qualities for which he is infamous ... Mr. Groom illustrates Stalin’s darkest side through the dictator’s twisted relationship with his bloodthirsty secret police chief ... In a fine telling of the 'what,' some of the book’s 'why' can feel a bit rushed ... The story line jumps a bit, and at times its arc can seem 'like a box of chocolates' ... At its best, Mr. Groom tells an enthralling story of three nations, each wary of the others, and of three men who set aside deep differences for a common cause.
... Groom rightly judges Churchill and Roosevelt to be great war leaders ... Winston Groom’s The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II will hopefully help a new generation learn about the heroics, the horrors, and the tragedies of World War II.
Well-researched and fast-paced ... Groom effectively synergizes the interactions of personalities and policies to make a persuasive case ... General readers in particular will find Groom’s commonsense presentation of the Big Three’s wartime interactions a useful bridge between survey histories and more specialized analyses. This is an excellent history.
There’s not much new in this history, and certainly nothing that readers well-versed in WWII history won’t know. Yet that doesn’t seem to be the audience here, for Groom writes as if his readers had never heard of Churchill, or FDR, or Uncle Joe ... Not Groom at his best but certainly serviceable for readers without much background in the history of the era.
