This well-researched history tracks how the course of World War II influenced Josef Stalin’s standing with his allies, so 'saving' Stalin takes on multiple meanings ... Saving Stalin offers a thoughtful analysis of the compromises leaders made to win a war, the outcome of which would have been uncertain without those difficult choices.
John Kelly, who has previously written narrative histories of the Black Death, the Irish famine, and the early stages of the Second World War, engagingly revisits the turbulent and often strained relationships between the U.S., Britain, and Soviet Russia in their war against Nazi Germany and her Axis partners in his new book Saving Stalin.
Unfortunately, this latest work from Kelly (The Great Mortality) focuses on the war in Europe but doesn’t consider the global implications and includes numerous errors and jarring statements throughout, some more forgivable than others ... Moreover, Kelly writes that slain Nazi soldiers were 'assembled in the snowy fields... summoned to Valhalla,' the mythological Norse hall of warriors killed in battle, thus glorifying men who perpetrated some of the worst atrocities in history. Errors and awkward prose mar a work that could have otherwise been acceptable. Not recommended.
The author relies mostly on secondary sources, but he chooses them well. As a result, this is high-quality history that will disturb only readers who learn about WWII from the History Channel. A well-rendered popular history describing war and great men.
Historian Kelly (Never Surrender) offers a solid look at the evolving relationships among FDR, Churchill, and Stalin that led to their cooperation to defeat Germany in WWII ... but ends the book rather abruptly with Stalin’s May 1945 victory speech, offering little insight into the postwar dynamics among the U.S., U.K., and Soviet Union ... Occasionally overwrought prose [...] distracts from Kelly’s firm grasp of the history and the personalities involved. The result is an enjoyable but nonessential account of the alliance that won WWII.
