Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945

Books

"May be the best historical portrait of life in the Red Army yet published . . . [researched] with extraordinary patience and a wonderful ear for nuance." -Anne Applebaum, The New York Review of Books Of the thirty million who fought in the eastern front of World War II, eight million died, driven forward in suicidal charges, shattered by German shells and tanks. They were the men and women of the Red Army, a ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe's most lethal fighting force and by 1945 had defeated it. Sixty years have passed since their epic triumph, but the heart and mind of Ivan-as the ordinary Russian soldier was called-remain a mystery. We know something about how the soldiers died, but nearly nothing about how they lived, how they saw the world, or why they fought. Sourced from previously inaccessible military archives, personal diaries, and intimate veterans' narratives, author Catherine Merridale unveils the untold journey of these soldiers from their first encounter with the German ...