... [an] indispensable new book.

The volume is impressive even by the standard of histories of the second world war.

McMeekin is a superb writer. There isn’t a boring page in the book. His familiarity with the archives of several countries is extraordinary. His breadth of approach, taking in events from Manchuria to Greece, as well as the main fronts, is refreshing.

Every once in a while a book comes along that can simultaneously educate, infuriate, and astound you as it upends everything you thought you know about a subject. Mr. McMeekin has written an astonishing recasting of World War II that truly revises some of the accepted historiography of that war.

McMeekin is a formidable researcher, working in several languages, and he is prepared to pose the big questions and make judgments. He does not spare the incompetence of Stalin as a strategist or the reckless disregard for life of the Soviet commanders. The story of the war itself is well told and impressive in its scope, ranging as it does from the domestic politics of small states such as Yugoslavia and Finland to the global context. It reminds us, too, of what Soviet 'liberation' actually meant for eastern Europe.

... will probably leave many readers purple with rage. Yet the idea of focusing on Stalin, rather than Hitler, is a clever way of inviting us to rethink the traditional narrative.

So sparse is the evidence for the war-revolution hypothesis that McMeekin resorts to citing a blatant forgery: a document purporting to report on a speech Stalin supposedly made in August 1939 in which he spoke about the Sovietisation of Europe as a result of the war he intended to provoke. The document in question initially appeared in the French press shortly after the outbreak of war and was plainly propaganda designed to discredit Stalin at a time when he was collaborating with Hitler.

McMeekin pays more attention than most military historians to the loathsome behavior of both sides to civilians and even their own soldiers. He shows less sympathy than most to Stalin’s insults and demands for aid from the Allies and none whatsoever for Soviet representatives vacuuming up America’s patents, technology, and services.

... richly detailed.