Search results for ""Author Boris Sokolov""

_Operation Bagration_ analyses the great Russian offensive in Belorussia in the summer of 1944 covering the planning of the operation as well as the German plans of the summer campaign of 1944. In depth research sets out to determine the real ratio of the Soviet and German forces as well as their actual losses during the operation. As well as some good decisions, command on both sides made some crucial mistakes as well as main tactical errors all of which are studied in this book to produce a fully rounded view of the campaign and highlights a connection to Operation Overlord by proving that it was only due to the landing at Normandy that the Soviet forces were able to destroy the German Army Group Centre while the elite mobile forces were concentrated in France.

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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 misrepresented in Russia today.

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