Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
Audiobook13 hours
Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War
Written by Rodric Braithwaite
Narrated by Simon Vance
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
The 1941 Battle of Moscow-unquestionably one of the most decisive battles of World War II-marked the first strategic defeat of the German armed forces in their seemingly unstoppable march across Europe. The Soviets lost many more people in this one battle than the British and Americans lost in the whole of the Second World War. Now, with authority and narrative power, Rodric Braithwaite tells the story in large part through the individual experiences of ordinary Russian men and women.
The narrative is set firmly against the background of Moscow and its people, beginning in early 1941, when the Soviet Union was still untouched by the war raging to the west. We see how-despite a mass of secret intelligence-the breaching of the border by the Wehrmacht in June took the country by surprise, and how, when the Germans pushed to Moscow in November, the Red Army and the capital's inhabitants undertook to defend their city, finally, in the winter of 1941–1942, turning the Germans back on the city's very outskirts. Braithwaite's dramatic, richly illustrated narrative of the military action offers telling portraits of Stalin and his generals. By interweaving the personal remembrances of soldiers, politicians, writers, artists, workers, and schoolchildren, he gives us an unprecedented understanding of how the war affected the daily life of Moscow and of the extraordinary bravery, endurance, and sacrifice-both voluntary and involuntary-that was required of its citizens.
The narrative is set firmly against the background of Moscow and its people, beginning in early 1941, when the Soviet Union was still untouched by the war raging to the west. We see how-despite a mass of secret intelligence-the breaching of the border by the Wehrmacht in June took the country by surprise, and how, when the Germans pushed to Moscow in November, the Red Army and the capital's inhabitants undertook to defend their city, finally, in the winter of 1941–1942, turning the Germans back on the city's very outskirts. Braithwaite's dramatic, richly illustrated narrative of the military action offers telling portraits of Stalin and his generals. By interweaving the personal remembrances of soldiers, politicians, writers, artists, workers, and schoolchildren, he gives us an unprecedented understanding of how the war affected the daily life of Moscow and of the extraordinary bravery, endurance, and sacrifice-both voluntary and involuntary-that was required of its citizens.
Author
Rodric Braithwaite
Sir Rodric Braithwaite is a former British diplomat and author whose long Foreign Office career took him to Indonesia, Poland, Italy, America and Russia. He was British Ambassador in Moscow during the fall of the Soviet Union, which he described in Across the Moscow River(2002, Yale). Rodric Braithwaite was subsequently foreign policy adviser to the Prime Minister, John Major, and Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. He is author of Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan (Profile Books), Moscow 1941 (Profile Books), a bestseller translated into nineteen languages and Armageddon & Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation (2017).
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Reviews for Moscow 1941
Rating: 3.858695652173913 out of 5 stars
4/5
46 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A lively popular history of Moscow and what the Great Patriotic War meant to the city. If you are looking for a close analysis of the military action you'll probably be disappointed. If you want to gain an appreciation of how the German invasion was experienced through the breadth of Soviet society until the tide crested at Moscow, you'll find much food for thought. I enjoyed this book a great deal more than expected, seeing as the author has a great appreciation of the city of Moscow and its history while keeping events in perspective; how myth and memory have carried down the years is one of Braithwaite's major concerns.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The quote on the front cover by Simon Sebag Montefiore "a heartbreaking and thrilling story of peerless heroism and misery on a barely imaginable scale" sums it up perfectly. The author's account is a perfect mixture of military, political and social history, enlivened vastly by the interviews conducted with ordinary survivors about their experiences and those of their families and comrades who died.