Author: Dimbleby, Jonathan

Former Soviet Union, USSR (Europe)

Published on 24 April 2025 by Penguin Books Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 640 pages
197 x 129 x 40 | 472g

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER2025 marks the 80th anniversary of VE Day. Read and remember the history that led to this important moment.

‘This book is his best yet . . . Dimblebys work is in a different league, told with such skill and judgment’ Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday TimesA gripping and authoritative account of the year that sealed the fate of the Nazis, from the bestselling historianJune 1944: In Operation Bagration, more than two million Red Army soldiers, facing 500,000 German soldiers, finally avenged their defeat in Operation Barbarossa in 1941. The same month saw the Allies triumph on the beaches of Normandy, but, despite the myths that remain, it was the events on the Eastern Front that sealed Hitler’s fate and destroyed Nazism.

In his new book, bestselling historian Jonathan Dimbleby describes and analyses this momentous year, covering the military, political and diplomatic story in his evocative style. Drawing on previously untranslated German, Russian and Polish sources, we see how sophisticated new forms of deception and ruthless Partisan warfare shifted the Soviets fortunes, how their triumphs effectively gave Stalin authority to occupy Eastern Europe and how it was the events of 1944 that enabled Stalin to dictate the terms of the post-war settlement, laying the foundations for the Cold War . . .

‘Mr. Dimbleby is a sure-footed guide to the labyrinthine military operations along a front line that extended nearly 2,000 miles, from the Baltic to the Black Sea’ Wall Street Journal’Terrific . . . a tour de force’ Sir Richard Evans’Military history at its very best’ Keith LoweSunday Time Bestseller, June 2024