Contrary to what is often said, Russia was not caught entirely napping by Operation Barbarossa in 1941, but it was too backward and isolated militarily to have an effective answer to it. Armies melted away before the German panzers, huge tracts of territory were lost and cities laid in ruins before Russia began to recover its balance and fight back effectively. Stalin was forced by pressure of circumstances to leave things more in the hands of the soldiers, and a new generation of able, ruthless Soviet commanders emerged - Zhukov, Koniev, Vasilevsky, Vatutin, Malinovsky, Chuikov. The German check outside Moscow gave the defenders heart and a breathing space; then came the grinding victory at Stalingrad, followed closely by the great tank battle at Kursk which decisively put Hitler's generals on the back foot and led to their slow retreat from Russian soil. The inhumanity which both sides showed to civilians, and to human life in general, makes harrowing reading. Professor Overy has written a splendid book, which should be the standard work on the terrible war in the East.