{"title":"Dmitry Zubov","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"stalin-s-falcons-book-dmitry-zubov-9781399095679","title":"Stalin's Falcons","description":"The Soviet history of the Second World War, written under the conditions of a totalitarian regime, reflected all its features, with the result that it includes solid sets of patriotic fables that have no connection with reality. Many of the events of the war were distorted beyond recognition or even made up from beginning to end.  Archives containing original documents were available only to selected, specially verified KGB  historians' who presented only the version of the war that was acceptable to the Soviet regime. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the process of declassifying archives and gaining wide access to information gradually began to reveal the terrible truth of the crimes of the Soviet regime. One of which, of course, was the incompetent leadership of the Red Army, which led to massive loss of life across the military and civilians alike.  However, the consequences of decades of Soviet propaganda had a strong impact on both Russian and world historical science. Because of this, not only Russian, but, unfortunately, many European and American historians found themselves repeating the Soviet myths they had been fed.  The history of Soviet fighter aircraft did not escape this fate. The tale of Stalin's so-called  Falcons', who allegedly shot down dozens and even hundreds of Luftwaffe aircraft, was persistently drummed into the heads of many generations of Russian people. These heroes, supposedly, flew Soviet fighters whose technical characteristics were many times superior to their German counterparts, with the result that Luftwaffe aces were reportedly afraid of meeting them in the air. These primitive propaganda clich s became a model for describing the actions of Stalin's fighter aircraft.  In this stunning expos , Stalin's Falcons reveals the stark and dark truth of the terrible losses suffered by Soviet flyers, the inferiority of the Russian aircraft and the almost slave-like conditions in which those aircraft were made.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49744891674897,"sku":"NGR9781399095679","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51024364372241,"sku":"NIN9781399095679","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1399095676.jpg?v=1750890573"},{"product_id":"stalins-wonder-tank-book-dmitry-zubov-9781399066754","title":"Stalins Wonder Tank","description":"The Soviet T-34 tank is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable symbols of the Red Army and its struggle against the Third Reich in the Second World War. Not surprisingly, over the years a considerable number of books and films have been dedicated to Stalin’s so-called ‘wonder tank’.  Many historians, especially those in Russia, peremptorily call the T-34 the best tank of the war. In so doing, they often refer to the ‘authoritative’ opinion of Heinz Guderian and other German generals. Von Kleist, for example, is stated to have once referred to the T-34 as ‘the finest tank in the world’. But, as Dmitry Zubov sets out to explore in this book, was this the true picture?  The reality of the summer of 1941, following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, revealed that it took the Wehrmacht only a couple of months to turn Stalin’s tank armada into little more than a pile of scrap metal. Despite this inauspicious beginning to its combat service, the myth of the T-34’s ‘invincibility’ was already being born. It was a development that, argues Dmitry Zubov, was in part driven by the Soviet propaganda machine, but also by their enemy. As the fighting wore on, the Germans became increasingly bogged down in endless operations to cover their flanks from the mythical counterattacks of Stalin’s Red Army, which by that time had actually lost most of its combat capability. But to hide the consequences of Hitler’s incompetent command, German generals had to explain the collapse of Operation Barbarossa by the incredible resilience of Soviet soldiers, the appalling ‘Russian winter’, and finally, by the ‘vast superiority’, to quote Guderian, of the T-34 tank. Between them, Hitler’s commanders argued, they had torn apart their excellent plans.  These facts motivated the author to examine the real history of the creation, production, and combat use of Stalin’s ‘wonder tank’. Under the numerous layers of Soviet secrecy, myths, propaganda and outright lies, he has exposed a bitter reality. The T-34 tank was not a masterpiece of Soviet engineering, but in fact a design that, in reality, was based on plans ‘borrowed’ by Soviets from designers in the West. Produced in an incredible hurry by unskilled workers, Stalin’s ‘wonder tank’ often presented an easy target for the German panzers and anti-tank gunners, and battlefield graves for their Soviet crews.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52100992008465,"sku":"NGR9781399066754","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53183526338833,"sku":"GOR014795858","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53184619479313,"sku":"GOR014796440","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53547994317073,"sku":"NIN9781399066754","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781399066754.jpg?v=1769681187"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-dmitry-zubov.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}