Stalin Saved the World for Democracy(???)

I'll bet that got your attention. What should get your attention even more is that apparently it's true.

I'm referring to a review of a number of books, titled "Stalin's Gift," that was published in the May 2007 issue of Atlantic Monthly. The reviewer, Benjamin Schwarz, looks broadly at a number of recently published books that fill in gaping holes in our knowledge about World War II's eastern front, between Germany and the Soviet Union. These books are based on information that was not available for decades, but is now that the Cold War has ended.

Among the startling bits of information are these:

• More than 400 German and Red Army divisions fought along a 1,000-mile front for four years; in the West the battle never amounted to more than 15 Allied and 15 German divisions.
• Approximately 88 percent of the German military dead were killed on the eastern front.

In fact, Schwarz quotes Norman Davies, author of Europe at War, 1935-1945, who said:

The Soviet war effort was so overwhelming that impartial historians of the future are unlikely to rate the British and American contribution to the European theatre as much more than a sound supporting role.

Not only that, according to Schwarz, Stalin himself was instrumental in the success of the Soviet effort. First, he surrounded himself with the best advisers available and trusted them, and second, he mastered the considerations of war and was actually calling the shots. Schwarz does not in any way overlook the brutality of Stalin's policies, or the mistakes he made in the learning process, but he closes the article quoting Geoffrey Roberts, author of Stalin's Wars, saying:

To make so many mistakes and to rise from the depths of such defeat to go on to win the greatest military victory in history was a triumph beyond compare . . . Stalin . . . saved the world for democracy.

Now that(!!) is pretty dang interesting!

Here are a few of the other books mentioned in the article:

Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 - by Evan Mawdsley

800 Days on the Eastern Front - by Nikolai Litvin

A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 - by Vasily Grossman, translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova

Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945 - by Catherine Merridale

Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War - by Rodric Braithwaite