The Struggle for Europe

Regarded by John Keegan as the best contemporary account of WWII in Europe.

I have endeavoured to explain how the present situation came about; how and why the Western Allies, while gaining military victory, suffered political defeat; how and why, in the process of crushing Nazi Germany and liberating Western Europe, they allowed the Soviet Union to gain control of Eastern Europe and to prevent the application there of the principles of the Atlantic Charter for which they had fought.

In considering the history of the war in the West from the perspective of the 1950s, I have tried to show not only how Hitler was overthrown but also why Stalin emerged victorious; how Russia came to replace Germany as the dominant power on the Continent; and how Stalin succeeded in obtaining from Roosevelt and Churchill what he had failed to obtain from Hitler.