Free standard shipping on all orders

The Eastern Front: War, Myth, and Memory book cover

1st Edition

The Eastern Front War, Myth, and Memory

Edited By Yan Mann, Olga Kucherenko Copyright 2025
    456 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The Second World War in Eastern Europe is far from a neglected topic, especially since social, cultural, and diplomatic historians have entered a field previously dominated by operational histories and produced a cornucopia of new scholarship offering a more nuanced picture from both sides of the front. However, until now, the story has still been disjointed and specialized, whereby military, social, economic, and diplomatic histories continue to give their own separate accounts. This collection of essays attempts to bring these themes into a more cohesive whole that tells a complex, multi-faceted story of war on the Eastern Front as it truly was.

    This is one of the few critical examinations of the war on the Second World War’s Eastern Front that includes both perspectives and looks at the war as a multifaceted effort. It also reveals how myths are created around military conflicts and has direct relevance to current developments in Europe, linking them to a broader discussion of the Second World War, its impact and utility today. It gives a historical dimension to pressing issues and will be of interest and relevance to history students, policy makers, political scientists, diplomats, and foreign policy experts.

    The Eastern Front will be a useful reference source, since some chapters rely on extensive new archival research and materials, ego sources as well as extensive findings of non-Western scholars, thereby bringing their work to the attention of a broader audience. 

    Introduction

    OLGA KUCHERENKO and YAN MANN

     

    PART I

    Frontlines

               

    1. German Army Command Culture on the Eastern Front

    DAVID STAHEL

     

    1. Soviet Strategy and Operations in the Great Patriotic War: Stalin, the Stavka and the General Staff

    ALEXANDER HILL

     

    1. The Soviet Soldier at War: Discipline, Motivation, and Morale 

    ROGER REESE

     

    1. Greyzone Stalingrad: Civilian Experience of the Battle

    OLGA KUCHERENKO

     

     

    PART II

    Behind the Frontlines

     

    1. The German Army’s Economic Policy and Occupation

    JEFF RUTHERFORD

     

    1. Settlers of the Reich: The Germans of Hitler’s Frontier 

    JACOB FLAWS

     

     

    1. In Their Words: Soviet Women in the Ranks of Soviet Intelligence During World War Two     

    REGINA KAZYULINA

     

    1. Ordinary Men with Guns: Police, Partisans, and Civil War in the German-Occupied Soviet Countryside

    KENNETH SLEPYAN

     

     

    PART III

    International Front

     

    1. The Soviet Elephant and the British Whale: War Strategy and Struggle for Influence in Central and Eastern Europe (1941–45)

    ISKANDER MAGADEEV

     

    1. Winning Friends and Influencing Allies: Soviet Public Diplomacy Initiatives, 1941-5

    OLGA KUCHERENKO

     

    1.  American Anti-Stalinists in Defense of the USSR: The Socialist Workers Party, the Nazi-Soviet War, and Intransigent Revolutionism

    JASON DAWSEY

               

     

    PART IV

    Memory Front

               

    1. The Forgotten: Challenging Brezhnev's Cult of the Great Patriotic War

    YAN MANN

     

    1. Unwitnessed Memories or Destroy After Reading: the Survival and Suppression of Testimony in the USSR

    ASIA KOVRIGINA

     

    1. The Museum of the Defense of Leningrad and the Late-Stalinist Assault on Memory

    ANYA FREE

    Biography

    Yan Mann is an Associate Clinical Professor of History and the Program Lead of the World War II Studies Master’s degree program at Arizona State University. His research interests include the relationship between individual and collective memory, the Stalin cult, censorship, and propaganda.

    Olga Kucherenko is a Faculty Associate at the World War II Studies Master’s degree program at Arizona State University. Her research interests include conflict-based propaganda, wartime childhood, and allied relations. She is the author of Soviet Street Children and the Second World War: Welfare and Social Control under Stalin (2016) and Little Soldiers: How Soviet Children Went to War, 1941-1945 (2011).

    Add to Cart