The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II

Groom brings his experience as both novelist and historian to bear in this well-researched and fast-paced narrative of the complex relationship among the three statesmen who determined the outcome of WWII. Groom demonstrates a solid command of the literature to describe the origins and functioning of a grand alliance that was anything but natural: Britain and the U.S. had a long history of mutual rivalry, and Soviet Russia was an ideological enemy and logical geopolitical adversary of the Western capitalist powers. Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Josef Stalin were all products of political adversity, all strong-willed and mutually suspicious. Groom effectively synergizes the interactions of personalities and policies to make a persuasive case that the Big Three managed to make just enough compromises in terms of personae, policies, and principles to keep the alliance on track. In his telling, Churchill is hands-on, Roosevelt more a referee, Stalin a survivor. Groom’s background as a military historian shows in his excellent narrative of the decisive operations in the European theater and their influence on top-level negotiations. General readers in particular will find Groom’s commonsense presentation of the Big Three’s wartime interactions a useful bridge between survey histories and more specialized analyses. This is an excellent history. [em]Agent: Keith Korman, Raines & Raines. (Nov.) [/em]