An illustrated encyclopedia prepared by leading military historians Aleksei Isaev and Artyom Drabkin—an exceptionally complete visual guide to the events of 1941–1945. The Great Patriotic War remains “unknown” in many ways even today: the many publications about individual battles don’t give a unified understanding of the bloodiest war in history, a war that can’t be comprehended through scattered episodes. For the first time, this book offers a way to see the war as a whole.
What the reader will find is not just a sequential account of combat operations from June 22, 1941 to the victorious May 1945 and the Japanese surrender, but a vast panorama that allows one to perceive the war as an integrated whole—both in details and in its real tragedy and grandeur. All events of 1941–1945 are presented at a modern scholarly level, relying on declassified archival materials and a wide range of foreign sources. The course of operations, the role of people and technology are shown—without any ideological distortion or political rhetoric. The edition is supplemented with hundreds of unique photographs, maps, and drawings of military equipment.