This book argues strongly that the war in the East was Hitler's to lose, that Stalin was in grave jeopardy from the outset of the war, due in large part to his sadistic and vicious behavior throughout the 1930s, which all but destroyed the Red Army and Russian industry, and that the conventional wisdom about the brave Soviet soldiers rescuing the motherland in the Great Patriotic War is nonsense. Stalin's horrendous troop losses left him on the edge of surrender until the Allies saved him.