Stalin's Lieutenants: A Study of Command Under Duress

Sea Power, Aug 1997

STALIN'S LIEUTENANTS: A Study of Command Under Duress, by William J. Spahr. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1997. 322 pp. $24.95. Stalin was blessed with a number of excellent and loyal followers, but Stalin himself was jealous and paranoid, and ended up purging not only the Bolshevik hierarchy but also the Soviet military of its cadre of good leaders-then unsuccessfully attempted to replace them.

A megalomaniac and a micromanager by nature, unwilling to either make decisions or to delegate authority, Stalin nonetheless "led" the Soviet Union to victory over Nazi Germanythanks primarily to the eventual rise to the top of such new military leaders as Marshals A.M. Vasilevsky and Georg Zhukov. These are their stories. With black and white photos, maps, a sketch of the fortress at Brest, introduction, footnotes, epilogue, bibliography, and index.