The Devils' Alliance
  • Published: 15 January 2016
  • ISBN: 9780099571896
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $35.00
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The Devils' Alliance

Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941

Formats & editions
EBook
21 Aug 2014
Paperback
15 Jan 2016
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The gripping story of the last great unexplored aspect of the Second World War

For nearly two years the two most infamous dictators in history actively collaborated with one another. The Nazi-Soviet Pact stunned the world when it was announced, the Second World War was launched under its auspices with the invasion and division of Poland, and its eventual collapse led to the war’s defining and deciding clash.

It is a chapter too often skimmed over by popular histories of the Second World War, and in The Devils’ Alliance Roger Moorhouse tells the full story of the pact between Hitler and Stalin for the first time, from the motivation for its inception to its dramatic and abrupt end in 1941 as Germany declared war against its former partner.

Using first-hand and eye-witness testimony, this is not just an account of the turbulent, febrile politics underlying the unlikely collaboration between these two totalitarian regimes, but of the human costs of the pact, as millions of eastern Europeans fell victim to the nefarious ambitions of Hitler and Stalin.
  • Published: 15 January 2016
  • ISBN: 9780099571896
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Roger Moorhouse

Roger Moorhouse is a historian and author specialising in modern German history. He is the co-author, with Norman Davies, of Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City, and the author of Killing Hitler: The Third Reich and the Plots Against the Fuhrer and The Devil's Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin.

portrait photo of Roger Moorhouse

Also by Roger Moorhouse

The Forgers
First to Fight
Berlin at War
Killing Hitler
Microcosm
See all

Praise for The Devils' Alliance

Superbly researched and academically impeccable, yet written with all the pace of a thriller, The Devils' Alliance shines a powerful beam into one of the undeservedly least known aspects of the Second World War

Andrew Roberts

In this profoundly researched, briskly argued and wonderfully readable book, full of dramatic and darkly comic detail, Roger Moorhouse has done history a great service. He has rescued one of the Second World War’s dirtiest little secrets from the shadows into which the pro-Soviet bias of post-war historians had swept it and reveals in all its moral squalor the deal that made it possible for Hitler to go to war.

Professor Adam Zamoyski

The Devils' Alliance is a marvellous achievement. No event was more crucial to the outbreak of the Second World War than the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, and no one is better qualified to explore its grim implications than Roger Moorhouse

Norman Davies

Roger Moorhouse’s definitive book blends eyewitness accounts with an authoritative master narrative… The Devils’ Alliance is not just a good book, it’s an important one, making a significant contribution to our understanding of the two worst dictators of the 20th Century, and the calamitous conflict they both had a hand in causing

History of War Magazine

Elegant

Independent

Meticulous and vividly readable… Moorhouse’s grim and compelling book could not be more topical

Sunday Telegraph

Moorhouse is the best guide now available to explain…the awful consequences for those caught in the unscrupulous coils of dictatorship

Richard Overy, Literary Review

Authoritative and highly readable

Lawrence James, The Times

Thorough and eloquent... a scholarly yet accessible reminder of the frighteningly tangible costs of totalitarianism

New Statesman

A highly enjoyable history written with verve and attention to detail

Financial Times

Lucid and well-researched

Keith Lowe, Mail on Sunday

A terrifying account of cynical diplomacy, deceit, untrammelled power and the echoes that can be heard even now

Sinclair McKay, Daily Telegraph

Superb

Brendan Simms, Wall Street Journal

Authoritative, highly readable account.

Lawrence James, The Times

Intelligent, well-informed.

Evan Mawdsley, BBC History Magazine

Has a lot more to offer than the usual facts and figures thrown together about a largely forgotten part of history… This has a certain amount of written fluidity… I have read any number of books about this subject and I have to say that this is one of the best researched that I have found… I found it a satisfying read throughout, I learnt a lot and filled in a few holes in my knowledge, an excellent book.

Reg Seward, Nudge
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