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Forgotten bastards of the Eastern Front : American airmen behind the Soviet lines and the collapse of the Grand Alliance / Serhii Plokhy.

by Plokhy, Serhii, 1957- author.

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New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019]

World War, 1939-1945 -- Aerial operations, American.

World War, 1939-1945 -- Aerial operations, Russian.

Air bases -- Ukraine -- History -- 20th century.

World War, 1939-1945 -- Ukraine.

United States -- Relations -- Soviet Union.

Soviet Union -- Relations -- United States.

9780190061012 (hardcover alkaline paper) :

xiv, 340 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Part 1. Grand alliance -- Mission to Moscow -- Stalin's verdict -- Going frantic -- Poltava -- Part 2. Battles of Poltava -- Soft landing -- Comrades in arms -- Death to spies -- Pearl Harbor on the steppes -- Forbidden love -- Picking a fight -- Fall of Warsaw -- Part 3. Strange bedfellows -- Forgotten bastards of Ukraine -- Watchtower -- New Year's dance -- Yalta -- Prisoners of war -- Rupture -- Last parade -- Part 4. Cold war landing -- Spoils of war -- Poltava suspects -- Witch hunt -- Washington reunion.

"At the conference held in Tehran in November 1943, American officials proposed to their Soviet allies a new operation in the effort to defeat Nazi Germany. The Normandy Invasion was already in the works; what American officials were suggesting until then was for the US Air Force to establish bases in Soviet-controlled territory, in order to "shuttle-bomb" the Germans from the Eastern front. For all that he had been pushing for the United States and Great Britain to do more to help the war effort--the Soviets were bearing the heaviest burden in terms of casualties--Stalin balked at the suggestion of foreign soldiers on Soviet soil. His concern was that they would inflame regional and ideological differences. Eventually in early 1944, Stalin was persuaded to give in, and Operation Baseball and then Frantic were initiated in the Poltova region (in what is today Ukraine). As Plokhy's book shows, what happened on these airbases mirrors the nature of the Grand Alliance itself. While both sides were fighting for the same goal, Germany's unconditional surrender, differences arose that no common purpose could overcome. Soviet secret policeman watched over the operations, shadowing every move, and eventually trying to prevent fraternization between American servicemen and local women. A catastrophic air raid by the Germans revealed the limitations of Soviet air defenses. Relations soured and the operations went south. The story of the American bases foreshadowed the eventual collapse of the Grand Alliance and the start of the Cold War. Using previously inaccessible archives, Allies and Adversaries offers a bottom-up history of the Grand Alliance, showing how it first began to fray on the airfields of World War II."--

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