More specifically, it examines how the exigencies of intense turbulence act as crucibles in which ordinary people (and their teams) make themselves capable of doing extraordinary things—first, ...

A week after the Germans invaded the U.S.S.R. on June 22, 1941, Soviet authorities in Smolensk, a medium-size city some 250 miles west of Moscow, issued an order to evacuate parts of its Communist ...

David-Fox provides a detailed examination of the tragic history of the western Soviet territories that swapped hands between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany twice between 1941 and 1943.

explores them in “Crucibles of Power,” narrating what happened in Smolensk and nearby areas during the war. Through diaries, memoirs and other documents illuminating the lives of individual ...