[Jukka Juutinen]

I have my copy in my hands now, and so far I have read about 60 pages. I find the book so far excellent as far as the content is concerned. Nevenkin describes the events from German, Soviet and Hungarian perspectives. Plus he writes well. The beginning of the book has an emphasis on the political development. Hitler's failures as a statesman need not be repeated, but Churchill's failure as such is evident in this book as well, and this is to be commented given the prevalence of the hagiographic accounts on him even today. Stalin who never forgot that a war must always have a political goal treated W. C. like a marionette. Perhaps the best short description of the latter is by Captain Russell Grenfell who wrote that Churchill tried to be too much a Whitehall warlord when he should have been the Downning Street politician.

The book has extensive apendices, and one is a most interesting glimpse on the ideological traditions of the Red Army. In an order (signed by Rodion Malinovsky) to prevent looting etc. on Hungarian civilians, the text begins "The enemy should be beaten and annihilated with the utmost hatred...". While one can imagine that e.g. Eisenhower might have signed such a piece of text, I bet that e.g. for Montgomery it would have been simply unbearable language for a disciplined professional officer to sign.

Nevenkin's reasoning that "...prolongation of the struggle for the Hungarian Plain and the hostile atmosphere that surrounded the Red Army,..." explained Soviet troops' misbehaviour is in my opinion too simplistic for the core reason lies most probably with the combination of Russian people's cultural characteristics coupled with Bolshevist ideology.

The book is overall very well designed with a pleasant reasonably small font, though placement of maps could be better. However, whoever edited the text has made some odd choices. E.g. all ordinal numerals are written as normal numerals, e.g. "3 Army", not "3rd Army" or "3. Army". Germans are Germans and Soviets are Soviets, but Hungarians are mostly "Magyars". Then there are inconsistent mixed language terms like "23 Panzer-Division", yet "4 Police-Panzer-Grenadier-Division". One one spread (pgs 66-67) German General Friessner is spellt "Friessner", "Freissner" and "Frissner".

But, overall so far an excellent book!