Deathride Hitler vs. Stalin: The Eastern Front, 1941-1945
By: John Mosier

The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 began a war that lasted nearly four years and created by far the bloodiest theater in World War II. It was commonly thought that Hitler was defeated by Stalin because Hitler had underestimated the size and resources of his enemy, Russia. The author of Deathride, John Mosier, refutes this simplified account, and suggests that Hitler came very close to winning the war with Russia, and lost due to the intervention of the Western Allies. Stalin's great triumph was not winning the war, but establishing his account of the war, known as The Great Patriotic War in Russia, the war which ultimately set into motion events that culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Deathride" states that the Soviet losses in World War II were great and would eventually led to a defeat. The Soviet Union had twice the population of Germany at the time and was suffering a casualty rate more than two and a half times as the Germans. Stalin had a notorious habit of imprisoning or killing anyone who brought him bad news, so the Soviet battlefield reports became fantasies of great victory when the battle plans Soviet generals developed should have responded to the actual circumstances of the war.

What is said to have saved Stalin is the Allied decision to open the Mediterranean theater. Once the Allies threatened Italy, Hitler was forced to withdraw his best troops from the eastern front and re-deploy them. The Allies also provided heavy vehicles that the Soviets desperately needed and were unable to manufacture themselves. It was not the resources of the Soviet Union that defeated Hitler, it was the resources of the West. In "Deathride" there is careful analysis of the war between Hitler and Stalin, and a narrative of events which contrast most previously accepted histories of the Soviet distortions of Soviet triumph during World War II.