Alexander Hill completed both his undergraduate education and doctorate at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, and has taught military history and Russian history at the University of Calgary for more than a decade. During his tenure at the University of Calgary, he has published two other books, The War behind the Eastern Front (2005), on the Soviet partisan movement in north-west Russia during the Second World War, and The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-1945: A Documentary Reader (2009), as well as many journal articles on the Soviet Union during the Second World War.

Introduction; 1. Of horses and men: the Red Army of the late 1920s; 2. Tanks, aircraft and 'deep battle': the Red Army transformed, 1928-1936; 3. The 'enemy' within: the Red Army during and in the aftermath of the great purges, 1937-1940; 4. More than manoeuvres: Red Army experience in Spain and at Lake Khasan; 5. Khalkin Gol; 6. Keeping up with the Schmidts and the Suzukis: soviet military equipment and the small wars of the 1930s; 7. Voroshilov's 'lightning' war: the Soviet invasion of Poland; 8. The Finnish debacle; 9. Reform and the road to war; 10. Barbarossa: from Minsk to Smolensk; 11. Barbarossa: from Smolensk to Moscow; 12. The end of 'Typhoon'; 13. Lost opportunity; 14. More men, women and machines; 15. 'Not a step back!'; 16. Change at the top; 17. Stalingrad and Uranus; 18. The wrath of the Gods; 19. The defence of the Kursk salient and the battle for Prokhorovka; 20. To the Dnepr and beyond; 21. The ten Stalinist blows of 1944; 22. The end in sight; 23. The fall of Berlin and the end of the Reich; Conclusion; Appendix 1. The destruction of the upper echelons of the RKKA in 1937-1941; Appendix 2. Soviet armoured strength and serviceability in the Western military districts of the Soviet Union as of 1 June 1941; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.