Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: An Untold Story of World War II

by Serhii Plokhy

In November 1943, with the outcome of the Second World War hanging in the balance, the Allies needed a new plan. The Americans' audacious suggestion to the Soviets was to open a second air front, with the US Air Force establishing bases in Soviet-controlled territory. Despite Stalin's obvious reservations about the presence of foreign troops in Russia, he was persuaded, and in early 1944 and Operation Baseball and then Frantic were initiated as B-17 Superfortresses were flown from bases in Italy to the Poltova region in today's Ukraine.

Award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy tells the gripping, little-known story of this encounter between American and Soviet soldiers and how their collaboration quickly fell apart, mirroring the transition from the Grand Alliance to the Cold War. Soviet secret policemen watched over the Americans, shadowing their every move. A catastrophic air raid by the Germans revealed the limitations of Soviet air defences. As their initial enthusiasm turned into disappointment, the American soldiers started calling themselves the Forgotten Bastards of Ukraine. Ultimately, no common purpose could overcome their cultural and political differences.

Drawing on newly opened Russian archives as well as CIA records, Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front offers a riveting bottom-up history one of the Second World War's most unlikely alliances.

Genres: History, World War II, Nonfiction, Aviation, Russia, Military History, Ukraine

352 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2019

About the author

Serhii Plokhy is a Ukrainian and American historian. Plokhy is currently the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, where he was also named Walter Channing Cabot Fellow in 2013. A leading authority on Eastern Europe, he has lived and taught in Ukraine, Canada, and the United States. He has published extensively in English, Ukrainian, and Russian. For three successive years (2002-2005) his books won first prize of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies.

For his Ukrainian-language profile, please see: Сергій Плохій

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serhii Plokhy is the top historian of 20th Century Ukrainian history. His books are very thorough and well researched. There is no nonsense and no made-up dialogue for dramatic effect. Consequently, if you are not interested in detailed history on the subject of his books, you might find the books to be a bit dry.

Forgotten Bastards is the story American bomber bases in the Ukraine during WWII. The establishment of these bases showed the Nazis the strength of the Grand Alliance and hastened the end of the war. The book also details the attempts that the Soviet intelligence agencies (MBG and SMERSH) made to prevent relationships between natives and American soldiers and to harass some of the Americans as spies. It shows the rising disillusionment that many officers and soldiers who had previously thought well of the Soviet system. The book goes on to describe efforts to repatriate American POWs through the Poltava airbase and Russian negligence or obstruction of these efforts. Finally, it places some of the key players in the context of the early Cold War activities in Berlin.

It is a good solid history of a little-known aspect of WWII. Read it patiently.

[Olesya Tkachuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

книжка, про яку довелось почути усім моїм близьким, бо аж так я нею захопилась.
у 1944 році у полтаві, миргороді, пирятині було облаштовано американські бази для “човникових” бомбардувань німеччини. тобто срср допустив сша на свою територію, відтак тисячі американців жили тут і спілкувались із радянцями – як на той час надзвичайне явище. плохій детально описує операцію, побут, любов і ворожнечу американців і місцевих. багато геополітики й звичайних життєвих історій – кайф

[Віта · Rating 5 out of 5]

Сподобалися спогади американських пілотів, яких збивали час від часу німці над Західною Україною і підбирали упівці. А потім в дрімучих українських лісах наші підпільники люб'язно спілкувалися з іноземцями... англійською. В кожного западенця в Гамериці був чи-то вуйко, чи стрийко, до якого раз поїхав - і повернувся поліглотом. Зворушливо до сліз

[James Crabtree · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a good plan: use United States Air Force bombers to attack targets in occupied Europe but instead of returning to bases in Italy and England and dealing with the Luftwaffe’s frontier defenses the aircraft would continue onward, through Eastern Europe, where the German air defenses were much lighter. The bombers would land at airbases in Soviet territory, where they would rearm and refuel in preparation for flying over Nazi Europe and delivering another blow against Hitler. The Americans would be able to reach targets previously out of range of its B-17s and B-24s and the Soviets would have a strategic bombing capability “by proxy” via nomination of targets. It would be a sterling example of the Grand Alliance between East and West.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way.

With access to Soviet-era secret police records author Serhii Plotkhy looks not just at the diplomatic wrangling and the military work that made the Frantic missions possible, but also the clash of cultures which would put the two Allies on a collision course. Indeed, his thesis is that the Cold War did not start in the aftermath of World War II and the establishment of the Iron Curtain but at the Poltava airfields and the eye-opening treatment that American airmen experienced in the USSR. His book makes excellent use of both first-hand accounts and documentation to make his case.

During World War II the democracies of the United States and Britain were, out of necessity, aligned with the communist dictatorship of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Ironically so, since the USSR had in 1939 aligned itself with the Axis powers and had been feeding the German war machine raw materials right up until Hitler’s all-out attack on the Soviet Union. In any case, the United States provided lend-lease assistance, giving the Soviets tanks, aircraft and trucks in order to keep them in the fight. On the homefront, Stalin became “Uncle Joe” and the “Russians” honorable allies. Hollywood movies were produced about life in Soviet Russia which can only be described as wartime propaganda.

As a result, most Americans who flew the B-17s to the USSR were at the very least open-minded towards the Soviets. This did not last long. First of all, the Soviets failed to impress the Americans who arrived at Poltava. The hygiene standards were not what G.I.s were used to, with poorly located and maintained latrines and disgraceful handling of food. The Russians did not live up to their fearsome reputation as soldiers either, with airfield sentries found asleep and a disastrous Luftwaffe night-time bombing raid on the airfields which was not met with effective antiaircraft fire or fighter interception.

Second of all, the Soviets treated Americans with suspicion, in the case of airmen, and with contempt, in the case of liberated POWs. Paranoia was an integral part so-called Soviet culture, since its basis was the theory that countries which practiced capitalism were exploitive and the masses were downtrodden. Yet the Americans, made up of different ethnic groups and religious backgrounds, did not seem downtrodden. In fact, they seemed far better off than their Soviet allies. In addition to this, many of the Americans who had Ukrainian and Russian language skills belonged to families which had backed the Whites during the Russian Civil War. The Reds naturally thought that the airmen sent to their country were actually there to undermine it, especially when the need for the shuttle raids became less obvious. This bit of transference gives us a good idea of how the communists did business with erstwhile allies.

The Soviets alienated the Americans in almost every way imaginable. Onerous restrictions were put on Americans trying to leave the bases and people (usually women) who had unsupervised contact with Americans were harassed. Flights from the bases were grounded for hours and sometime days while waiting for “permission from Moscow.” American Airmen were not permitted to provide transportation and medical assistance to G.I.s liberated by the Red Army from Nazi POW camps. The last outrage was due to the way the Soviets viewed their own prisoners of war: nothing less than traitors. As a result, the Red Army felt no obligation to feed, house or transport American POWs since, as far as they were concerned, they had failed to do their duty.

But Plokhy’s most stunning revelation was one that could not have been known at the time: the secret police organization known as SMERSH was deployed to put the Americans under surveillance while in the USSR. SMERSH, whose name was derived from the Russian phrase “death to spies,” was a counterintelligence arm of the NKVD. The only other enemy it had been used against had apparently been the Nazis.

The Soviets treated all Americans as dangerous provocateurs. Those Americans who were former POWs were traitors. Those Americans who could speak Russian were spies. It did not take the Iron Curtain to open many American’s eyes to the threat the Soviets posed, it took Poltova.

[Олег Проданчук · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книга-переможець у номінації "Історія" Book Forum Best Book Award 2020.

Це легко та надзвичайно цікаво написана праця історика Сергія Плохія, в основі якої лежить історія про союзницькі авіаційні бази американців на землях Полтавщини, яка тоді була окупована СРСР. Крім маловідомих загалу, зокрема й мені, фактів про даний унікальний аспект Другої світової війни у книзі Ви знайдете й історії життя, кохання простих людей, солдатів та цивільних, у житті яких залишив свій слід червоний режим. 


У даній книзі розглянуто справді багато історичних епізодів. Є як комічні, так і жахаючі історії. Відверто шокує ницість радянського командування, яке притримувало наступ на Варшаву, аби німці винищили як умога більше польських повстанців. Крім того, вони не давали можливості союзникам здійснити гуманітарні місії для доставки медикаментів та припасів полякам, забороняючи дозвіл на преземлення літаків на авіабазах України.


На виїзді американських військових з Полтавщини книга не закінчується. Гарним доповненням слугує розкриття долі причетних до функціонування авіабаз постатей. Нагадуванням про своє перебування в Україні для них стали не тільки спогади чи збережені сувеніри, а й перевірки спецслужбами та підозри у шпигунстві, як з одного, так і з іншого боку кордону.


Гарним доповненням до цікавенного тексту є добірка фотографій з описаних авіабаз.

[Olga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Доволі цікава книга присвячена подіям військової операції "Шаленець (Frantic)" в 1944-45 роках з головним місцем розташування на Полтавщині, а також всьому спектру взаємовідносин союзників і радянців протягом того часу і пізніше.

Звичний для історичного нонфікшну сухий виклад з великою кількістю цитованих джерел, але деякі глави було читати емоційно важко.
Ну і кілька абсурдних ситуацій з"Пастки 22" згадувала через схожість, але вже було зовмім не смішно.

[Kostiantyn Shcherbachenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книгу Плохія читав одразу після книги Марка Конверсіно "Спільна війна. Провал операції "Френтік" 1944-1945".
Якщо Конверсіно використовував переважно тільки американські джерела, то Сергій Плохій також використав матеріал з відкритих архівів СБУ, в яких сьогодні зберігаються документи НКВД/МДБ/КДБ. Це дає можливість подивитися на події 1944-1945 років в українських містах Полтаві, Пирятину, Миргороді не тільки з погляду американців, але й контррозвідки СРСР.
І завдяки цьому стає більш зрозуміло, як спільна операція союзників проти одного ворога, могла стати провісником холодної війни між колишніми союзниками.
Важко залишатися союзником того, хто з усіх навколо тебе намагається зробити шпигунів, готує плани захвату твоєї бази, перешкоджає поверненню з полону твоїх співвітчизників, бо для тебе полонені це люди, яких треба повернути за будь-яку ціну, а для твого тимчасового союзника - зрадники, які в кращому випадку заслуговують на переміщення з таборів нацистів до таборів гулагу.
Тому, не зважаючи на в цілому нормальні контакти та людські відносини на рівні рядових та офіцерів, дві системи з різними цінностями могли співробітничати тільки поки "ворог мого ворога - мій друг".
А ще цікаво спостерігати як мінялося відношення до СРСР у громадян США, які на початку Френтіка відносилися до його симпатиків. Від рядових - яких відбирали для місії в тому числі і за їх відношенням до СРСР, до посла США в СРСР Аверелла Гаррімана, який з прихильника співпраці з СРСР, надання радянцям допомоги за програмою Ленд-лізу та влаштування американських баз на Полтавщині, перетворився на людину, яка за словами Сталіна, "несе свою частку відповідальності за погіршення наших відносин після смерті Рузвельта".
Я б порадив прочитати книгу всім симпатикам СРСР на Заході та сектантам "смачного пломбіру", які народилися після розпаду СРСР, тут. Але боюся, що все одно до них не дійде.

[Chwali · Rating 2 out of 5]

Na okładce czytamy „Zimna wojna zaczęła się nad płonącą Warszawą”. Od razu wyjaśniam. Książka NIE jest o powstaniu. O pomocy dla Warszawy są może dwie kartki. Po co zatem ten zabieg? Jak mawiał klasyk „Kasa misiu, kasa”. Książka nudna i sztampowa, a szkoda bo temat ciekawy. Jak ktoś lubi pióro Beevora i jego świetne opisy, tu tego nie znajdzie niestety. Można przeczytać, ale jak ktoś tego nie zrobi, nic wielkiego się nie stanie.

[Dom · Rating 5 out of 5]

The history the book writes about is relatively unknown but still simply fascinating, was very engrossed and invested reading through it. Very interesting perspective on how Operation Frantic also showed the earliest cracks in the WWII Soviet-American alliance would aid in developing the tensions that would unfold into the Cold War. Amazing book really

[Felix Sun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liatenes to the audiobook. Very, very good book covering the less mentioned conflict between the Western Allied and USSR alliance. I dont see what's the point on the last chapter, felt very draggy, but i am very happy with the book overall.

[Emmanuel Gustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a history of operation Frantic in 1944-1945, the basing of American aircraft in Soviet territory, at and near Poltava in the Ukraine. Plokhy's account is focused on the signs of the emerging Cold War, driven as it is by study of the archives both Soviet and American intelligence and counter-intelligence services, as well as personal recollections. Through the archives of the SMERSH and MGB, a harsh light is cast on the attitudes of Stalin's regime.

Frantic is usually treated as a footnote in the history of WWII. Accounts of USAAF operations will briefly mention that with some difficulty the services obtained rights to base aircraft in the USSR, that on 22 June 1944 German bombers successfully attacked and destroyed many American aircraft on the ground, and that the operation was ended soon afterwards. From a purely operational and military perspective, that may not be a bad summary, but this book digs deeper and shows that there was a lot more to it.

Plokhy does not mention it, but this was not the USSR's first encounter with foreign soldiers operating from its bases. Secret clauses attached to the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 provided training opportunities for German soldiers at bases in the USSR, as the terms of the Treaty of Versailles did not allow this to happen in Germany itself. German officers ordered fifty Fokker D.XIII fighters in the Netherlands (officially for export to Brazil) to establish a secret flying school at Lipetsk, in western Russia. It remained operational until Hitler came to power, and you could say that for the USSR, this story did not play out well.

Thus there were at least some plausible reasons for suspicion when the Americans sought, and finally obtained, bases for their aircraft in the USSR. Soon, the repression and paranoia of Stalin's regime bred some more. While reading this detailed study, one gets to pity the Red Army officers at Poltava: If they were too friendly to the Americans, they became suspect as potential American spies in the eyes of the SMERSH; if they were too unfriendly, the counter-espionage service would entertain the idea that they were German spies or contra-revolutionaries trying to undermine the war effort. There was no way out and they naturally fell back on seeking approval for everything from Moscow, an attitude which infuriated the Americans. Plokhy's detailed accounting of the many twists and turns, suspicions and obstacles, shows how a relationship that at least locally started out with good will on both sides, comradeship and growing mutual respect, quickly sourced.

Plokhy sees the seeds of conflict in an incompatibility of political and cultural traditions. This seems a bit too generous. As he highlights in ample detail, an important reason for the failure of the personalities at Poltava to maintain good relations, was that the regime regarded such good relations as fundamentally undesirable. Any close contact with these foreigners, regardless of whether it was professional, social or sexual, made Soviet citizens and soldiers automatically suspect. These were not conditions that allowed the Russians, Ukrainians and Americans much leeway to resolve whatever differences they had about food, flying, sanitary conditions, or girls. I'd like to be a bit more optimistic than the author and surmise that in a friendlier environment, cultural bridges could have been built. While Plokhy suggests that the experience of Poltava seeded the Cold War in the minds of many of the people who participated in it, he is wise enough to mention that there were also other, bigger factors in the background, such as the fate of Poland.

Of course the Americans were in a privileged position, by and large - they could leave, and indeed the worst the SMERSH could do to them was to have them sent home. Plokhy extends his study to the post-war fate of some of the people who appear in his story. For the Soviet citizens and soldiers, there was no escape, and it makes for grim reading. One can see the twisted logic behind the secret service monitoring of women whose parents had been killed in Stalin's purges, who had dated German and American soldiers, and obviously had little reason to be loyal to the regime. But it was also relentlessly petty, the obsessive intrusiveness of a police state, designed more to intimidate than to prevent real espionage.

There are some downsides the focus of this book. I read this book in a translation to Dutch by Fred Reurs, which is good overall (there are some mangled sentences) and this may have introduced some errors that are not the original author's. Still, the books seems confused about the roles and responsibilities of the various USAAF officers, has some weird designation errors such as the "C-17" Skymaster (the C-47), and in general gives only the briefest possible account of the operations conducted as part of the project. But those are nitpicks.

This is a very readable and very human account of a forgotten corner of the war.

[Adam Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely amazing piece of work here. Great research has gone into this and it is very well written. Very interesting to hear the stories of these men and women, otherwise ignored by mainstream history media.

[Mason Strazzella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me a while to get through, but was my first war non-fiction book. Really interesting backstory that describes the degradation of U.S./Soviet relations through the lens of a single air force operation during WW2! Realistically though the entire epilogue describes the key takeaways of the book, and the chapters in between didn’t always feel particularly well-connected, so I’d give it a three

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must have heard of the shuttle-bombing missions somewhere, but it didn't really register with me how much American infrastructure would need to be moved into the Soviet Union for those missions to work.

The main focus of the book is not on the bombing missions, but instead on the interactions between the Soviets and the Americans. The Soviets come off as being paranoid, yes, but not unduly do considering the enormity of the evils that had happened in Ukraine in the previous 3 decades and the track record of Western (including American) forces during the Russian Revolution. In contrast, the Americans come off as astoundingly naive.

The conclusion that the Grand Alliance was doomed due to fundamental differences in values seems like a bit of a stretch. To Stalin's Soviet Union, the trust that would be needed for a long-term alliance was never available in the first place.

[Michael Burianyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Serhii Plokhy, Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institure, adds to his voluminous output of Ukrainian, Soviet and Cold War histories. Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front is the story of American airbases in Ukraine’s Poltava region during the 2nd world war from mid 1944 to early 1945. The bases were originally planned as shuttle bombing stations, allowing US B-17 Flying Fortresses and their P-51 Mustang escorts from the UK and Italy greater range for targets in Eastern Europe. After later downsizing, they were repurposed to be centres for repair of damaged US aircraft and the repatriation of US POWs who found themselves east of the advance of the Red Army on Nazi Germany. While other histories of these bases have been published earlier, Plokhy’s book has the huge advantage of including material from KGB archives that have been made publicly available in Ukraine.

The experience of these bases proved to be a preview of Cold War animosity that developed after the end of the war. In the opinion of this reader, while the Americans could be accused of wishful thinking, naivety and a certain cultural innocence the Soviets proved to be willfully ignorant and mistrustful, duplicitous, paranoid and cruel. Particularly disturbing were the stories of how Russian and local Ukrainian women were treated by the Soviets when they attempted relationships with American airmen. Even worse was the treatment, by the Soviets, of American POWs freed from Nazi camps in Eastern Europe.

Again, as with other works of Plokhy that touch on the USSR, it is a reminder that the Soviet mindset still lingers to this day, as in Putin’s Russia. Even the negative reaction to relationships between Soviets and outsiders was still very evident until the mid 1980s, as I can personally attest to.

Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front is an excellent history of what may have been a small part of the 2nd World War but that had a profound resonance with what came in the decade that followed.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Plokhy writes about historical events related to Ukraine. The Poltova and two other American air bases established during WWII to support shuttle bombing (in which bombers flew from the west, dropped bombs, then flew on to land in the USSR, later flying separate missions in the opposite direction).

I read a book written almost fifty years ago about this, "The Poltava Affair: The Secret World War II Operation That Foreshadowed The Cold War" which covered much the same events up through the point where the Americans withdrew from these air bases. This newer books includes information found in Ukrainian archives about how the Soviets viewed and tracked the Americans as potential spies as well as continuing the story well after the Americans departure and on into the post-war period.

I liked the book overall but several times summary information was repeated that seemed puzzling, possible done in error. And there were at least a half dozen words spelled incorrectly, presumably typos, but not something one expects from Oxford University Press.

Dr. Plokhy suggests that his view that the failures of these air bases foretold the post-Grand Alliance animosity between the US and the USSR is not, I think, all that original - after all the sub-title of the book published in 1973 was, "The Secret World War II Operation That Foreshadowed The Cold War." It is quite interesting how the author documents how difficulties in getting along at the local level of the air bases managed to work its way in some cases to Stalin and Roosevelt for resolution

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't sure if I should give this 3 or 4 stars. A lot went into this book, but I don't think it delivered on what should have been a more interesting slice of history. Also, the prose isn't the most compelling, and, more importantly, I felt that this book showed us far less of what was accomplished by this temporary partnership and filled too many pages with tangential stories. I learned more than I needed to know about Soviet distrust of romantic relationships between American servicemen and Soviet women. The author also delved into post-war distrust of those involved in these efforts but with limited detail and not much that added to the overall story. Some of these folks were distrusted after the war. Okay, given the period, that's not really a surprise or a revelation.

While I realize the author had more to share than the alliance itself and its use of Soviet airfields for American air forces, I did expect far more about what the bombers and their protecting fighters accomplished by opening a new direction for attacks on the Nazi Germans and how that helped move the allies closer to victory. That type of information seemed pretty thin. All of that left me wondering if the whole alliance didn't really accomplish much, so there wasn't enough to write about, but the author wanted to run with the premise. In any case, this did add to my historical knowledge and drew from a wide array of research, but I was hoping for more.

[Elvina Shkil · Rating 4 out of 5]

ретельна, "душна" в своїй скурпульозності праця - як раз щоб погодинно дізнатися про події пари років та їхні наслідки.

добре розкрите питання фанатичної параної радянських сипецслужб та того, наскільки промитими були мізки ідейних радянців.

історія совку завжди рада показати, що "можемо гірше, ніж ви собі уявляли". усе, що з точки зору політики воєнного періоду можна було зробити погано, робилося жахливо :)

мені забракло (але це і не було предметом дослідження) коментаря з точки зору колоніального досвіду.

є доречні згадки про те, що на фоні радянців німецькі окупанти були приємнішим варіантом як для Наддніпрянщини, так і для окупованого Львову, але побіжно. на те, що спільні військові бази будувалися американцями на землі, яку ще кілька років тому совєти спустошили Голодомором, виділено від сили два речення.

припускаю, це пов'язано з тим, що свідки подій, американці єврейського, українського чи російського походження, на чиїх коментарях значною мірою базується праця, не дуже для себе рефлексують це питання. найрадикальнішою є думка про "любімую родіну", яку паплюжить сталінізм (це не претензія до автора, але маємо що маємо). присвятити повоєнне життя вивченню радянського союзу в Гарварді і не дійти для себе до думки, що совок - це той самий російський імперіалізм та шовінізм, але з іншого ракурсу - це, звісно, choices :)

[Dr.Husaim · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Народ побєдітель", "можем повторіть" і тому подібні вигуки, вже за місяць будуть звучати з кожної праски на пост-радянському просторі. Та зазвичай ці всі вигуки звучать на фоні пів-правди... А правда в тому, що ніхто не міг перемогти в тій війні самотужки.

Не міг це зробити і радянський союз при всіх своїх потугах. Саме тому для радянців, як раніше для британців, штати розгорнули масштабний ленд-ліз постачаючи до союзу продовольство, техніку, зброю і навіть літаки.

Цікавим епізодом є те, що Сталін вимагав від союзників відкриття другого фронту у Франції, бо чітко розумів, що червона армія не встоїть, коли німці не відтягнуть війська на захід.

Ну і самим цікавим епізодом, є існування на території України, трьох американських воєнно-повітряних баз, для "літучих фортець" В-17. Де радянські солдати пліч о пліч співпрацювали з американцями.

P.S. книга вельми інформативна, часом навіть занудна, але варта прочитання.

Автор: Сергій Плохій
Видавництво: @ksd
Сторінок: 200/320
Оцінка: 7/12

[Peter Fox · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive history of the short lived 3 American aerodromes based in the USSR during World War 2. Unfortunately the desire to cover everything robs the story of any kind of pace or urgency. It feels more like a 300 page encyclopaedia entry than a work of historical prose.


Plokhy details incident after incident of Soviet intransigence and very quickly they all begin to merge. If you can picture a huge dossier of complaints, all very similar in nature, being recounted one after the other, then you get the idea.


There are lots of people mentioned, but you get no real feeling of investment in any of them, as no one feels that much of an individual. A memoir from one of the people posted there would have had this personal touch. Surprisingly the most interesting section of the book is the post war years, when McCarthyism meant that a few people were probed.


This isn't a bad book, but it could have been better. If it had been edited down and more personality injected, then it would make for a happier reading experience.

[Michael Samerdyke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had known a little about the American "shuttle-bombing" base in the USSR before reading this book, but I learned much more about it thanks to Serhii Plokhy.

This book is a micro-history of the origins of the Cold War. Instead of looking at the top people and their exchanges of position papers, Plokhy looks at how an American airbase in the USSR that was built to speed the defeat of Nazi Germany ended up becoming an irritant in American-Soviet relations, showing how the two political cultures came into conflict.

The book shows how issues of dating and treatment of POWs ate away at the initial "fraternal feeling" between the two militaries. Most books don't go into this or dispose of the matter in a paragraph. Plokhy uncovers the people who experienced the history.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the early Cold War.

[Richard Hakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a subject that is probably from a historical point quite important it is an event in history that is little know. American Airplane bases in the Russian Ukraine. Despite the locals liking the Americans the (popularist) government (Stalin) did not like the idea of USA airmen coming in contact with the locals as it would undermine what they were telling the locals about how bad it is outside. This is the trouble about populist governments, sooner or later they find their ideas are not popular anymore (Boris and Cummings) after that no matter how they hide the facts it is just a power struggle. History suggests it is a matter of time before they fail. The Russians hung on 40 years I wonder how long Boris will?

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd been aware of this whole episode of the war going back into the 1970s and, even then, it seemed like an exercise in operational and diplomatic overreach. In this day and age the author has enjoyed access to Soviet documentation of the time, and Plokhy's findings do nothing to undermine my long-time understanding. Call this a reinforcement of the tenets of hardcore realism and that merely enjoying a common enemy is not enough to sustain actual comity amongst polities that are naturally antagonistic.

[Zivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In order to find a new unexplored topic of WW2, after 75 years, you have to go to really esoteric stuff like this book. Unfortunately, the level of detail makes it quite boring. You could probably summarize it even for a WW2 fan in a few pages.
Ultimately what the book is trying to say is that the roots of the cold war were laid not after WW2 but already during WW2. But in a similar vein, you could say that the roots of the cold is the Soviet revolution of 1917 itself, because, by definition, it created a regime so incompatible with the west.

[Miras Safadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coming from a person who is deeply interested in historical period of WWII and who has read all the books, and watched all the documentaries there are, this book truly is an untold story.

Full of cultural shocks, mysteries, and thrills, this book is truly captivating and hard to put down.

I highly recommend anyone who is interested in that time period to read this as it will remind you that there are stories to tell from other parts of the world other than the ones from the West (despite this story being about a collaboration between the West and the East).

[I Read, Therefore I Blog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serhii Plokhy is Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, director of its Ukrainian Research Institute and a leading authority on Eastern Europe. This absorbing, very readable book looks at a forgotten period in World War II when Stalin permitted the USA to operate 3 airbases in the Ukraine between April 1944 and June 1945 and makes a convincing case for how the US/Soviet experience there fuelled the start of the Cold War.

[John Endacott · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book about historical events of which I knew nothing - the siting of American airbases in Ukraine in 1944. The book also covers the cold war experiences of those involved and suggests that the US air force experiences was key to developing US attitudes early in the cold war - particularly the Russian refusal to let US planes in Ukraine support the Warsaw uprising.
The book is a bit repetitive and goes on more than it needs to.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Мені дуже сподобалась.
Американці вважали радянців союзниками, щиро співчували і хотіли допомогти, ставили життя людей вище за будь що,
А радянці?
А радянці вбачали у всіх шпигунів, брехали та крали, знущались над над своїми та полоненими з інших країн… а найбільше вони боялись, що українці дізнаються правду про ссср, що це не велика держава, як говорила пропаганда, а просто відстала країна, без прав та свобод…

[Matt Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

The hook for this book is American bombers and fighter pilots having a landing base behind Soviet lines. The real story of the book is American and Soviet relations throughout WWII and in the years directly after during the Cold War. Serhii knows how to capture the human element to these big events so well, and like all his books it is very well written.

[Oleg Duma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Цікаве дослідження маловідомої (власне, для мене) сторінки Другої світової війни. Співробітництво радянців та американців, що було приречене на регрес та занепад. Вражаючі долі американських військових (особливо, нащадків емігрантів), що змінюють свої погляди, опинившись у радянській дійсності.