Churchill's Third World War: British Plans to Attack the Soviet Empire, 1945

As the war in Europe entered its final months, the world teetered on the edge of a Third World War. While Soviet forces smashed their way into Berlin, Churchill ordered British military planners to prepare the top-secret Operation Unthinkable—the plan for an Allied attack on the Soviet Union—on July 1, 1945. The plan called for the use of the atomic bomb and Nazi troops if necessary: more than merely controversial, as the extent of the Holocaust was becoming clear. A haunting study of the war that so nearly was, Walker offers a fascinating insight into the upheaval as World War II drew to a close and the Allies’ mistrust of the Soviet Union that would blossom into the Cold War.