| Summary/Abstract |
Hitler’s invasion of the USSR has long been a source of historiographical controversy. In the West, the version of events pushed by former German commanders, which emphasized Hitler’s mistakes, the weather, and brutal Soviet profligacy, became the dominant Cold War explanation for Hitler’s failure to take Moscow. This explanation no longer finds many adherents among Western historians. The official Soviet explanation emphasized the treacherous German attack, heroic resistance by the Red Army, and the solidarity of the Soviet government and people. During glasnost’, a ‘revisionist’ critique of the Soviet view fervently attacked once-sacred shibboleths surrounding the prosecution of the war. This article explores the evolving anti-revisionist ‘national-patriotic’ version of 1941 that has become the new dominant paradigm in Russia.
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