Whitewood examines Joseph Stalin's purge of the Red Army in 1937-38 charging officers of plotting a military-fascist takeover of the government in alliance with Nazi Germany. It was part of the Great Terror, he says, the political violence and repression in the Soviet Union generally during the middle to late 1930s. The purge is credited with the poor showing of the Red Army after Germany attacked in 1941, and with the Western powers refusing to ally with Stalin, considering him unstable and weakened. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)