This read was very well written but also academic and dry in places. It is very detailed about a little-discussed arena of WW2 and I did like the new information I learned from it.

I have recently finished reading an ARC of Charles Stephenson's marvelous study of the Soviet attack on Japan in the closing months of World II entitled "Stalin's War On Japan", due to be published shortly by Pen and Sword. I am pleased to report that the volume is both well written and quite illuminating in its discussion of the Soviet actions which occurred in compliance with their treat obligations to the Western Allies. Among other things, the text includes a fairly detailed study of Soviet deployments and planning in the period leading up to hostilities. What is more, and perhaps most tellingly, it demonstrates how far the Soviet forces in the Far East had come since the collapse of Nazi Germany and its European satellites and allies in the West. The carefully coordinated and overwhelming forces Stalin assembled for his attack on the Kwantung Army as well as the superb leadership, training and equipment that marked the massive assault force demonstrated how far the Soviet military had come since they had first engaged Hitler's Wehrmacht. Just as important, the much vaunted Kwantung Army, once an elite and highly feared armed force instrumental in supporting and prolonging Japan's adventure in China and the war in Asia was revealed as nothing more than a paper tiger, long drained of its elite units and populated, in the end, by whatever the Japanese could throw into the line, with weak air support and practically no armored support against a Soviet force constructed on the model of the massive armored armies employed against the Nazis. It is a fascinating and little understood feature of the Pacific War, and should be read with an eye towards the US employment of nuclear weapons as well as the fear engendered among Western leaders by Japan's apparent determination to fight to the death. I urge anyone interested in the decision to deploy nuclear weapons as well as the early post war foreign machinations of the the former Allied states to examine this work, It is well worth our examination.