Lend-Lease is certainly in the news given the ongoing shipment of weapons from NATO countries into the Ukraine. This isn't the first time this was done. Author Vladimir Kotelnikov's Lend-Lease And Soviet Aviation In The Second World War offers a superb look into the delivering, modifying, and employing in combat of the various Allied aircraft shipped to the Soviet Union.
Given current events it is hard to find a more timely look at how much effort is involved in arming another country with war material at the same time it is actually engaged in conventional warfare against a peer
Many of my readers probably have an interest in military history and operations in general and not just the Second World War. If so then you may have been paying attention to the advanced nature of the Russian effort to secure a dominant military position in the Arctic Circle. You may have also wondered what this effort entails and why it is such a big deal.
If so, then I have just reviewed a book about the Second World War era ground based military operations of Germany's Mountain Corps Norway that took place during the June to October 1941 portion of Operation Barbarossa.
The Nazi war against the Soviet Union defined the Second World War's outcome. Had the Germans focused single-mindedly on fighting that war (following their unprovoked June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union code-named Operation Barbarossa) the world may look very different today. Thankfully, they did not. In fact, during the war's critical years of 1941-1942 the Mediterranean theater would prove to be the biggest drain on the German war effort. Nonetheless, and somewhat paradoxically, another problematic distraction would prove to be the naval battles in the frigid Arctic Ocean.
