The War and Peace Trilogy

The War and Peace Trilogy follows the Second World War from the Allied assault on Normandy, through the difficult coalition maintained in wartime Moscow, to the occupation of Berlin and the opening confrontation of the Cold War. The books do not form a continuous battlefield chronicle; together they examine how soldiers, civilians, diplomats and occupation officials experienced the transition from total war to an unstable peace.

D-Day reconstructs 6 June 1944 through eyewitness accounts from both sides of the invasion. The Stalin Affair moves behind the diplomatic front of 1941–1945, where Britain and the United States negotiated with Stalin while depending on the Soviet war effort. Checkmate in Berlin then follows the former allies into rivalry, culminating in the blockade and airlift of 1948–1949. Read together, the trilogy connects combat, alliance politics and the division of postwar Europe.