Pre-Loved Books | History | Military, War

On the Fourth of July, 1942, four Allied ships traversing the Arctic separated from their convoy to plunge farther north into the ice field of the North Pole, seeking safety from Nazi bombers and U-boats in the perilous white maze of ice floes and giant bergs. Despite the risks, they had a better chance of survival than the rest of the doomed Convoy PQ-17, a collection of thirty-five cargo ships carrying $1 billion worth of war supplies to the Soviet port of Archangel. Supplies were virtually the only help President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill extended to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin as they delayed joining the fight in Europe while the Soviets and Nazis slaughtered one another on the eastern front. As a newly forged alliance between the Soviets and the Western democracies was close to dissolving and the remaining crews of Convoy PQ-17 tried to slip through the Arctic in one piece, the fate of the world hung in the balance. Book jacket.