July 4, 1940 - Churchill's Finest Hour?

‘Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a trickle of information has emerged from archives in Moscow, shedding new light on the subject. While much of the documentary evidence remains classified “secret” in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense and the Russian State Archive of the Economy, Western and Russian researchers have been able to gain access to important, previously unavailable firsthand documents. I was recently able to examine Russian-language materials of the State Defense Committee—the Soviet equivalent of the British War Cabinet—held in the former Central Party Archive. Together with other recently published sources, including the wartime diaries of N. I. Biriukov, a Red Army officer responsible from August 1941 on for the distribution of recently acquired tanks to the front lines, this newly available evidence paints a very different picture from the received wisdom.

In particular, it shows that British Lend-Lease assistance to the Soviet Union in late 1941 and early 1942 played a far more significant part in the defense of Moscow and the revival of Soviet fortunes in late 1941 than has been acknowledged.

http://www.historynet.com/did-russia-really-go-it-alone-how-lend-lease-helped-the-soviets-defeat-the-germans.htm#sthash.ciPG09uE.dpuf

I was alive in 1965 when Churchill passed away. The huge headline in the local paper stated Man of the Century Dead. True today as much as it was then despite Time magazine giving Einstein that honour. I was 7 at the time. It was the first time in my life I had become aware of a famous person dying. I was unable to comprehend much about the Kennedy assassination a little over a year prior. That said you don't get a champagne named after you for nothing and I think Churchill would have appreciated that honour better than the Time magazine one.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R354FNQZ4MAG8X/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R354FNQZ4MAG8X
provides a review of Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources, and Experts in the Second World War - which seems to be the title under which your suggested reading is available here.

I will say that I’m surprised that Britain would have given Stalin a battleship. I had known, of course, that Churchill had proposed to send aid to the USSR, his own hostility to Communism notwithstanding. It was all to clear from my own reading that FDR had recognized the USSR as his first diplomatic act, and that his administration was riddled with commies. Including Alger Hiss. The attitude of American conservatives towards the war on Germany’s Eastern Front was, simply, that the pity was that they couldn’t both lose. But once we were fighting the Germans . . .
But it turns out that helping Afghanistan fight the Soviets wasn’t all that much more of a bargain than helping the Soviets against the Germans ended up being.

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