Professor A.V. Torkunov’s book is dedicated to the military conflict of the mid-20th century, the causes and course of which remained truly mysterious for a long time. It was only in the 1990s that the opportunity for an impartial study of the history of the conflict arose. The author studied in detail top-secret and previously closed documentation from Soviet archives, presented not only a detailed and in-depth analysis of them, but also carried out the first publication of the most significant documents.