Books: Exasperation in Moscow

THE STRANGE ALLIANCE (344 pp.) —John R. Deane—Viking ($3.75).

The strangeness and the strain of the U.S. wartime alliance with Soviet Russia was guessed at by the U.S. public, but the public had only suspicions to go on. Now in a sober, fact-packed book, a man who knows a great deal about it, Major General John R. Deane, describes what was perhaps the most one-sided friendship in history.

Now retired to civilian life, General Deane was head of the U.S. Military Mission to Moscow, 1943-45. As such he was senior U.S. military officer in...