Introduction: General background; War potential and the general purpose of this study -- The Anglo-American assessments in a wider context -- The Soviet Union and the West : the pre-war experience and international great power politics before World War II -- From the guarantee to Poland to the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact -- U.S. pre-Barbarossa assessments -- The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and its consequences -- The Soviet-Finnish winter war -- Assessments running up to Barbarossa -- Trying to explain the assessments and compare them with reality -- The beginning of Soviet-German war : assessments during Operation Barbarossa -- The first turning point of the war : the Soviet winter offensive -- The spring, the coming of summer and continued worries -- The first year of the Soviet-German war : how realistic were the assessments? -- The German summer offensive and Soviet prospects -- The Anglo-American assessments in the context of the possibility to establish a second front in 1942 -- The autumn assessments and the Battle of Stalingrad -- From Stalingrad to Kursk -- The 1943 cross-channel attack that never was and the "90-division gamble" -- The Red Army's first major push to the west -- The final phase of the war : from Operation Bagration to the surrender of Germany (and the campaign against Japan) -- Assessments compared to reality during the last period of the war -- The assessments of war potential and material aid to USSR -- A comment on the assessments in the context of the early Cold War -- Conclusion.