John Erickson, FRSE, FBA, FRSA was a British military historian and expert on the Soviet Union. His two best-known books – The Road to Stalingrad and The Road to Berlin – dealt with the Soviet response to the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II. During the Cold War, he was respected for his knowledge of and personal contacts in the Soviet Union, and as head of the Centre for Defence Studies at Edinburgh University in the 1980s he played a major role in brokering a rapprochement between Western and Soviet diplomats and military through the Edinburgh Conversations.