McMeekin quotes a transcript in the Russian archives from 19 August 1939 that says “'the Vozhd [Stalin] told Molotov that if he cut a deal with England and France ‘Germany will back off and seek a modus vivendi with the Western powers.’ By contrast, if Molotov ‘accept[ed] Germany’s proposal and conclude[d] a nonaggression pact with her,’ Stalin predicted that Germany ‘will certainly attack Poland and the intervention of England and France is then unavoidable.’"
Stalin may have been wrong about that - or right- but he wanted a European war, for Marxist-Leninist reasons.
In early 1940 as a response to Russia's invasion of Finland London considered bombing the oil fields of Baku and making war on the USSR as well as Germany. I used to think the idea of going to war with both countries at the same time absurd but now I see advantages to it.
In the two years following the start of the Second World War in September 1939 Hitler and Stalin had both invaded seven countries. Would you say that a Western victory over one of these countries which allowed the other to seize half of Europe and become the West's great enemy almost immediately was a great victory?
Stalin was as hungry for territory as Hitler and demanded from Germany in December 1940 the Southern Bucovina, the right to occupy Bulgaria and parts of Turkey and Persia and withdrawal of German troops from Finland as the price for joining the Tripartite Pact. He offered Bulgaria European Turkey in return for becoming a Soviet satellite.
McMeekin finds that Stalin was preparing busily in 1941 for an attack on Germany. He agrees on this with Suvarov.
Unlike Suvarov he does not claim to know if Stalin had decided on attacking Germany before Germany attacked Russia. Suvarov found what he considered strong evidence that Stalin had been about to attack Germany had Hitler not attacked first. McMeekin prefers to sit on the fence and says an armed clash was bound to happen whoever initiated it.
The Germans knew about Stalin's preparations but Hitler had already decided on a war with Russia in December 1940 "well before the really massive late build-up of Soviet armour and air bases on the frontier".
There is no evidence that it was a preemptive war on Hitler's part.
He told Jodl on March 3 1941 that he wanted to eliminate the Jewish Bolshevik intelligentsia and "dissolve the entire regime and replace it with governments with which we can make peace".
On March 30 he told his generals that the war was to as much to seize lebensraum and to extirpate Bolshevism, Jews and Slavs as for traditional strategic reasons.
Khrushchev said that Stalin knew on 20 June 1941 that war was about to break out. The story he told the party congress in his secret speech of 1956 that Stalin retreated to his room and had an emotional breakdown when the attack happened was a lie.
McMeekin disagrees with RHS Stolfi that by delaying the thrust towards Moscow Hitler lost the war.
In fact the Germans did come close to taking Moscow. Muscovites panicked on 16 October expecting the Germans to arrive perhaps that night. People thought Stalin and the generals had fled and openly criticised the Communists. Antisemitic demonstrations took place in several industrial suburbs.
It was Roosevelt who insisted on the unconditional surrender of Germany to please Stalin who, unknown to the Americans, had opened peace negotiations with Germany.
This prevented Admiral Canaris and other German plotters toppling Hitler and a German-Allied war against Stalin.
The only hope for Romania to avoid Communism was had Churchill been able to persuade Roosevelt to invade Europe from the Balkans not Normandy. He failed and Roosevelt as usual lined up with Stalin against him. Britain had become an American satellite.
How lucky we are to have Putin and Trump to worry about not men like Hitler and Stalin.
Hitler's regime does not exist today not because he invaded the USSR (war between Stalin and Hitler seems to have been inevitable) but because he declared war on the USA.
Roosevelt decided to defeat Germany and Italy before Japan. England was shattered and in no condition to protect Western Europe from Communism and so the role fell to the US.
Western Europe became effectively American territory and is to this day.
There are no communist regimes in Europe not because the USSR lost the cold war but because Gorbachev renounced it. In the long term Communism's internal contradictions may have doomed it but China thrives.
After 1989 the American empire was extended eastwards, so far eastwards that Russia was eventually provoked to war.
Was British and American help the reason Stalin defeated Hitler?
It was very important indeed in helping Stalin extend his empire from Eastern Europe to Korea and China too which led to tens of millions of deaths. Thanks to Soviet spies like Klugmann, Burgess and Philby, Yugoslavia and Albania became Communist.
Finland was the lucky country that escaped Communism by being neutral, yet bafflingly Nato thought Finlandisation a bad thing.
Why did the Allies not demand Stalin restore the governments of the Baltic states and Poland in return for aid, asks McMeekin.
I found Stalin's War supports my view that England and France should have armed to the teeth and not gone to war with Germany.
This was Lloyd George's view and he was a much better Prime Minister than Chamberlain, whom he called 'a good Lord Mayor of Birmingham in a bad year'.
We cannot know if Stalin would have won anyway had Britain and France never gone to war with Germany. One historian I know thinks he probably would have done.
Whichever had won, better that Western Europe kept out if possible.
That would have saved a world of pain. There would have been no war with Japan and no war in Western Europe. France would not have fallen.
The French and British empires would have remained powerful for decades.
The American empire that rules most of the world was born between 1941 and 1948 and looks an awful lot better than Hitler's empire. That's why we hear so much about Hitler. It's American empire propaganda.
Stalin's empire was also born in those years, with much American and British help.
In the Middle East the American empire has not been a success, nor in Ukraine, nor in Latin America or South-East Asia or in most of the poor world.
I hope Taiwan is luckier than most places that Americans helps.
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