Dan Snow's History Hit - Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt: The Impossible Alliance that Won WWII

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

In the summer of 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. As the Germans drove towards Moscow, a catastrophic Soviet defeat seemed imminent - a defeat that would have made the Allied liberation of Europe virtually impossible. To keep the Allied victory in sight, Roosevelt and Churchill assembled a crack team of diplomats to secretly travel to wartime Moscow and negotiate with the intractable Stalin.Dan is joined by Giles Milton, bestselling historian and author of 'The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance That Won the War'. Giles tells us how the leaders who had wanted to destroy Stalin's Russia ended up desperately trying to keep it afloat.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. It was the largest offensive in human history. On June the 22nd, 1941, the first of what would be nearly 4 million Axis troops invaded the Soviet Union along a front just under 2,000 miles long. They marched on foot, they rode on horseback, or they were carried in a vast fleet of 800,000 vehicles. It was the start of what has to be one of the most savage conflicts in history, the German-Soviet War of 1941-45, the bloodiest theatre of the Second World War into which it was subsumed. In the minutes and the hours, days and weeks following that invasion, there was massive destruction.

There was genocide. There was warfare of unimaginable intensity. For the men and the women and the children caught up in that fighting, it was hell. But for one man in particular, it was an opportunity. It was almost a blessing. It was certainly cause for celebration. And that man was Winston Churchill. The British Prime Minister was thrilled that Stalin and Hitler were now implacable enemies. The Soviet Union, led by Stalin, like Britain, was now locked in an existential battle against Germany. And the Germans were not only outnumbered by the British and Soviets together, their economy was smaller, and they would have to fight in two different directions.

So within hours, Winston Churchill reversed his decades-long opposition to Soviet communism, and he embraced a man he knew to be a murderous tyrant as an ally. He promised he would do everything that he could do, everything within the power of the British Empire to prop up the Soviet Union. It was the most bizarre turn of events given that this was the man, Winston Churchill, who tried everything in his power to strangle the Soviet Union at birth two decades before as it battled for survival during the Russian Revolution and Civil War. But now, in the summer of 1941, all that was forgotten as Churchill and then the US President Roosevelt sent emissaries to Moscow to forge a working relationship. Now this is the story of that process. This is the story of that relationship and those emissaries. We've got Giles

Milton back on the podcast. He'd just written yet another wonderful book, The Stalin Affair, The Impossible Alliance That Won the War. The man is a never-ending well of smash hits, critically acclaimed bestsellers. He's written lots of wonderful history books, been on this podcast many times. You all know his name and his work. He is looking at new sources to tell the story of the remarkable diplomats

that held this grand alliance together. And it was a close-run thing. Giles says that without these individuals, the alliance may very well have collapsed and it would have had incalculable consequences is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Giles, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. Thanks for having me on again.

Well, it's always a pleasure, Giles, and particularly when you're talking about something as remarkable as this story. Can you just rehearse what an unbelievable shock it was, well, for Stalin, for lots of people, that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941? Well, this was a massive shock for Stalin, who had been warned by many of his allies and not-so- so allied leaders that this invasion was coming. But of course, two years earlier, he'd signed his Nazi-Soviet pact, his deal with Hitler, his friendship pact with Nazi Germany. And he simply did not believe that Hitler would betray this pact and, well, tear it up effectively and invade the Soviet Union. So when all the warning signs began to

be shown, when the Wehrmacht began massing on the frontiers of the Soviet Union, So when all the warning signs began to be shown, when the Wehrmacht began massing on the frontiers of the Soviet Union, when Luftwaffe planes began flights over Soviet territory, clearly gathering intelligence, Stalin simply didn't believe it. And so what that meant was that on the day of the invasion, or rather the night of the invasion, 22nd of June, 1941, of the invasion, or rather the night of the invasion, 22nd of June, 1941, Stalin himself and the Red Army was totally unprepared for the onslaught that was about to hit them. And Stalin would repeatedly shoot intelligence officers who would come to him saying, we think Hitler's about to invade. Oh, it was absolutely appalling. But there were actually defectors from the German army

were crossing into Soviet territory to say, look, guys, something really bad is about to happen to you. And this would be sent all the way to Moscow, go to the Kremlin, end up in Stalin's office. And Stalin would say, I don't believe him, shoot the guy. And that's what happened. And how did Stalin respond? Because there's a very interesting personal story, apart from anything else, as his armies are reeling back on the front. Stalin comes close to having what was almost a nervous breakdown, does he? Yeah, this is a kind of remarkable fact that I think he is so stunned by what has happened and so stunned by just the hopelessness of the Red Army in those first few days of the invasion

that he literally retires to his dacha outside Moscow and is seen by nobody and refuses to see anybody. It is as if he's had a complete mental breakdown. And in fact, it takes a number of key Politburo members to actually go to the dacha and plead with him to take control of the situation, to lead the Red Army in this sort of cataclysmic battle that's taking place. And eventually, Stalin agrees. But it's very interesting, when they first arrive, his Politburo comrades, he actually thinks they'd come to arrest him and possibly to shoot him. So he's completely thrown by the invasion. He wasn't expecting it. And he's miscalculated all the way down the line. Trying to leave behind our hindsight here. I mean, do you think Stalin and the Soviet Union came close to,

perhaps not all-out defeat there, but sort of acquiescing to some kind of negotiated settlement? I mean, what was at play in those vital weeks in the summer of 1941? I think the Soviet army, the Red Army, came incredibly close to defeat in those early days and weeks of the invasion. You've got to look along the entire front, this massive 1,800-mile front line where the three huge German armies are thrusting deep into Soviet territory. And they're simply annihilating absolutely everything they come up against. And if they're not annihilating the Red Army formations, they're surrounding them and taking them prisoner. And so by the end of that year, the Wehrmacht is virtually knocking on the gates of Moscow. It's a really critical period just before the winter of 1941 really sets in in earnest. The Red Army, Stalin, his entire regime

is on the point of collapse. And this would be a catastrophe for the Western allies, for Britain in particular, that was in the war against Germany, and America that was very, very nearly in the war against Germany, and certainly had an interest in Britain's eventual victory. What do the Brits and the Americans do to try and say, well, this is the work you've done? How do they try and shore up Stalin and Stalin's regime? How do they try and keep them in the war? Well, it's absolutely fascinating. On the morning of the 22nd of June, when Winston Churchill is woken up and told that Hitler has invaded the Soviet Union, and Churchill is absolutely delighted. This is the best possible news for him, because this means that Hitler is now fighting a

war on two fronts. He's fighting Britain in the West, and he's fighting the Soviet Union in the East. And the first thing Churchill does, typically for Churchill, is to light a very big fat cigar in celebration. But he has to make a decision that very day. What does he do? You've got to remember that Churchill has detested Stalin and his regime for as long as it's existed. Back in 1919, it was Churchill who was instrumental in sending British arms and men and troops into the Soviet Union to try and crush the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of their revolution. So now he has to take a decision. Well, who do we back? Who is the enemy? Is it Hitler or is it Stalin or is it both?

And sort of typically for Churchill, he takes a very pragmatic and sensible decision that Hitler is the worst of them all. And therefore, if Stalin is against Hitler, then Britain should ally itself with Stalin. So it's an incredibly difficult and uncomfortable maneuver for Winston Churchill. But on the evening of the 22nd of June, he makes a BBC broadcast to the nation live from Chequers in which he throws the entire weight of the British Isles behind the Soviet Union and their effort to fight back against the Wehrmacht. Charles, that's some rapid decision making.

I mean, I suppose the British elite, unlike Stalin, they had been aware this was in the offing. Had there been discussions or did Churchill just have to sit there over a glass of scotch and have a good think about it for a few hours? No, I think certainly the British knew this invasion was coming. Churchill had actually sent a warning himself to Stalin, warning that it was coming and Stalin had dismissed it as British propaganda. They were trying to stir up complications between Germany and the Soviet Union. So Churchill knew this was coming, but it was typically for Churchill, it was he took the decision on that day that this is what he was

going to do. And he was surrounded by, you know, Eden, the foreign secretary was there, he had a number of advisors, and they're all saying, hold on a minute, this is going to be an extremely tough one to sell to the British public. You know, we've been telling them for years how awful Stalin is and his regime in the Soviet Union, and now suddenly we're allying ourselves with them. And actually, it's very interesting if you look at Churchill's BBC broadcast that night, because he actually says to the nation, no one has been more greatly opposed to the Soviet Union than I have. But he said, but in this instance and what we're facing now is that we have to present a united front

against Hitler, who is the ultimate enemy. Fascinating stuff. And how does Churchill try and, from a distance, support Stalin personally and the Soviet war effort? Well, this is where it all gets interesting because you see, Stalin is a virtually unknown figure in the West. Few people have ever met him. Few people have ever seen him. He never makes public broadcasts. There's very little known about him apart from the fact that he's a brutal, murderous monster. And even the ambassador in Moscow, the British ambassador, Sir Stafford Cripps, who was sent there because he was very left-leaning himself and it was thought he would be able to have an entry to a dialogue with Stalin. Stalin refuses to see him. He literally never sees the

British ambassador. So there's almost nothing known about Stalin. And Churchill realizes he has to know about Stalin. He has to know about the Red Army. He needs information. But this requires him to send an emissary, someone who can go to Moscow and deal with Stalin. And this is where really the point of my book, or this is the story of my book, is that Roosevelt sends in one of his own people to deal with Stalin, and Churchill sends in a person as well to deal with Stalin. And it's this absolutely fascinating relationship that develops between these British and American emissaries on one side and Stalin on the other, because they have to, as part of their briefing really, they have to go into the Kremlin, they have to meet

with Stalin, they have to work alongside Stalin, they have to get to know Stalin. And this is where we begin to see a completely different Stalin from the monster that we're familiar with. I have to say, they all agree that Stalin is a total monster, but they also know that he's an ally and they have to work alongside him. So they have to see beyond the murderous brute, if you like, and get to know him and try to win his trust. So let's meet these people whose job it was to befriend Stalin, try and build a working relationship with him. We're talking about Harriman, the American, and then Kerr, the Brit. Archibald Clark Kerr, yes. So the first person to be sent into the Kremlin

is Averill Harriman, who is Roosevelt's emissary actually to Churchill, first of all, but he ends up going to the Soviet Union in the company of Lord Beaverbrook, who's the great newspaper magnate, the owner of the Daily Express, the world's biggest newspaper at the time. And you've got to realise that this is a pretty peculiar situation because you have got two And you've got to realize that this is a pretty peculiar situation because you have got two multimillionaires, the very sort of people that Stalin would absolutely detest going into the Kremlin to meet this bandit, you know, this bandit ruler in Moscow. They go to meet him in the Kremlin the very first night they arrive in Moscow, and it's a total disaster. Stalin, after giving them a very detailed account of what's taking place on

the battleground, which is a disaster for the Red Army, he then begins just to insult them and hurl insults at them and say that they don't want to do anything to help. They're not going to do anything for the Soviet Union. Incredibly rude and offensive. And they go away from the Kremlin that night thinking that it's a disaster. This allied relationship is not going to work. They go back into the Kremlin on the next night. And Stalin is completely transformed. He's charming. He's courteous.

And this is where the two emissaries, Avril Hariman and Lord Beaverbrook, they begin to weave their magic. Both of them are very gregarious. They're both very entertaining. And they begin to entertain Stalin. And this friendship of sorts is first forged at that moment. And for Averill Harriman, who's going to be sent to Moscow at a slightly later date to literally live in the city and work alongside Stalin, this is a crucial moment because he's realised that although this is a monstrous dictator he's dealing with, it is somebody that he can work with and get along with.

And this is the time when other career diplomats were saying that the Soviet Union was toast. There was no point investing the time and effort that the Germans would win. That's absolutely right. Everyone pretty much was convinced that the Soviet Union was heading for defeat. And this is where the second emissary, Archibald Clark Kerr, comes in. Now, he's been British ambassador in war-torn China. He loves a bit of civil war. He loves bandits. He gets on great with dictators. And Churchill seems to realize that this is probably the ideal person to be sent into Moscow to try and woo his charm with Stalin. And so off Archie goes in 1942, becoming British ambassador to Moscow, and the most unlikely and extraordinary friendship develops between these men.

You've got to realize that Archie is extremely different from most ambassadors of the period, refuses to be called Your Excellency like ambassadors always were. Everyone calls him Archie. He holds his meeting in the embassy gardens in a pair of shorts and bare chested. He writes his memos with a quill pen. I mean, he's an extraordinarily flamboyant, eccentric maverick. He's bisexual. All these things, they are hardly, you'd think, going to win him favor once he's working with Stalin inside the Kremlin. And yet the two men form a very close bond and that bond is going to last throughout the war. And it's going to prove crucial both for Archie and for Avril Harriman because their principal role is to ensure that the allied

relationship between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin doesn't collapse. And believe me, at many points in the war, this relationship is teetering on the edge of collapse. So they are there to manage it and make sure it holds together. You listen to Dan Snow's history. We're talking about Stalin and the West. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were.

By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. It's funny, there's so much focus in World War II studies on either on transatlantic cables and direct communications between the great leaders, the supreme commanders, or indeed on their famous meetings. But you're reminding us that actually old-fashioned diplomats and diplomacy was equally important here. It was vitally important. One sort of key moment comes in the summer of 1942 when Winston Churchill decides he's going to go off to Moscow. He wants to meet his new mate, Stalin, and go and see him in the Kremlin. So he flies into Moscow, as had happened with Avril Hariman and Lord Beaverbrook

when they first met Stalin. It's a disaster. Stalin is rude. He's offensive. He just hurls out insults at Winston Churchill. He reminds him of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in World War I, which of course had been largely directed by Churchill himself. And Churchill is so incensed that he says, I'm leaving. I'm leaving Moscow. I'm going home. I'm tearing up the Allied Alliance. I'm having nothing more to do with Joseph Stalin. And this is a point where Archie Clark Kerr comes into the picture because he, through an extraordinary sort of half hour he spends with Churchill, he talks the prime minister around. He talks him into going back into the Kremlin and to try and

making one more attempt to forge something like a friendship with Stalin because he thinks that the two men can get on if only this relationship is correctly managed and it's his job to do that. And of course, what Archie suggests ultimately comes to pass that Churchill goes back into the Kremlin. He goes back in for a meeting, which is just him and Stalin and an interpreter. And they get on like a proverbial house on fire. The relationship is developed. They go back to Stalin's apartment in the Kremlin. They have dinner together. Svetlana, Stalin's daughter, joins them. It's all very jolly. They drink tons and tons of champagne and vodka. And Churchill leaves Moscow, describing Stalin as his great friend and a great war leader. And a few days later,

will give a speech to the House of Commons saying that the Allied relationship is back on track, and we're going to win the war with the help of Joseph Stalin. Who was manipulating who here? Or was everybody right and everybody wrong at the same time because of the complex jigsaw of humanity? Was Stalin playing them, do you think? Or were they managing Stalin? Well, what's so interesting about these characters, you know, Archie, Avril, and Avril's daughter, Kathy, who maybe we can come on to in a minute, because he went to Moscow with his daughter. That's in itself an extraordinary story. But what they're doing is not only managing this relationship, but they're watching it from the sidelines, and they're writing everything down in their

diaries and notebooks. So we have incredibly fascinating accounts, eyewitness accounts, of, you know, what took place when the big three, the three wartime leaders met, for instance, at Tehran, where they first met at the Tehran conference, what they got up to when they were at the Yalta conference. And what's really interesting is that they all come to the same conclusion, is that Stalin is by head and shoulders a better negotiator than both Roosevelt and Churchill. Roosevelt and Churchill were often at each other's throats. They were trying to score points off each other. They were also under par. Roosevelt, of course, by the Yalta Conference in 1945 was dying. Churchill was old.

He was drinking far too much. As one of his aides put it, he was drinking bucketfuls of Caucasian champagne, and this didn't do anything to help his negotiating skills. Whereas Stalin, by all accounts, was a master of his brief. He knew exactly what he wanted. He knew exactly how he was going to get it. And of course, by the time the big three wartime leaders meet at Yalta, the Red Army has already broken out of the Soviet Union, sweeping into Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and indeed into Germany. So it's looking pretty much like Stalin is going to get everything he wanted. And what my three individuals say, which is really interesting, is that they find it very difficult to square the fact

that when they're dealing with Stalin, he was charming, he was courteous, he was gregarious, he was always extremely hospitable towards them. And they found it very hard to square the circle with a Stalin who they knew absolutely was a murderous brute, you know, who'd killed millions of his own people and locked many of them into gulags in Siberia. They couldn't square that circle. They just ended up saying, there are simply two Joseph Stalins that we got to know. Yes, there's a quote in your book, the Harriman says at the end, doesn't he? He goes, he was in some ways the most effective of the war leaders, Stalin, but at the same time, he was, of course, a murderous tyrant.

There is no point trying to investigate it any further. Both of those two things can be true at the same time, troublingly, I suppose. Exactly, exactly. To get this inside story, one of the things that was so interesting about researching this project was that, as I said, Harriman went to Moscow. In fact, he came to London and then on to Moscow with his young daughter, Kathy, who is a 24-year-old American socialite, incredibly glamorous, always draped in furs. She looked fantastic, bright red lipstick, silk stockings, the works. bright red lipstick, silk stockings, the works. And first of all, the two of them came to London and got to know Churchill incredibly well. They were pretty much living in Chequers at the time in and out of Downing Street. And Cathy wrote hundreds of letters home to her sister, describing life in the Churchill household. So that was one point of absolute fascination, because you get this behind the scenes view of what it was like to be in Churchill's household at the time of these momentous battles that were taking place in the early years of the war. And then she's sent into Moscow with her father and gets to know not only

Stalin, but all his commissars as well. And again, writes hundreds of letters home, all of them which escape the census because she sends them by diplomatic bag. So these letters were still in the possession of her son, who invited me to New York to see them, photograph the lot because it was so fascinating. And you just get a very different sort of view, a very different window on being in a room where you've got the three most powerful men in the world discussing the future of the world, and Cathy's there writing it all down. It was a real eye-opener, fascinating insight into how diplomacy works behind the scenes. I was also really interested in your book and how you chart Stalin realising that the Anglo-American relationship was more fragile than it appears and there were opportunities to drive a wedge

between the Brits and the Americans. And one of the ways of doing that was to slightly sideline the Brits and call them yesterday's power and emphasise the fact the futureits and the Americans. And one of the ways of doing that was to slightly sideline the Brits and call them yesterday's power and emphasise the fact the future belonged to the Soviets and the Americans. Yeah. And at that point, I think it very much did. And there's descriptions of Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference, very near the end of the war, sitting there like a sort of benign and very rich uncle deciding who's going to get what. And Stalin as well, knowing that his Red Army was already possessed half the territories that he wanted to claim. And Churchill slightly lost in all of this because, first of all, he's completely shocked with the way that Roosevelt is dealing behind his back with Stalin. Roosevelt at one point

even suggests that him and Stalin should solve the problem of India, you know, and this is done without Churchill's consent or knowledge. And a lot of advisors, even the president's advisors, were deeply shocked by the way that Roosevelt was treating Churchill. They felt it was very, very underhand. Those important intermediaries living in Moscow, I mean, did they develop sympathies for the Soviet Union, the nation they came to live in and enjoy socialising with people and spending all their time with? Does that get odd for diplomats? Do they have to sort of remember whose side they're on sometimes? Well, it was really strange for them because they lived this peculiarly isolated existence in Moscow, that they were really confined to their embassy and to the ambassadorial residence. They were unable, in the early years at least of the war, they were unable

to meet with any Soviet citizen at all. It was against the law for Soviets to talk even to foreigners. So they got to meet no one. And this was a source of constant frustration for Archie, the British ambassador, who actually complained to Stalin directly. He said, this is absurd. a British ambassador, who actually complained to Stalin directly. He said, this is absurd. We can't talk to anyone in your country. And gradually, Stalin relented and he began to allow the Brits and Americans to see certain Russians were allowed to come into their circle. And this is another point of great interest in some of the letters and diaries at the concert I found was that the extraordinary banquets that begin to be held for the Americans, Brits on one side, but also for notable Soviets who are invited to these

occasions. And these become these extraordinary sort of drinking matches where Stalin and his commissars would try and get Avril Harriman, Cathy and Archie as drunk as they possibly could, ostensibly in the spirit of friendship. But one suspects there was a more devious plot behind all of this. And you know, the Soviets were allies. They were our allies as Brits. They were the Americans' allies. And yet, the whole way through this period, they were bugging the British embassy and they were bugging the American embassy. So they were allies that could never really be trusted. And Churchill, at one point, when he was absolutely furious, when he was absolutely furious,

when he was in Moscow, furious with the Soviets and furious with Stalin, he deliberately started shouting insults about the Soviets at the wall and ceiling, knowing that there were hidden bugs that would be immediately picking up what he said and relate to the Kremlin. So there was a bit of a game going on, a sort of rather dangerous game taking place when they were in Moscow. of a game going on, a sort of rather dangerous game taking place when they were in Moscow. Charles, from all of your reading and studying, when did it become sort of clear, beyond reasonable doubt, that the Soviet Union would survive and that the Allies would defeat Germany in the Second World War? Was it as early as the fighting around Moscow in 1941, or did it have to wait for Stalingrad or even Kursk? What's your understanding of that?

The Soviets hoped that at the end of 1941, when the German army was effectively stalled at the gates of Moscow, the Soviet army, and Stalin in particular, hoped that this was the turning of the tide. But it wasn't really, because the German army, if you like, went into hibernation for the winter. And when spring came along, they were revived, they had new weaponry, they had new men coming in. And actually, there was a huge thrust further eastwards. Of course, famously, they never got to Moscow, but look what they were doing in Ukraine, they captured all the key sort of mining areas, and etc, etc. So in your letters and reports, there is real nervousness in the summer of 42, when Operation Blue is galloping over southern Russia and Ukraine, there's still a sense we might lose this war. Absolutely. And there was a constant fear that

Moscow would fall. And of course, don't forget that virtually all the inhabitants of Moscow, all the diplomatic corps, many of Stalin's commissars, they'd all moved out of Moscow. They'd moved way further east because there was a real fear that any day now the Wehrmacht would be marching through Red Square. So I think, to answer your question, I think it was probably around this time of Stalingrad that this was a great turning point. And I think this was the point where the Western allies, as well as the Soviets, thought, actually, Hitler's doomed and we're going to win this war. And there are actually numerous occasions on which Churchill could be heard saying,

we are actually going to win this war. I know we're going to win this war. So it was around the point of Stalingrad and of course, the defeat of General von Paulus and the capturing of enormous numbers of German soldiers. And is there ever a point where Harriman and Kerr perhaps start to feel doubts about the extent of Soviet power in Eastern Europe, their intentions in Eastern Europe, the nature of Western Soviet conflict following the war? Is there a period where they kind of transition from optimism, excitement, and keenness to help the Soviets as much as possible to getting a bit worried about the future? Yes, and it comes very early on in fact. They've seen what Stalin wants

to do, and they begin writing warnings, mem memos to the State Department in Washington and to the Foreign Office in London saying, hold on a minute, be very careful what you're doing here. Stalin clearly is intending to take over the Baltic states. He's clearly intending to install a puppet government in Poland. They knew exactly what was going on. They got to know Stalin pretty well. And they tried to issue warnings to their home governments about this. But London and Washington didn't want to hear. They simply wanted to keep this Allied alliance going. They were really hopeful. Both Churchill and Roosevelt were hopeful that this wartime alliance, which had worked

so well through the war, you know, this did defeat Hitler in the end. They wanted to keep it going into the post-war period. But Harriman, Avril Harriman and Archie Clark Kerr, they're already saying there's absolutely no way that this is going to work, you know, that we've got to break with this alliance as soon as the war is won. And this, of course, did not make them very popular when they reported this back to London and Washington. Harriman goes on to almost become president in the US.

How did they both look back on their days in Moscow? Did they maintain a fondness, well, for Stalin and for the Soviets? Well, it was quite interesting because actually after the war, Archie Clark Kerr was asked to write a number of profiles of Stalin. And he tried to present Stalin as he'd known him. But by the time these were about to be published, the Cold War had really started. And Stalin had very much gone by that point from being wartime ally to being this sort of menace of Eastern and Central Europe. And so the Times, the BBC and elsewhere refused to publish anything that he'd written about Stalin because it was deemed to be too sort of positive and uplifting about Stalin. about Stalin. However, Archie Clark remained a realist, as was Avril Harman, that this alliance was definitely over. And of course, Churchill came around to that point of view very soon afterwards as well in his famous Iron Curtain speech, which he gave in Missouri in 1947, where he turns against his wartime partner, his great wartime ally, Joseph Stalin, and he tells the world that an iron curtain has come down over Europe.

Europe is divided into two respective halves, one democratic, one run by the tyrant in the Kremlin. And so this, of course, really fires the starting shot of the Cold War. In our globalised world where we can get on planes and travel around and have exciting summits and trump can meet the north korean leader on a beach at the drop of a hat as a tweet and yet it's a reminder that these real relationships to really achieve things you've got to have these people like harriman like care sitting there doing the hard work you know the role of diplomats may be slightly eclipsed by the big leadership summits, but it's vital. I think that's absolutely true. And I go possibly even further

and say that there is every likelihood that the wartime partnership between the big three, between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, would have fallen apart without Avril and Archie being in Moscow to manage it. Honestly, it was so tense. It was so close to breaking up at so many points during the war that they just managed to hold it together. They managed to persuade these three huge egos that they have to keep this relationship on track, that this partnership is the only thing that's going to win the Second World War. And so, yeah, their role, I think, was absolutely vital. Lovely place to end it. Thank you so much, Giles. What is your book called?

My book is called The Stalin Affair, The Impossible Alliance That Won the War. Thank you very much. you