Dan Snow's History Hit - THE LEADERS: Stalin

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Was WWII actually Stalin's War? He's a man whose name is synonymous with absolute power, the epitome of ruthless ambition, his story is one of both triumph and unspeakable cruelty. A man whose brutality matched any of the Axis leaders....who worked with Hitler….yet in the end ...aligned himself with the Allies. As a result, he came out of the war on top and shaped the world order for the subsequent 50 years. Even today his shadow falls over the events we're seeing on the evening news.In this episode of 'The Leaders' Dan is joined by Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews, Phillips O'Brien and historian Simon Sebag Montefiore to examine the rise of Stalin's totalitarian power and the way he manipulated everyone on both sides to reach his strategic aims. Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal PatmorePhillip's book 'The Strategists' is available now.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail].

Most people would argue that the prime mover, the central character in the monumental tragedy that was the Second World War was Adolf Hitler. But I think there's a very strong case to be made that it was Joseph Stalin who sits at the centre of the story of World War II. His name is synonymous with power because he gave it to himself. His name literally means Man of Steel. He is the epitome of ruthless, capricious, corrupt ambition. His story is one of extraordinary triumphs and unspeakable cruelties. He was a revolutionary who betrayed the ideals of his own revolution.

A leader who demanded loyalty, yet showed none in return to anybody. A man whose brutality matched any of the Axis leaders, who worked with Hitler, yet in the end aligned himself with the Allies. As a result of that often unlikely diplomacy, he came out of the war on top and he shaped the world order for the next 50 years. Even today his shadow falls across the events we see on the evening news. From an obscure poor Georgian childhood to the unchallenged ruler of the mighty Soviet Union, Stalin forged himself into the embodiment of the state. An absolute leader whose will and ambitions and decisions and deals shaped the lives of everybody in his country and much further afield. He was cold-blooded, he was remorseless, he was brutal.

And yet, many have admired him as a war leader. They even lionized him. Even if you set aside his monstrous brutality, does he really deserve any praise for guiding the USSR through that war of unimaginable intensity? This praise of Stalin's leadership because he ends up with territory disregards so much of what we actually know makes a country powerful.

You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit and this is episode four in our Leaders series, Joseph Stalin's early life was marked by poverty and violence and a series of hugely formative experiences that shaped a ruthless character. He was born on December the 18th, 1878 in Gorey, Georgia, right on the fringes of the Russian Empire, born into a very poor family. It was a household where cruelty was the norm. His father was an alcoholic, he was a shoemaker, and he regularly beat the young child. On top of his beatings, he was plagued with health issues, scarlet fever, measles, smallpox,

top of his beatings, he was plagued with health issues, scarlet fever, measles, smallpox, that left him with permanent scars. He was in three separate traffic accidents, and for reasons that are still slightly unclear, he had one arm that was shorter than the other. It was a tricky start to life. His mother was a devout Russian Orthodox Christian who worked as a washerwoman and dreamt of her son becoming a priest. So when he was 16, he joined a seminary school in Tbilisi, where he initially excelled academically, particularly in languages. His mother was very proud. Learning Russian, which wasn't his native tongue, would prove particularly useful. It didn't take long, though, for him to lose his interest in his orthodox studies

as he pursued quite another philosophical pathway. In 1898, age 20, Stalin joined a Marxist group. He left the seminary. He turned his full attention to revolution in this life rather than salvation in the next. But Stalin wasn't like the other revolutionaries you come across or you read about. He was a shapeshifter. He could both argue about the means of production and he could scrap in the street. He was a brawler and he was a professor. It was a potent, dangerous mix. This is historian Simon Sebag Montefiore on the rise of Stalin.

He converted to Marxism and became a master of the underground life, the conspiratorial life, as you might think, as a sort of terrorist and revolutionary. You see, most of the Bolsheviks, most of the Social Democrats, they were very good at writing articles. They were all intellectuals and noblemen. Lenin called them the tea drinkers. They were very good at sitting in cafes and talking about themselves and correcting articles and having terrible feuds about ideology. Stalin could do that too, because he'd had this good education. But he could also have people whacked. He could arrange a strike. He could arrange an assassination. He could set up a protection racket. He was a master of espionage and clandestine activity. So he could do both

things. Not many of the top Bolsheviks could do both. And that's why when someone said, but he's had people killed, Lenin said, that's exactly the type we need. And this is in Tsarist Russia. This is in Tsarist Russia. He went underground. He had many, many aliases. He had lots of love affairs and abandoned everybody.

He just lived for the cause. He believed with fanaticism in Bolshevism, in Marxism. And many of them had religious educations and they believed that Marxism was a kind of scientific religion, like an alternative religion. He gets caught. He gets caught many times. His exile to Siberia. I think he's happiest in Siberia, fishing, living with the indigenous peoples out there. And then the revolution happens. living with the indigenous peoples out there. And then the revolution happens.

Unrest had been growing in Russia for months. There were food shortages. There was dissatisfaction with Tsar Nicholas II's leadership. There was war fatigue. And there was a dawning realization among the working men and women of Russia's big cities that they were not just essential to the continuation of the war because of their production of war material, but the entire stability of the Russian Empire. For months, Russia seemed to be teetering on the edge of revolution, and in February 1917, it finally tipped. Russian army units joined the rebels and forced the Tsar to abdicate on the 15th of March 1917. A provisional government was put in place, but didn't last long. Seven months later, in October of 1917, the Bolsheviks, radical communists led by Vladimir Lenin, seized power, overthrowing it in a nearly bloodless coup.

That marked the beginning of communist rule in Russia and the start of a bloody civil war. This is Simon again on what Stalin was up to during that revolutionary year of 1917. He's actually visiting in Siberia on his own, hating all the other Bolsheviks who were all these Russian noblemen, Jewish intellectuals, all the kind of people he hates.

And he's happiest going on long shooting trips on his own. Also spending long, long days with these kind of indigenous peoples out in the middle of Siberia. And of course, also sleeping with very young girls and impregnating them. And so he's living this kind of life in isolation. And it must have seemed like the revolution might never have happened. The first revolution's in February, and he's still out there. And he immediately leaves and comes back to St. Petersburg. Lenin comes back, he meets up with Lenin. And are they close? Yeah, they're sort of weirdly close. I mean, Lenin had sort of taken it upon himself to sort of educate Stalin in ideology, and set him sort of jobs to write about nationalities and appointed him as nationalities expert. And Lenin

recognizes that in the Bolshevik leadership, there are only about two top effective people, and that's Trotsky and Stalin. And it's quite inconvenient that one's a Jew and one's a Georgian because this is a Russian revolution. But nonetheless, Lenin appoints them. They are the only two people who once they've seized power are allowed to come into his office without any appointment. This tells you all you need to know. And the October Revolution, by then, Stalin is in charge of Lenin's security. He's an expert at smuggling Lenin in and out of St. Petersburg when they're hunting him down.

And he's around during the storming of the Winter Palace. Trotsky's actually running it. Stalin has other jobs on that night. But he's one of the top five people planning everything. And as soon as they sort of get power, like I said, you know, Lenin says, Trotsky and Stalin, they can come into my office at any time. They're my two top sort of hatchet men, henchmen. So you mentioned the sort of five of them that are planning this. The impression you get of the second Russian revolution is that the communists were a tiny, tiny little sect, and yet they managed to take over the Russian Empire.

Once they were in power, you've got to realise that there was a tiny group of people, as you said, and they had this incredibly ruthless idea of how to take power. It was like, they believed in terror, they'd studied the French Revolution, they loved the French Revolution, they saw themselves as sort of Robespierre characters. And they really believed that a small group of people could change history, improve the world, affect progress, using terror to remould society. And they really believed that and they were willing to do it. Is there a point that you identify when Stalin sort of abandons any pretense at believing in progress and believing in improving the world, and he just settles down to becoming a kind of thuggish, autocratic thief.

I don't believe that ever happens, funny enough. Because I think when we were taught history at school, we were always taught that Hitler and Stalin were just madmen. And that's a very unhelpful way to look at them, actually. Because if you study Hitler's rights to power, he was a superb people person who kind of won over people, played them off against each other, won over the industrialists, won over the establishment. And in diplomacy, he was a very smooth diplomat when he wanted to be. Stalin, same thing. I mean, he systematically organized to win power by charming people, by doing favors for people, by giving people apartments and cars, and the Communist Party, first of all. And once he was in power, he worked very hard

on propaganda to promote himself in certain ways. The man of great modesty. He persuaded everyone that he was the opposite to Trotsky. The other alternative was Trotsky. When he was struggling for power, Trotsky was this kind of incredibly handsome, barrel-chested, marvellous sort of face with sort of a plumage of hair, who was always kind of walking around in beautiful,

finely laundered tunics. And he had Stalin, very low-key, and also done a lot of amazing things in the revolution, but just never showed off, didn't want to be at the centre stage, it seemed, you know, and who wasn't a very good speaker. He spoke with a strong Georgian accent. So he was a brilliant people person. And when you read all the letters in the archives with him and all the top leadership, there are thousands of these letters because it was just before telephones became totally secure and much more widely used. When you read all these letters, which he wrote by hand for hours, you can see he's flattering them. He's charming them, he's offering them things, he's persuading them. So that's one part of it. The other thing is, he always believed in Marxism.

Above everything, it was politics, politics, politics. He believed in Marxism. He believed that his destiny was to be the man who made Marxism successful in the world, and the heir to Marx and Lenin. And he totally believed that. He believed there was no separation between himself and A, Marxism, but B, Russia. That was the other part of his kind of persona because he was born a Georgian. It was the only time in world history that a Georgian could become leader of Russia

for various reasons because of the internationalism of Marxism and also just because of the sort of extreme situation that Russia had been destroyed. It was being rebuilt. 30 years later, 20 years later, he wouldn't have become leader. He'd have died as a tramp in Georgia, as would Hitler, any other moment in history. Because all of history is just this kind of moment, isn't it? This fusion of kind of moment, personality and opportunity. So Stalin, I think he always believed in Marxism.

So Lenin's in charge there. Civil War breaks out almost immediately. Yeah. What's Stalin charge there. Civil War breaks out almost immediately. What's Stalin do during the Civil War? Well, in the Civil War, he's both a huge pain to Lenin because he's constantly refused to take orders from anybody, including Lenin. He's the sort of person that never takes orders from anybody. He has to be master of everything. But at the same time, he's extremely effective at, if you send him to a town, telling him to stop the rot,

take control, find enemies, that sort of thing. He's useful at that. He goes down there, he becomes friends with the army commanders, he creates his own coterie, he executes enormous numbers of people who may or may not be enemies. So he's actually the perfect person for this war. And it's an incredibly brutal war. I mean, something like 10 million people die in it. And what its real effect is on Russia is that it brutalizes the Bolshevik party so that the people who do well, the people who get confidence, people who get power are these really tough working class commissars, not particularly the sort of old tea drinking intellectuals. And so Stalin gathers around himself a kind of coterie of these

really tough, and you've seen pictures of them all, they're in tunics, they're in boots up to their knees, they have pistols, you know, the leather jackets, all that sort of thing. Those are the people who now take over Russia, and they are kind of blooded by this. And they're used to executing huge numbers of people. This becomes very useful later in the 20s when they start to collectivise and they start terror. Stalin's terror in the 1930s, jumping ahead a little bit, is literally like a fusion. It's like half civil war and half the strange conspiratorial world that Stalin had existed in before the revolution. As an undercover conspirator who trusted no one, where everyone was a traitor. Everyone was betraying everyone,

everyone was talking to the secret police, you couldn't trust anybody. And those two kind of worlds fused in the terror. To go back to your original, where we started with this, you know, the formation of Stalin, those are the things that formed him. What stage did the succession become an issue? Well, very soon, because there's an attempted assassination of Lenin very early on. And Lenin is then quite sort of damaged in his health. And Stalin has a very good civil war, but Trotsky has a better civil war, because Trotsky is the sort of architect of victory. And it's a fascinating story about Trotsky, because he's a journalist, and he becomes the sort of soldier, organizer of victory, which is such an unlikely story, you know, considering

he's a Jewish farmer's son who turned international journalist. But he learns how to organise, not just propaganda, but actual armies and warfare. And he really wins the civil war. So he's actually kind of got a big claim to the succession. And very quickly, 1922, Lenin starts to have strokes, which become worse and worse. And as he does that, he realizes that Stalin's too powerful. He's made Stalin the general secretary of the party, which is an invented job. I mean, Lenin's really head of the party, but this is the organizer. politics is all about personnel. So he starts appointing his people, patronage. Russia's always been about patronage, still is, you know. So he starts to become very powerful. And he's never too proud to go and talk to somebody, to listen to somebody, to invite them over for tea, to make an alliance. Well, in Ireland, you've got this Trotsky, this kind of framboyant Jewish person. Jews are very suspicious people to Russians. There's still a strong strain of anti-Semitism,

even in the Bolshevik party, which is supposed to be so anti that sort of thing. So Stalin builds a party and Trotsky just builds his own profile and is too arrogant really to build one. And so when it comes to Lenin's death, Lenin dies knowing that Stalin has got too far ahead. He tries to sort of bring back Trotsky, it's too late really. And he knows that it's going to be a fight, the succession between those two. And who does Lenin want to succeed him? No one. Because like all great leaders, they don't think anyone's good enough to succeed them. And so they want a collective leadership. They want someone who's not going to be as important as they are, who's not going to be as great as they are, because

they believe there is no one as great as they are. And so he wants a collective leadership. But instead, it's pretty inevitable he's going to get Stalin. And Stalin gradually defeats in the 20s all of the sort of different groups. And they're all hopeless politics, surprisingly, because they spent their whole lives kind of arguing about ideology in the Bolshevik time. But they're all absolutely hopeless at standing up to him. And is it kind of palace politics? I mean, instead of outmanoeuvring them in conference rooms and things in Moscow,

how does he do that? It's all sorts of different ways. I mean, in some ways, it's like personal old-fashioned kind of Tammany Hall machine politics. It's literally like, you're coming to Moscow, have you got a nice enough apartment?

And then when they arrive in Moscow, he actually turns up and looks at their apartment. Is this good enough? Have you got a fridge? Oftentimes, he turns up at their apartment, he talks to their wife, and he says, you don't have a fridge. I'm going to get you a general electric American fridge. That happens many times. Or have you got the right cars? Let me get you a

Packard. You know, this sort of thing. So he takes great trouble. Some of it's just machine politics. Some of it is real ideological politics. He backs Bukharin at one point against Trotsky, against Zinoviev, against the left. But actually, he's a real leftist. And in the end, he follows leftist policy. He says, this has got to be a real revolution. We've got to collectivise. We've got to industrialise. And some of it is just sort of dirty tricks. You know, it's bugging people's phones. It's tricking people, like getting Trotsky to miss Lenin's funeral by sort of sending him the telegram too late. Any dirty tricks, he's quite happy to do anything. Partly it's just personality, promotion. It's just him. He's now a veteran. He's an old Bolshevik. He supports his friends too. So it's a series of

things. So although he never faced an election, he definitely ran for office. He definitely ran for office, even though actually the party was quite a small electorate. But actually it's increasing all the time. There are sort of million members pretty quickly, because it's the ruling party, everyone wants to join. So though it's not the whole of the Russian people, it's an increasing number of people. And of course, you know, they have to control the whole population. I mean, there's all sorts of things going on there. And so what state does he emerge as the uncontested ruler of the Soviet Union? Well, in December 1929, he's kind of declared the leader. But really, he's kind of been dominant, really, since 1922, really,

when Lenin got ill. When you look at it, it's kind of less surprising. For outsiders, it's terribly surprising, because, you know, he seems such a dark horse and such an unlikely, you know, they're always more flamboyant people. But actually, they're not particularly talented, these people. You know, everyone always said it's so remarkable that he managed to beat Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin. Actually, these are all kind of what Lenin called tea drinkers. They're not practical politicians. And the whole point about Stalin was he could do everything.

He had all the political talents necessary to succeed at that time and place, in that peculiar environment of the Bolshevik leadership. So after he's named in 1929, the terror, is that about his own grip on power? Or is that about him organising the Soviet Union the way that he wished it to be organised? Well, it's both. I mean, first of all, he says, this is a Marxist revolution, we've got to have a Marxist revolution in the country as well. So he organises collectivisation, which is really a war on the peasantry. And they don't care who dies, they send people from the towns, like armed people who look for grain, try and destroy

kind of better off peasants, the kulaks. And they form these huge collective farms, which are actually extremely inefficient, but nonetheless, they do it. And it's a kind of war on the countryside. Peasants who resist, peasants who destroy their own grain and stuff, they just let them starve. 10 million people die. And if anyone else had been in power, I think the Soviet Union would have broken up. But in 1932, Stalin held it together. The Terror in the 30s was the sequel to collectivization, because during the pressure of collectivization, he saw that many of the Bolsheviks didn't have the nerve, didn't quite support him, resented him. And so he decided that he would destroy them systematically. And he was inspired very much by history, because Ivan the Terrible did exactly that with his nobility. And Stalin felt they'd become a new nobility. So he just launched this

terror. Its aim was just to find traitors, find enemies, even if they were potential enemies, which is quite a strange thing. You kill people because they could be an enemy. But they literally said, I think it was Yezhov who was in charge of the secret police at the height of the terror. He said, it doesn't matter if we kill 10,000 innocent people if we get one enemy. And so they basically did that. And it's the most terrifying story.

And is it about Stalin's personality? Definitely. I mean, there would have been mass killings under Trotsky, but it wouldn't have taken the bizarre form that it took. That was a product of Stalin's personal nature. But did it work? It worked to a certain extent, because its aim was to make sure that if there was a war or another mega crisis, that the Bolshevik leadership would be loyal to Stalin and his leadership. And when it happened in 1941, there was not a whisper. No one resisted, you know, and actually during the war, everyone obeyed Stalin completely. And despite, I think he lost sort of 6 million men in the first year and a half of the war, no other leader in history could

have survived such disastrous, catastrophic losses in a war. But no one dared confront Stalin. And so he got away with it, and then learned to be quite an effective commander-in-chief. Go listen to our Leaders series. Join us after the break. To be continued... 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. As Hitler set his sights on Poland in the late summer of 1939, Stalin recognised the opportunity. He saw that Hitler's ambitions were matched by his own. As Hitler grabbed territory in Poland,

so too could Stalin settle scores, grab territory in places like the Baltics and Poland. He realised that he could use Hitler's invasion as the perfect cover to seize land for the Soviet Union. All under the guise of security, creating a buffer zone against Nazi Germany. He could exploit the febrile international situation to expand his borders. He signed the infamous Nazi-Soviet pact, the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. And 16 days after Germany invaded Western Poland, Stalin sent his troops into the East. Here's Professor Philips O'Brien. Phil, at the outbreak of the European war, when Hitler and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, what does Stalin want? Well, Stalin in many ways thinks he's the cat who's got the cream in August, September of 1939.

What Stalin does is he looks at the other great powers of Europe, the Germans, the British, and the French, and he sees a bunch of capitalist powers. And the last thing in his mind he wants to do is fight for some of these capitalist powers against the other. What he's desperately worried about is they would all turn against him, that at some point the Germans, the British, and the French might gang up on him. He's trying to make sure that is the kind of situation that never comes about. He doesn't believe Hitler is in many ways particularly more threatening to him than the British or the French are. He believes that they are all capitalist powers who would like to bring the Soviet Union down. So what he doesn't want is isolation. He doesn't want to have them gang up

on him. And that is why he jumps at the Nazi-Soviet pact. He had, by the way, been flirting with trying to have good relations with the Germans for years. There had been a lot of misperception that because Hitler was an anti-communist and a lot of Soviet propaganda was anti-Nazi, that actually those countries could get along. Stalin always realized there was a chance that he could cut a deal with Hitler. Well, there were Germans training in mechanized warfare in Russia, isn't it? Exactly. The German-Soviet relationship had actually been quite cooperative in the interwar period. And so what he wants is to see who will give him the best deal, really, between the British and the French on one hand and the Germans on the other. And actually, what happens in the summer of 1939 is Hitler offers him a deal he can't say no to.

The British and the French are unwilling to offer Stalin what he wants. Hitler is willing to make the offer. Hitler offers him half of Poland, more than half of Poland and the Baltic states. And that is simply too much for Stalin to say no. And so he's ecstatic. He celebrates the Nazi Soviet pact. He gets a little drunk. They even toast Hitler because in his mind, this is absolute genius. What he has done is made sure the capitalist powers will now fight each other and he will pick up the spoils. Best thing that can happen are the Germans go to war with the British and the French. Now, you mentioned pick up the spoils.

What are those spoils? Are we in a sort of Trotskyite world in which Stalin thinks, ooh, this could be the beginning of the oft foretold great revolution. This is global communism. Or is he just trying to rebuild that czarist russian empire it probably both in his mind still no it is communist he's not what we call a traditional russianist he's not trying to be czarist but on the other hand he believes the soviet union is going to lead world communism what he's lost is any romantic notion that this will be a working class revolution. Yeah, that's gone for Stalin. He believes in revolution from above. In other words, revolution is going to come through his

leadership, not from any popular spontaneous movement. He will lead the world to communist revolution. And he sees this as a key step to that because he believes the capitalist powers will now fight themselves to exhaustion, and then he will be in the ideal situation. So Russian horses may once again water in the Seine. Yeah, certainly. In his mind, I think he probably would have been happy for Germany to be more weakened than the British and the French, because then he could have expanded eastward. Okay. So in 1939, he's got pretty big ambitions or certainly possibilities in his future. Well, I mean, I think he can see that a great war in Europe,

where he can stay out of it, is a good thing for him. A great war in Europe can, in his mind, destroy the old order. The First World War did destroy much of the old order. So Austria-Hungary was gone because of the First World War. The Soviet state was born. The Soviet state was born. The Soviet state was born. Another great European war will only play into his benefits. How centralized is power as a warlord? Is he making decisions? Is he pulling all the levers?

It's the most centralized warlord. I mean, Hitler, yes, the Fuhrer principle. Hitler is a dictator. But Hitler actually doesn't interfere so much with, say, industry. He's happy to let industrialists run things. So the German state is all based on Hitler's authority, but there's certain areas where he doesn't interfere so much. Stalin can interfere with anything that he wants. He makes all the decisions. It is a centralized state beyond any other centralized state of the powers of the Second World War. So the state owns everything.

Stalin, in a sense, owns the Soviet Union. As the head of the Communist Party, he owns the Soviet Union, and he can do whatever he wants to do whenever he wants. And plus, he has psychologically basically cowed the other leadership, which becomes very important in 1941. Remember, in the 1930s, he kills many of his closest friends, who he believes to show were unloyal. He kills everybody he thinks is the slightest bit disloyal. And by 1939, the people around him are psychologically almost enslaved to his will

because of the absolute terror he has brought about. We'll just go back to 1939. He signs a pact with Adolf Hitler. Are there short-term benefits? You mentioned some of the strategic benefits, the Western powers fighting each other. Does he benefit economically and stuff? Well, the Germans benefit economically more than anything. What the deal is at that point, there's the territorial deal. And the territorial deal is he ends up with more than half of Poland and the Baltic states. But he basically allows Hitler to invade knowing that there won't be any support for Poland.

And so Hitler takes over the other half of Poland and crucially Hitler gets Warsaw and all of that. So there's the geopolitical one. And from that point on, Hitler can plan knowing the Soviet Union will not be his enemy. And that's really important. So he can actually concentrate everything to fight Britain and France in the spring of 1940 that allows for the German victory over France. If the Germans had to keep a lot of their army on the Eastern Front, they could not have launched the offensive they launch against the French. So Germany has geopolitical advantages. They also have enormous economic advantages. Hitler starts reneging on the Nazi-Soviet pact economically

from the beginning. How it was supposed to work economically is that the Soviets would give the Germans lots of raw materials. And in exchange, the Germans would give the Soviets some advanced material, war equipment to allow the Soviets to improve their technology. The amazing thing, that stuff never shows up. And Stalin gets referred, where are you supposed to send us some planes? Oh, you know, we're fighting a war. So the Germans actually don't fulfill their end of the Nazi-Soviet pact economically, whereas the Soviet Union, Stalin religiously makes sure the Germans get all the raw materials that they're promised, up until the moment Hitler invades. I mean, the trains are running into Germany full of raw materials for the German war economy up to the moment of the German attack. That's the interesting thing about Stalin in this period. Is he going, I don't trust

Hitler. Let's take this breathing space and rearm and rebuild, let some of these prescribed officers out of their camps and let's get the Red Army strong. Or does he actually seem to get quite into this alliance? It's a really interesting question. People know, I can never pronounce his first name, but V. Molotov, who had been Soviet foreign minister for a long time, long time Stalin crony, who lives a very long life afterwards. And someone asked him, well, did Stalin trust Hitler? And Molotov said, no, that's ridiculous. Stalin didn't trust anybody. Why would he have trusted Hitler? I think what had happened is Stalin didn't necessarily trust Hitler, but he trusted Stalin. So really, what Stalin has committed himself to this Nazi-Soviet

pact, it has given him some advantages, real advantages. And what he can't imagine is him having miscalculated to such a degree, because his whole self-image is based on him being right. He is the great leader, the Wurz, and what he will do. And by the way, anyone who challenges his great leadership is going to die. So it's more that for him to all of a sudden realize the Germans might attack is to admit he has made a colossal blunder. So it's not that he trusts Hitler, it's just he can't for his own self-image really admit what he's done, which has helped create Hitler and make the German war machine very powerful. Well, those months between 1939 and the German invasion in 1941, were they important?

Did Stalin improve Soviet defenses? I mean, certainly, I guess the territory was important. It provided a buffer zone. What he does do is start producing mass equipment. What are the most important things Stalin does is, one, they do learn a little bit from the great strategic disasters, the Winter War when he attacks Finland. I mean, Stalin behaves just like Hitler. Hitler attacks Poland. Well, a few months later, Stalin attacks Finland. It's the exact same thing. There's no reason for him to attack Finland. The Finns are not wanting a war. He simply wants to take Finnish territory. So he attacks Finland like Hitler attacks Poland. And it ends up being a disaster for the Red Army, that it's simply not prepared. It doesn't have the logistics. The training is weak. And the Finns extract a really hard price on the Russians, the Soviets. But eventually, Stalin does mass the

Soviet army, really throws almost a huge percentage of the Soviet army to take small parts of Finnish territory. But that is a lesson. And I think they realize is we are not a fully fledged modern military. But the helpful thing for Stalin is he realizes that by the end of 1939. So he's got a year and a half to start preparing the Red Army before Hitler invades, not that he knows it's going to invade. And there are some important changes between 1930 and the end of 1939. And the summer of 1941, they start upgrading their equipment. They start, you might say, improving their officer corps so that the Red Army of 1941 is a more capable force than that of 1939. Meanwhile, by the summer of 1941, Adolf Hitler really was at the height of

his power. With Western Europe under total Nazi control, Britain struggling to hold out, Hitler decided to turn his attention eastward. For Hitler, the Nazi-Soviet pact always been a temporary convenience. It was a way to buy time while securing resources for his war machine. His ultimate goal remained unchanged, the destruction of the Soviet Union. Despite his alliance with Stalin, his disdain for Bolshevism never waned, Despite his alliance with Stalin, his disdain for Bolshevism never waned, and he was certain that a quick, brutal, massive invasion would bring the Soviet regime to its knees.

And so, on June 22, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in history. Hitler was gambling everything on a lightning war to crush Stalin before the winter set in. Let's go to the summer of 1941. I'm so struck by Stalin's determination not to listen to intelligence that was clearly telling him the Germans are massing on his frontier. It's astonishing the intelligence that the Soviets are getting about the German plans. They're getting it from their very famous spy, Richard Sorgo, who's based in Japan and has got sources in the Japanese government who are basically saying the Germans are getting ready to attack the Soviet Union. The British pass on their decrypts of German sources. So that's British disinformation.

I mean, eventually you have Germans actually telling him, we are about to invade. And he just can't accept it. And so this is the kind of situation where the evidence is screaming at him, where his whole vision had been based on him being right and him being a genius, that he cannot accept that, that he is wrong. So he will just simply pretend that he will be right,

and hopefully all will be right in the end. Then the Germans do invade, and Stalin has a sort of breakdown. I mean, certainly he disappears for a few days. It's a few days after June 22nd, when it does look like the Red Army can't stop the Germans. And he goes to his dacha, which is just outside Moscow. I think it's the one where they filmed Death of Stalin, and disappears. He's not communicating with the government in Moscow, which is only a few miles away. And so the Soviet state is basically leaderless for a few days. I think he's all of a sudden understood that he has brought this about. And his view of the

German army, I think he thinks they can't stop the German army. I think that's the amazing thing, as Stalin thinks, because of his experience of German military efficiency in the First World War, which was quite impressive on the Eastern Front, I don't think he thinks he can stop the German army in 1941. And he believes that's it. Then the Germans have to stop and pause. And I think that begins the process of recovery for Stalin. And he does realize at that point

that he can trust the people around them because they're too weak to overthrow him because they had their chance. So what is amazing, he's eventually able to do a bit more delegation during the second war than he had been able to do before that because he can delegate because he believes they're not a threat to him. When he was at his most vulnerable, at his lowest, when he assumed he was going to take a bullet to the back of the head and no one made a move against him. In fact, they begged him to come back. So that's a pretty big affirmation of his leadership.

And that, I think, allows him to grow as a war leader. But it allows him to start to learn the process of delegation, which is very important in the Second World War. I mean, in many ways, to be a great war leader, you have to understand what you can delegate and what you can't. When Stalin comes back to Moscow, what decisions does he make? What does he do at that point? To begin with, he begins the process of trusting some war leader. I mean, he does not become a great war leader. He makes a lot of mistakes in 1941.

I think that's very clear. And he also leads a lot of incompetent commanders in charge, like his old crony, Bujenny, who he leaves in control of Ukraine and the big forces around Kiev. On the other hand, he begins to use people effectively like Zhukov, who in many ways he slightly fears, but he understands that's a very competent officer and I have to use that officer. What he also does brilliantly in 1941 is start working with the British and the Americans. He gets over any hesitation about working with capitalist powers and the Americans. He gets over any hesitation

about working with capitalist powers. Believe me, that gets over right away. And particularly with Roosevelt, dealing with Roosevelt's emissary, Harry Hopkins, he's actually incredibly effective. That he makes Hopkins believe that, you know, he really, really values Roosevelt, really wants to work with the Americans.

It's all overplayed, but he makes Hopkins really believe he wants to be a good ally with the Americans. It's all overplayed, but he makes Hopkins really believe he wants to be a good ally with the United States. He wins Churchill over as well, doesn't he? Yes. I mean, I don't know if Churchill ever fully believes that. He understands after the war, there's going to be problems. Whereas Roosevelt really thinks, I think coming from what he hears in Hopkins and Stalin in 1941, that there's a chance for a strong post-war relationship. So operationally, the Soviets lose some of the biggest battles in history to that point, but they do do some things brilliantly. They leave very little resource behind,

they pack up factories, move them east, they destroy railroad. Is that coming from Stalin? A lot of it is. Because it is a highly centralized state, he can order a factory to be taken from Western Russia and put on trains and move to the Urals. And by the way, that includes his workforce, right? The factory and the people that work in it, the whole building. You're going to go. You're going to T-34s, we're going to build you in the Urals. And that's the kind of thing he can do. There's no worry about the civilian population. We're going to blow up the railways, fine. Civilians, if they die, they die. So it's absolutely ruthless war making from the point of view of Stalin. And what he still has to learn in 41 is not to get too granular about the military. Where he makes mistakes from 41 and into 42 is when he still tries to micromanage military affairs.

So the first thing he learns is to try and protect the Soviet war industry, protect Soviet production. And in 1942, he learns to really step aside from being too hands-on on the military. And presumably the Soviet state is ready for total mobilization, for total war, because Stalin's been starving people. He's been reorganizing industry. The Soviet state doesn't have to learn how to reach into the lives of every one of its citizens to mobilize them, to send them to places, to make them do what they want to do. There's two things they have going for them.

One is the absolute centralized terror that the Soviet state had exerted over its own people. And the Germans help a great deal, too, by being even more horrible than the Soviets. So you are able, by the way, to get Ukrainian support for the war eventually for the Soviets because the Germans are even more horrible to the Ukrainians. So that what they are able to do is take advantage of the centralized state and the threat posed by the Nazis to really extract a great deal of resource out of the Soviet population. Is Stalin's decision to stay in Moscow, is that an important moment? I think it is a very important moment because he could have ordered the army out. Had he said,

we really want to fight a long-term war. We won't fight for Moscow. We'll pull back to the Urals. It's not only that he stays, but he stays to fight for Moscow is the key one. And yes, his person staying is a sign that one, I think he comes to the confidence they can hold it, that the German army is actually weakening and they make the right calculation that Germans are actually not in great shape in December 1941. and that it's not automatic that Moscow is going to fall, that the winter is here, and maybe they can't. So I think it's a proper calculation, and it makes a difference. Go listen to our Leaders series.

Join us after the break. I'm Matt Lewis. To be continued... 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. Hitler's apparently unstoppable war machine ground to a halt at the very gates of Moscow. The German army, victorious across Europe, ruthless in its advances, now found itself facing, to its dismay, more and more fresh Soviet soldiers, but also an unyielding force of nature. The Germans had blitzed their way through the USSR. They'd captured vast swathes of territory.

They'd left utter destruction in their wake. They'd committed monstrous crimes. But by the time they closed in on the capital, on Moscow, winter had set in. Temperatures plummeted to minus 40. German tanks simply froze up, weapons malfunctioned, and soldiers who were just unprepared for the Russian cold perished in the snow. Meanwhile, Soviet forces were more adaptable in this icy hellscape. On skis and snowshoes, they struck back. Endless waves of new soldiers caving in the German front.

By early 1942, the Nazis were in retreat. This was the first time on land that Hitler's war machine had been stopped decisively in its tracks. Moscow did not fall, but Soviet success wasn't just about the weather. Stalin had something else on his side. Is that the real turning point of the Second World War? I think December 41 is the turning point, because you have the US come in and the Soviets are going to survive. Those are the two developments. And one on the own wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic as having both together. So the survival of the Soviet Union is a key part. But Hitler could have beaten the Soviet Union in 1942 and he'd not had to worry about the Anglo-Americans.

German economic production is far larger than the Soviet Union in terms of its access to steel, access to raw materials. The problem the Germans have is the German economy is always fighting the Anglo-Americans. They're devoting far more of their production to fighting the British and the Americans, even in 1942-43, than they are to fighting the Russians. So had the Germans been able to focus everything on the Soviet Union, I don't see how the Soviet

Union actually resists it. It's like Russia fighting Germany. They don't actually have the military force to compete one-on-one. So, Soviet survival is not just surviving through 1941. Soviet survival is the fact that the Germans always have to send more production to fight the British and the Americans. Meaning what? Still focusing on building ships, U-boats, aircraft? Yeah. I mean, the Germans spend about eight times as much production on aircraft than tanks in the Second World War. The land war actually doesn't take much German production. The Germans spend about 50% of all their production building and arming aircraft. That's what the German economy is doing. And in December 1941, when the Germans are attacking Moscow, great battle, they have more aircraft fighting the British than the Russians. So there is even in December 1941,

quote unquote, this great battle, the German Luftwaffe is engaged fighting the British. They're fighting the Russians with actually not as much production as you would think. Why there are a lot of soldiers there is because the Germans don't send the equipment. They're trying to compensate for lack of equipment through infantry. onward at all because they can't afford to send any aircraft. But at no point are the Germans able to send, say, Allah, the Battle of Britain. The Battle of Britain is fascinating. Germans are able to spend 100% of their production against the British, and they fail quite quickly. At no point do they send anything more than 60% of their production against the Soviets, and that's 41. And then it drops below 50%. By 43, they're probably sending 30% of their production to fight the Soviets. So I think we have to recalibrate. And if you look at the war in terms of production, as opposed to infantry, you will get a very different vision.

1942 is difficult for the Soviets. 1943, they have the Battle of Kursk, another huge battle. But by the end of 43, fascinating, I read a quote the other day, Stalin was talking about when it comes to asking how we won this war. And he's talking about the end of 43. So they are talking about winning the war. They know it's won. I mean, I think from the Soviet point of view, you know you're going to win the war from the end of 42 when Stalingrad survives and the Germans are pushed on the back foot. The Germans are only going to do so much. The British and the Americans are entrenched in the desert. Germany is now going to be squeezed between that vice. Now, what the Soviets want and what Stalin wants is a British and American army in France as soon as possible. He doesn't

understand the mechanics of a sea war and air war. That's not his way of thinking. He thinks in terms of big land wars. So what Stalin's view is, okay, how are we going to win this war? The best way we can end it is to have the British and the Americans invade France. We'll be in the East and we'll just steamroller them together. But he's absolutely sure they're going to win. The one thing he still is worried about at times, though, is that will the British and the Americans actually change sides? To him, they're still capitalist powers and maybe they will rather cut a deal with hitler or some post-hitler german or some post-hitler german political organization because they certainly don't want the soviet union to become too strong is stalin by the end of 43 starting to look at

the map of europe and thinking i wonder if we can get to the odor before they get here is that starting to go through his head i mean he doesn't say it but i think stalin can see the trends and can see how things are going. So I assume he's thinking, how do we get as much as we possibly can before the war ends? Where exactly he sees that being, I don't know. But I would assume it's to get as far west as he possibly can. So at Tehran, this conference at the end of 43, he successfully puts a lot of pressure on the Western allies. He wants a landing in France in 44.

It's basically he and Roosevelt gang up. Roosevelt thinks he has to charm Stalin. You can't charm Stalin. But Roosevelt's trying to ingratiate himself with Stalin. He's trustworthy. But what holds Roosevelt and Stalin together in Tehran is that they both want the same thing. And Churchill doesn't want it. So they gang up on Churchill and they really just bludgeon him into line that we will have

this invasion of France and it's relentless and Churchill just has to agree. Strange. As you're talking, I'm suddenly thinking, what about the unholy alliance of Churchill and Stalin? Churchill doesn't invade France. Stalin occupies the whole of Western Europe. Strange. Yep. Well, I mean, that would be the interesting thing is how Churchill's war would have actually ended and no one knows. And actually Stalin might've ended up with a lot more territory than he did end up with. What does Stalin sort of give them in return? He agrees he will enter the Pacific war at some stage. Which the Americans don't even want at the end.

What Roosevelt wants is the Red Army to keep fighting. So he doesn't actually want Stalin to make any concessions to him. They do say, okay, once we have dispensed with Germany, we would like you to join the war against Japan. Though interestingly, by the time of Yalta, they don't even want that. There's a rather sad moment in the American delegation when they're talking. And they're basically like, oh, the Soviets and us said we're ready to fulfill our part of thealta. They don't even want that. There's a rather sad moment in the American delegation when they're talking and they're basically like, oh, the Soviets and us said we're ready to fulfill our part of the bargain. And the Americans are like, well, we don't really want you to fulfill that part of the bargain. Well, yeah. What are they going to do? Partition the Korean peninsula? But they can't say it. So the Americans have to say, well,

thank you very much. Yes, we're looking forward to you joining the war. Is Stalin thinking about the post-war order at Tehran? I mean, he certainly is in Yalta, of course. I think he is definitely thinking, I mean, winning the war on the best possible situation. I don't think Stalin ever had huge faith in the continuation of the post-war alliance, the grand alliance continuing in the post-war. He had much greater faith on the expansion of the post-war alliance, the grand alliance continuing in the post-war. He had much greater faith on the expansion of the Soviet Union. That was going to be the thing for maintaining the world in the way that he wanted to do it. So he is fighting the war to make sure

the Soviet Union is in as advantageous a position as possible when it's end. I'm not quite sure what he thought it would be. I think he is focused enough to know, as did Churchill, by the way, and I think Roosevelt, that the fate of Germany would be the single most important thing. And I think that is also something that sometimes we forget now, that Germany had shown itself almost able to conquer all of Europe twice within a 30-year period. And that is from the innate resources of Germany, the industrial technological population resources of Germany. So what the Soviets and the British and the Americans all wondered is what the heck happens to this after

the war? You've got a German problem. And so what they all want is a dominant position in Germany, a control of German resources. And so that's what they're fighting for. So I think ultimately what Stalin wants is the most influential position in Germany that he can have. Does he make it clear at Tehran that the Soviet Union will be realizing its gains from, for example, the Nazi-Soviet pact, like the Baltics, Eastern Poland, even ignoring Germany, is Stalin still going to stake his claim to those territories? He's hinting that. He's not coming out and saying it. What is clear is like he's not going to deal with the Polish government in London. So he is making it clear that is going to be his area, but he can't come out and say it. The war is still relatively deep in the Soviet Union. Even at the end of 43, it's not yet in Poland or Germany. It's still in the Soviet Union. So he has to be

very careful about making claims to territory he doesn't yet occupy. The plan sketched out at Tehran, it takes a long time. It costs the lives of millions. There's months of bloody and extraordinary war. But Stalin does end up, well, he ends up in Berlin. The Western allies end up conquering Western Europe, liberating Western Europe, and taking Western Germany. It's along the lines that's sketched out at Tehran. Do you think by 45, someone congratulated, didn't they? And he said, well, Tsar Alexander got to Paris.

Do you think at the end of the war, he's starting to think, well, maybe we could have had a little bit more? And the one, of course, he's expanded the Soviet Union greatly. When he takes over the Soviet Union, Poland actually is quite a big country until 1939. And so he's expanded the Soviet Union through much of Poland, and he's taken over parts of East Germany, which is all well and good. But of course, the real industrial strength in Germany is in the West, which the British and the Americans have. So his conquest of Germany is a lot of Prussian potato fields. But outside of Berlin, there's not a lot of industry there.

So I think that's what is interesting. And even by the way, he doesn't even get half of Berlin. So on the map, yes, he seizes a great deal. And I think that is important to understate. He takes a lot of Eastern Europe. But he doesn't get a lot of the real industrial technological resources of Germany. That remains in the West and that's under British and American control. And by the way, he understands that because he's always trying to assert some rights in Western Germany from that point onwards, even though that's under British

and American control. The second thing is, of course, what he never gets understanding is that the populations of Eastern Europe don't want to be ruled by him. So he will try to not get along with them, but crush them. So he puts together a prison empire, which is never that strong. So on the map, what he does is looks wildly successful, but he's actually put together what will be a burdensome, not advanced empire. It only lasts a few decades. I mean, when people talk about the Soviet Union, it's actually a very short empire. 45, it's at this extraordinary period of extension. It's got that. By 1989, it's gone. That's not that long. 44 years. We talked in this series about the scale,

if you like, between interfering, making unit level decisions like Hitler, between stepping back and taking an overview. What about as a war leader? Where does Stalin sit on that curve? force of the Red Army. He has officers that he trusts, and he will provide them with huge amounts of equipment, large numbers of soldiers, give them general direction, and let them to it. And then he remains that way until the end of the war. I mean, the way he sets Zhukov against Konev in the Battle of Berlin is a fascinating example of psychological manipulation of commanders. His two best commanders, he basically gives them both a chance to go for Berlin and lets them come up with their plans to do it. So in that sense, I think he's very good as someone who puts together and runs armies. Where I'm not sure he deserves the reputation, both in the early part of the war

and right at the end, is as a global grand strategist, because I think we do use the wrong criterion. How should we think about his cruelty, his psychopathic indifference to suffering, forcing the Red Army across the Dnieper in the winter when generals saying, oh, we'll get this done in the spring. No, you're going to do it now. Boasting about the war crimes being committed against German civilians. I mean, to what extent is that a bug or was that a feature, dare I ask, even a strength of his war machine? Well, it certainly can be a strength to a certain degree, but it also, we did let him off the hook.

People did let Stalin off the hook, partly because he's fighting Hitler. Had Stalin been fighting, say, Wilhelm II, and Wilhelm II had done everything that Hitler did, but not attacked populations, but been sort of a traditional German leader. I think Stalin's brutality would have actually been stressed more, and it would not have been seen as a great success for beating Germany. But Stalin is fighting Hitler, and because Stalin is fighting Hitler, we give him a lot of the benefit of the doubt, which I think is something that, not that that has to be just accepted. He is incredibly brutal. What I don't like is the lionization of Stalin as a war leader. I always think that's very strange. This sort of stress on his greatness is just, he's partly foolish as well. It's tempting to see Stalin, isn't it, at the heart of World War II,

right at its inception, he's allied with Hitler. He then presides over this gigantic, grueling military contest between the Soviet Union and Germany. He outlasts Roosevelt. He outlasts Hitler. He outlasts Churchill as paramount leader of his. Should we think about Stalin as the ultimate grand strategist in this war? I call him the best and worst, or the worst and best. He's a terrible grand strategist, 1939 to 41. From 1939 to 41, he basically empowers Hitler to attack him. He helps create German strength.

He helps Hitler become very powerful. And he refuses to accept the fact that Hitler is going to attack him. He's a disaster up until 1941. Then from 1941 to 1944, he really learns, I would say, a great deal. He learns about where the Soviet Union is not strong and where it is. And where it's not strong, he gets a lot of help from the British and the Americans. He is a good ally in the sense that they do coordinate what they're doing. He reconquers everything that Hitlerler took and expands into eastern europe then i would argue is he goes

off the rails in 45 and sets the seeds for the cold war because again we have a very childish view he's a successful one because he ends up with a lot of territory yes he has expanded soviet influence but he's actually put together a really weak divisive empire that doesn't last. So it's only if you have a very weird conception of not looking at the political structure he assembles that you think this is a success. He creates the East Bloc, which is an inherently weakening device for the Soviet Union, and eventually helps bring the Soviet Union down. So this praise of Stalin's leadership, because he ends up with territory, disregards so much of what we actually know makes a country powerful. So I think in that sense, he's the best and the worst. He has an

extraordinarily successful period from the summer of 1941 until 44, but then he goes off the rails. He loses his moderation. And in 1945, he's back to being the bad old Stalin. By the autumn of 1945, the world was transformed. It was almost unrecognizable to what had been before the war. Nations lay in ruins, empires had crumbled, and from the ashes two new titans arose. One of them so secure in its embrace of capitalism, the other in the iron grip of communism, the United States and the Soviet Union, now found themselves locked in what was a battle. It might not have been a battle of bombs and bullets, but of ideology, of influence.

The post-war order took shape with dizzying speed. The iron curtain descended. It was a new era of espionage and nuclear brinkmanship and proxy wars. As the West prepared for conflict, the Soviet Union also surged forward. Stalin's command, still as ruthless and unrelenting as it had been in wartime, marshaled resources, rebuilt industries, and forced the USSR into a rapid recovery at an immense cost to human life and happiness. He expanded the gulag system, he deported ethnic groups accused of collaboration with Nazi Germany, he suppressed dissent in newly annexed territories like the Baltic states. He reinforced his cult of personality.

State propaganda was geared towards glorifying his leadership. But he never felt secure. His policies, his repression, were marked and sparked by deep paranoia. He ordered purges against perceived enemies. He launched anti-Semitic campaigns. His foreign policy was aggressive, but it was opportunistic. He resisted Western influence in Eastern Europe while promoting revolutionary communist movements abroad. Under his leadership, the USSR cemented its position as a formidable superpower.

But while Stalin may have had some success keeping capitalism at bay, he could not outmanoeuvre time itself. On the 5th of March 1953, he died of a stroke, aged 74. Four days of national mourning were declared. His passing sent shockwaves through the Soviet Union and the world. With Stalin gone, there was a power vacuum, and there was a silent, brutal battle in the corridors of the Kremlin about who would take the reins of this vast empire. The man who eventually emerged was Nikita Khrushchev. He was Stalin's successor, but he initiated a campaign of de-Stalinization. He denounced his predecessor's cult of personality and some of these more repressive policies.

This had some effect. It thawed some of the Cold War tensions, but only slightly. The fundamental governing proposition of the Soviet Union would last for decades after Stalin. The veneer of strength that he'd given it resting on some very uncertain foundations. In our next episode of this series that examines World War II leaders, we'll be looking at the most enigmatic of the group, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, whose involvement in Japan's war effort really remains a subject of controversy. Was he just a powerless figurehead,

reluctantly caught in the great tides of history? Or was he actually the driving force behind Japan's brutal militarism? Join us next time for that. Just hit follow in your podcast player. You can listen on Apple, Spotify, BBC Sounds, or any of your podcast players already. Goodbye. you you