Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Historian: The Untold Story of WWII's Most Fascinating Person - Geoffrey Roberts

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Kathleen Harriman was there at the center of it all, at Churchill's side in the Blitz, in Stalin's Moscow, at Yalta, and somehow history almost forgot her. My guest today, renowned historian Geoffrey Roberts, is fixing that, and I promise you, once you hear her story, you won't. Geoffrey Roberts is an emeritus professor of history at University College Cork. A leading Soviet history expert, he has written many books, including Stalin’s Library, an award-winning biography of Georgy Zhukov, Stalin’s General, and the acclaimed Stalin’s Wars. Get a copy of Geoffrey's book Wartime Letters: London and Moscow 1941-1945 Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Pre-order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, out on the 17th of September in the UK and the 22nd of September in the US: ⁠https://www.scaramucci.net/allthewrongmoves Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. The nature of Stalin's power, which wasn't just about he was a dictator, he was brutal, he had all his coercive power at his disposal, he had people shot and stuff like that. His power rested on his personality and on his charm and the social capital, which he collated into politics. You see the charming Stalin in action and you can see the power here exists. It's very revealing about the nature of the Stalin's system and Stalin's power in that system and where that power is. And the roots of that power, the sources of power, which is tremendous, are actually much more interested in complex than people might think. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. And joining us today is Jeffrey Roberts.

Jeffrey Roberts is a renowned historian, a brilliant author. He's also a commentator. But a book that is absolutely fascinating to me, which is called wartime letters, Kathleen Harriman, who I think is one of the understudied, by the way, historical figures from the Second World War. And you've obviously spent decades studying the Second World War in the Soviet Union, sir. And we loved your book Stalin Wars, et cetera. And I didn't really understand Soviet strategy until I met your writing. But what drew you to Kathleen Harriman? As I was saying to you before we started the podcast, so I met young Kathleen Harriman through the work of Sonia Pernail,

who wrote the book on Pamela Harriman, who was Pamela Digby Churchill and their intersection of their lives. But this young woman is absolutely fascinating to me. And so why don't we start there? Why did you write about her? Well, I met, I met Kathy through her letters, yeah. And I'll tell the story in the book because my first trip to the United States, September 2001. I was in Washington, D.C., working in the Library of Congress on her file of Avril Haramans' papers in the Library of Congress. And in those papers, dispersed throughout those papers in hundreds of different files, copies of some of, some of Kathy's letters, yeah? So that's what I came across. I can't remember whether or not I discovered her letters before the terror attacks or after the terror attacks.

But what I do remember is that throughout that month, I was scurrying around the Library of Congress, the Avril Haramemann Papers, collecting all of Kathy's letters together, right, making copies of them. Because I had this idea, I decided, these letters were some interesting, so captivating, fascinating, that they had to be published. They had to be read by other people. So that was my idea. I was going to publish a book of these letters. So that's September 2001. Okay, so I returned to Ireland. And then it occurred to me,

something which hadn't occurred to me in the previous few weeks, maybe Kathy was still alive. Because, no, she was born in 1917, which made her early 80s, and she was alive. So what happens was a few months later, March 2002, I actually traveled to New York.

I met Cathy. We had lunch. We had a long afternoon conversation in which, you know, I told her about the letters and also about her wartime experiences. So, so I met Kathy through her letters, then I met her, you know, much as much as much as a much of my surprising way, in person. Now, there isn't, I traveled to her. The reason I've talked to her, my kind of goal here, I wanted to get her permission to publish the letters in a book, right? The problem was she refused. to give that permission because she didn't want to take any undue credit. She was very critical of people who after the war wrote various memoirs, claiming that they've been present at great events,

we have great people. The person she had in mind in particular was Kaye Sammersby. Kay Somersby, who was Eisenhower's assistant driver during the war. And Kay wrote a memoir just after the war in which there were like hints she had in the fair with Eisenhower. Well, Eisenhower was Kathleen and Harriman's hero, for sure. So she said to me, she said, she wrote to me,

she swore that she would never do the same thing. So basically she vetoed publication of her letters by me, right? And that veto held until she died in 2011, right? In 2011, she died,

okay, which means that it's now possible for me to publish letters. Also, at the same time, I get access to Kathleen's private papers. And why are discoveries that there's many, many more letters in a private papers than the ones that were in the I'd found in the Library Congress. So there's a kind of rich tapestry of a story which emerges from Kathleen's private papers as well as from the letters themselves. So, I mean, she's a fascinating woman. Let's go over her a little bit.

Okay. She's a championship skier. she's a wartime correspondent. She is a, I would say, an advisor to her dad. And also what's fascinating about her because she's young and we're in this very masculine, male dominated world at that time, she's not taken that seriously, which she takes advantage of in terms of her insights and being able to get real information from people. And also, you know, listen, I also read the book.

You may remember this book, The Daughters of Yalta by Catherine Grace Katz, which weaves all of them together. All these young women, Anna Roosevelt, Sarah Churchill, they're all together at Yalta. The number one thing for me is the relationship with her and her dad. She's a smart woman. She knew her dad was having an affair with Pamela Churchill. Tell us about that whole relationship. Set the scene for us, if you will. What kind of world was she living in?

Before I do that, I mean, you mentioned earlier, Pernell's book, yes? About Pamela Herom. And also you just mentioned from Catherine Gaston. I know that you did an interview with Jarls Milton, not so long ago, right? Yes, I did. All of whom, like, make use of Kappi and her letters

as part of their narratives in those books. The thing that's different about my book is that what I want to do, I've done in the book, I think, is to present Kathy's story in their own words, yeah, a direct, giving you read it's direct access to what Kathy was saying in her letters, right? So you could actually make your, make your own interpretation. So I'm trying, I'm trying to try out the book as the editor, not to impose too much of an interpretive framework on the book, yeah? Yeah, interpret it yourself, right. Okay, so Kathy, Kathy has a very interesting war-time journey, of course, you know, at the age of 20, She joined her father, Avril, in London, May 1941. Obviously, this is before the United States enters the war. Britain is still being bombed.

Her father was in London to facilitate the lend lease program, a program to Britain. So she comes over to be a father's aid, basically. But she's also walking as a journalist as well. So she's a war reporter while she's in London between 1941, 1993. And then Avril is appointed. American ambassador to the United States. She goes to the United States.

And, of course, in the end, Russia, she has all kinds of interesting encounters, inventors, including, as you mentioned. She was a championship. She actually skied in the Moscow ski championships in 1940s. In fact, came third in the women's event and go back. And she did all kinds of other things while she was in Russia. You know, she's generally at the most,

the best-known American woman in Russia, apart perhaps from Eleanor Roosevelt. So, okay. So she has a very fluent Russian, though, right? She speaks fluent Russian, right? Well, I'm not sure she speaks very fluent Russian, but she certainly learnt Russian. She learnt Russian sufficiently to give toast

and to have conversations with people, which is more than most people who went to Moscow during the world in. Now, you asked a question about how far, but yes, that's an interesting question. I'm not sure that I would describe Kathy as Avril's advisor, but he's certainly someone that he talks to all the time. Yeah, they're constantly talking. And what they're talking about is the war and is about politics.

So this is the other thing to remember about Catherine. I think you'll appreciate this, Antelie. She's a very political person. She's interested in politics, interested in what's going on, trying to understand the way events are actually, are actually development. So I think Kathy's a very important sounding board, as far as everyone's concerned. But also, what's also true is that a lot of her own views are. perceptions are shaped by the conversations that she has with her father, because her father is

obviously a very powerful, but actually very powerful influence on that, but not actually overly dominating. You read the letters, yeah, I mean, he's a central figure in the whole correspondence, but he's not completely dominating by any way. She retains her independent self and separation from her father. Thank you for tuning in an open book. And if you haven't already, please hit the subscribe. button below so that you're the first to know when our new episodes drop each week. We've got a lot

more coming. And now back to the show. One of the things that I got out of it, and maybe this is correct. And if it isn't, please correct me. But I feel like he had this unorthodox style, Averill Harriman, that he drove the State Department crazy. You know, like how much of what we think of as diplomacy in World War II was actually personal relationships and back-checked? Donald trust the way Avril Harriman was professor. Yeah, because Avro wasn't the diplomat or actually wasn't a politician. He was a businessman. He was also quite close to Roosevelt.

He was one of Roosevelt's special envoys, personal invoice, right? First in London, then in Moscow, that's the way Roosevelt liked to work through personal representatives, because he found it to be much more effective in getting what he wanted to be done. He's often bypassing the state department. So there are some tensions in London between Avril, in his role, as Roosevelt's represented and the American ambassador and the state department in that context. And then, of course, when he goes to Moscow, okay, now he's the ambassador.

He's part of the state department set out, but he doesn't behave the way of any kind of normal ambassador. He really kind of like shakes up the whole American diplomatic operation in Moscow. And he does, he does it very effectively. Harriman is very, very effective representative for the United States in Moscow during the war. He gets on very well with the Soviet leadership with Stalin. He is enormously effective in practical ways in cementing, the Soviet-American relationship during the war. And Kathy's part of that as well because, of course, it's not just a question of politics and bureaucracy.

It's also social, psychological, personal, right? Yeah, there's a whole set of interpersonal dynamics going on within the Grand Alliance of them at the very top levels, right? In Moscow, everywhere, in fact, during the war. And the kind of the CAFE-Avro partnership is very, very central to the success of those dynamics and the contributions that they make to keeping the Grand Alliance together during the world because it wasn't the most like natural alliance in the world, was it? You know, capitalist America, communist Russia, dictatorship, a liberty boxing, and so on.

So she banquets with Stalin. She's playing bridge with Eisenhower. She dines with Churchill, the checkers. Do the letters reveal anything about those men that the official histories miss? She humanizes them. She presents a picture of both Stalin and Churchill, which I don't think you'll find anywhere else. At least I can't find it, yeah. Yeah, so it's very much a human personal

and sometimes quite quirky portrait of two hours. So there's a lot of insight that. I mean, okay, so you said earlier, I'm a Soviet history specialist. Okay, so what interested me about her letters when I first encountered them in 2001 was the letters that she wrote from Moscow, yeah? And the picture she drew of life in Russia during the war

what's going on in diplomacy in Moscow, right? And in terms of the interactions at the top of myself. That's what interested in me. And I learned so much from reading her letters about what was going on in those relax. It's mainly the humanisation of personal portrait. But there's also lots of kind of political kind of hints and astute observations that you make, which we can inform your view. of the total history of this period.

Okay, so let's go to, let's go to Stalin for a second then. Because you spent your career trying to get this story right about Stalin, and I think you've done an amazing job of separating the wartime leader from some of the atrocities, some of the monstrous nature of him. And then she comes in with this very personal perspective. So tell us, tell us how that influenced you, because she's really just talking to her family, which is the thing I find most fascinating.

You're giving us a window into a young woman talking to her family about people she's meeting. Of course, these are progeny's historical figure. So what was something you got from her that changed your view of Stalin or fortified your view of Stalin or did something to you about Stalin? Absolutely. Okay, she's writing to her family, yeah.

Also, she's writing to Pamela Harriman. yeah Pamela Churchill at her time yeah when she goes to Moscow you know she she write as a separate correspondence with Pamela and Pamela herself writes many many letters to her and Avril what wilder in Moscow yeah that's a very good question you're because you actually get a really important and interesting insight about Stalin from from these letters right which is the nature of to do with the nature of Stalin's power right which wasn't just about

he was a dictator, he was brutal, he had always coercive power at his disposal, you know, he had people shot and stuff like that. His power rested on his personality and on his charm, right? And the social capital, which he parlayed into politics, right? So that's what you see in there. You see the charming Stalin in action, and you can see the power he exerts over Kathy. By the way, as well, of course, and also of Avron, of all the foreigners who actually come in coming to contact. So it's actually, to me, it's very revealing about the nature of the Stalinist system and Stalin's power in that system and where that power lies. And the roots of that power, the source of power, which is tremendous, are actually much more interesting, complex than people might think.

I think it's fascinating. I want to go to you for a second because like me, you're from a working class family. You grew up in Deptford. Your dad was a labor at a power station. You know, my dad was a crane operator and a union guy. Right. And I think it's shaped and influenced the way I see things. So I want you to take us to your background and did it shape how you read the letters of a woman born into one of the wealthiest families in America, if not the world?

Right. Yeah. My father was a union man as well, by the way. a lot of my members of family who are crane drivers and worked in the dock order kind of like classic blue collar occupations I mean listen I that was one of my best jobs

Jeffrey it helped me pay for Harvard Law School I was a doctor I was a doctor very well paid jobs of course very well pay jobs there were high hourly wages and I was a dock worker in the summers of 1984 and 1985 which got me through got me through school.

Well, I had the privilege of having various grants, public grants. I didn't have to work. Well, I did work well. I was at college, obviously, but I didn't have to work way through college. Yeah, that's an interesting question you asked me. I never felt there was any, like, class or cultural distance between myself and Kathy. When I'm engaging with her letters and also when I'm at her in person in New York, in 2002,

What struck me about was the way she, and I say this in the book, the way she was able to transcend class and cultural barriers, right? They weren't a kind of an impediment to her engaging with people during the war, okay, at the very top level, also what she called, this is her world, the little people as well, as well, right? So I never felt ever, look, after she died, Marie Brenner wrote an article about Kathy in Van Gogh. Fair, right? Which kind of like focused on her kind of like American upper class kind of background and roots and influences and stuff like that, which kind of made me think that maybe I'd missed a sort of dimension of my reading of Kathy and her and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, so that kind of like broadened my perspective. But I never felt there was any like gap in my understanding of her arising from the fact that we had very radically a different class

origin. But how did you feel? Did you, did you, did you, did you, Phil, there was any, did you have any problem? I'm going to answer it very honestly. I would say that as a student, I was probably insecure and self-conscious, and it probably would have influenced me today. 40 years after I left college and law school, I would probably be less influenced and I think I would be similar to the answer that you just gave. You know, the thing that you said that I want to go back to is that she didn't want

the letters published. She waited her whole life to make sure that the letters didn't come out, at least until she was gone. How do you think she would think about it today, that here we are in 2026, we're still wrestling with the questions she was writing about in 1943? I think she would be intrigued and amused by it, yeah?

Look, if Kathy didn't want her letters to be published at all, and she indicated to me, in our response, that she did, she did after, by me, after, after she died, then she could have destroyed letters. Yeah, she could have made it. it physically impossible to do. The fact that she kept all these letters, all the different branches of correspondents, all kinds of huge amount of terms, that's a sign that she might feel a bit ambivalent

about it, but basically she's open to publication, right? Yeah, exactly. She just didn't want to be a self-angrandizing person, but there's a question that I would like you to channel a little bit of her and your knowledge of the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union, and a little bit of yourself. of can great powers with fundamentally different systems ever grow to trust each other long enough to solve a common problem like they did in the Second World War? Of course, that's the question that's on everyone's mind at the moment, isn't it, because of current defense? That's why I'm asking you, Jeffrey Roberts.

It's certainly on my mind. Well, it's on mine, too, sir, which is why. Let me ask him. Yeah, in fact, I've actually been writing and thinking about this quite a lot recently. But connected to the book, of course, what happened during the Second World War was an example of where Great Powers did collaborate together for a common purpose and very successfully, indeed, right? And that success, that experience, what it was all about, what it meant at the time in a very personal and humid one,

that's what you find reflected in the letters, yeah? So it's very interesting from that point of view. Now, of course, the whole thing fell apart quite quickly after the Second World War, and we had the Cold War and all this kind of things stuff like that. As is all right, I've been one of those people who's argued actually that wasn't inevitable, right? That the failure of the ground lies after the second one wasn't, it wasn't an inevitability. that some form of Roosevelt's policy of collaboration and cooperation with the Soviet could have continued after the Second World War. But the political legit, for whatever reason, for their own reasons, decided that didn't want to do that.

So, yeah, so actually, you know, in a way, in publishing the book, maybe I'm going to reveal too much here. There was a kind of ulterior motive there because I was harking back to the Second World War that experience. Obviously, from the moment of times I'm thinking, and I'm not said directly, but you can draw your own conclusion about that's what was happening in the past. Look what's going on now. I got that. That's why I asked the question, because I got that from you. And I have an enormous amount of respect for what you've done here. Okay, so we're at the point of the podcast where we're at the point where my producer and I came up with five words from your book.

I'm going to read the word. I need a one sentence or so reaction to it. Okay, you ready? Right. If I say the word war to you, what do you say? Violence. Diplomacy. Peace, friendship, understanding.

How about Churchill? Um, Churchill. Fascinating. Yeah. Different character. Equally fascinating. But what would you say is Stalin?

Fascinating another word. Well, I just, As you said earlier, I spent decades writing, thinking about Stalin. In all context, impressive. It's impressive. And, you know, the book about his library and how he self-trained himself for his life, you know, and the mendacity and the paranoia, my God. Yeah, but the thing about Stalin is like he's an intellectual.

So that's the crucial point to understand. But he's a practical intellectual, right? Which is why he got on so well with Avril Harriman, General. Avril Harriman is the most interesting things to say about Stalin as a war leader, about how effective. He was a war leader. These men were incredibly well read. And so when they were passing time with each other, they had these very deep intellectual discussions.

You know, he was obviously a monster, but, you know, he was obviously a monster. but, you know, as we know, these are also human beings, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, I've not Stalin, had, Abraham, when they had more to do with Stalin than any other foreigner or at the part, unless they were a communist during the war. So, very, very close, very into that relationship, a very effective relationship, I think, from the point of view of the ground, the lives, and also from the part of the view of furthering the American interests.

I mean, Averal's position wasn't on the ambassador. I'm furthering American interest. That's what I'm here to do. It means we're getting my hands dirty. You know, making some compromises, dealing with difficult issues, then that is what I'm going to do. That's what I'm doing. And Kathy was there. And Kathy was there by his side all the way through.

And she shared those attitudes for her father, yeah. I'm going to give you the last word, and I have two words for you. Kathleen Harriman. I mean, to me, she's Kathy Harriman, yeah? Because that's how I came to know personally. She's certainly the most fascinating female figure of the Second War. what I've ever studied or had any connection with. From the get-go, I was convinced that my kind of like fascination with her work,

current chorus, wasn't just a thing personal to me, that anyone who reads these letters will have the same experience, you know, as I did, which you'll be, you'll be, you'll be, you'll be blown away, blown away by, and I'm not kind of glad that's, you, you personally have confirmed that, that, that is the pace. You know, I wanted to bring you on for that reason, and I think that these women, women are underreported upon in terms of the significance that they've had. And I think you've been brilliant in terms of describing her and also laying out the case for her and her insight. So I really appreciate you coming on.

The title of the book is Wartime Letters, Kathleen Harriman, or as our astute and esteemed author, says, Kathy Harriman. Jeffrey Roberts, thank you so much for joining us today on Open Book. Thanks.