Stalin's War

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Despite the Cold War and wave upon wave of revelations about the horrors of Stalin's regime, the Western narrative of World War II continues to be dominated by a perverse sense of gratitude towards the USSR. The sheer horror of the Soviet experience and the staggering levels of both military and civilian deaths seem to demand a 'truce' in the UK and USA's otherwise consistent hostility before and after the war towards everything that Stalin stood for.In this remarkable, ground-breaking new book Sean McMeekin marks a generational shift. Stalin's chief difference from Hitler, he argues, was that he was a successful murderous predator. With Hitler dead and the Third Reich in ruins Stalin created an immense new Communist empire, after initially egging Hitler on. Among his new holdings were Czechoslovakia and Poland, the fate of which had first set the West against the Nazis and, of course, China and North Korea, the ramifications of which we still live with today. Until Barbarossa wrought a public relations miracle turning him into a plucky ally, Stalin had murdered millions, subverted every norm of international behaviour, invaded as many countries as Hitler had, and taken great swathes of territory he would continue to keep. In the larger sense the global conflict grew out of not only German and Japanese aggression but Stalin's manoeuvrings, orchestrated to provoke wars of attrition between the capitalist powers in Europe and in Asia. Throughout the War Stalin chose to do only what would benefit his own regime, not even aiding in the war with Japan until the conflict's last weeks. Above all, Stalin's War uncovers the shocking details of how the US government (to the detriment of itself and its other allies) fuelled Stalin's war machine, blindly agreeing to every Soviet demand, right down to agents supplying details of the atomic bomb.This is both a gripping account of the greatest crisis of the past century and a harsh, clear-eyed account of the terrible price paid by many millions of people betrayed by the delusions of the Western powers.