The Stalin Affair

April 1, 2024

With his past hit Nathaniel's Nutmeg headed to the screen, Milton offers a history of the Harriman Mission, the WWII effort to manage Stalin into a deal with the Allies to stand against Hitler. Based on new research and material, Milton details how Averell Harriman, Winston Churchill, and others navigated the mercurial bargain. Prepub Alert.

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June 15, 2024
Politics makes strange bedfellows, and war makes even stranger ones. On the huge canvas of World War II, the alliance between the Soviet Union and the British-U.S. partnership was crucial, but it came about only through a combination of diplomacy and desperation. So argues prolific historian Milton, author of Checkmate in Berlin, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and other notable books of history. Churchill, in particular, had punctuated his career with bellicose criticism of the Soviet Union and especially Stalin, but when the Nazi forces invaded, Churchill had no doubt that Stalin was the lesser of two evils and should be supported. Persuading people in his government was not easy, especially as Britain was dependent on supplies from the U.S., and passing some on to Russia added to the pressure. In the U.S., many favored isolationism, and others took the view that the two dictators should be allowed to fight each other to the death. Then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and Hitler declared war on the U.S. At that point, staying out of the conflict was no longer possible. Johnson introduces a complex cast of characters, with Averell Harriman, a business tycoon and confidant of Franklin Roosevelt, in a central role as liaison with Churchill and later the Soviet government. Stalin could be friendly or belligerent, depending on his mood of the day, and he and Churchill butted heads in several of their meetings. Nevertheless, the alliance held together. "Against all the odds, it had won the war for the Allies," writes Milton. "But it was unable to survive the peace." The author ably navigates this complicated narrative, and readers with an interest in political and military history will find it to be an engaging, colorful read. Milton mixes personal details with historical sweep to tell a significant tale.

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July 8, 2024
This piquant WWII chronicle from historian Milton (Checkmate in Berlin) features a charming tycoon and his well-heeled daughter in a down-to-the-wire plot to rescue Europe from the Nazis. In March 1941, Britain was under “relentless” Luftwaffe attack and “sinking fast,” Milton writes, when President Franklin Roosevelt handpicked railroad magnate Averell Harriman, then the fourth richest man in America, to visit Prime Minister Winston Churchill and report back on what food, supplies, and weaponry were needed. Milton describes how Harriman, “with striking good looks, trim and athletic to boot,” won Churchill’s trust (and seduced his daughter-in-law Pamela) within a fortnight of his arrival, and how he pulled strings so his 20-year-old daughter, Kathy, could join him in London and later in Moscow. Citing unpublished diaries, letters, and classified documents, the author credits the duo with “keeping the fragile Big Three Alliance on track.” He describes how Harriman convinced Churchill to allow the Trans-Iranian railroad to arm Stalin via the Persian Gulf, and how as ambassador to the Soviet Union he “assuaged Stalin’s fears of betrayal” and countered “naive” efforts at manipulation from Roosevelt that triggered Stalin’s paranoia. Milton does not laden the story with granular detail; his forte is describing soused Kremlin dinners and embassy parties (where Kathy danced with Soviet generals hoping to glean insights into Stalin’s war plan). The result is a breezy, boozy romp.

August 1, 2024
Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's surprise attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, thrust Great Britain and the Soviet Union into a necessary but highly tenuous alliance. Supporting British resistance to the Nazis, the U.S. also found itself embracing Stalin's murderous regime. The story of Churchill and Roosevelt coming to terms with Stalin has often been told, but historian Milton (Checkmate Berlin, 2021) here focuses beyond these three outsized figures to their subalterns. Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov deftly navigated his boss' brutal fulminations and slept in Churchill's house with a pistol underneath his pillow. Averell Harriman, Roosevelt's point man in Moscow, kept Churchill's and Stalin's mutual animosity from derailing the vital alliance. Harriman's daughter Kathy proved an able and amiable second to her father. Archibald Clark Kerr, UK ambassador to Moscow, allayed the Russians' suspicion of Britain's war tactics and curbed Churchill's eruptions at perceived slights from Stalin. By bringing these indispensable people and others out of their titanic leaders' shadows, Milton humanizes what is often lost in the grand sweep of history.

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