Stalin's War

January 18, 2021
Soviet leader Josef Stalin cleverly manipulated the U.S. and Great Britain during WWII, sowing the seeds for Communist expansion throughout Europe and Asia, according to this richly detailed account. Historian McMeekin (The Russian Revolution) draws from recently opened Soviet archives to shed light on Stalin’s dark reasoning and shady tactics, documenting how he boozed up Nazi foreign affairs minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in Moscow and forged the 1939 nonaggression pact with Germany during phone calls with Hitler. (Stalin then began “wringing every last drop of nectar out of his honeyed partnership” by invading the Baltics and Romania, McMeekin writes, prompting Hitler to begin “clearing the decks for war.”) Ever the bully, Stalin cajoled Churchill and Roosevelt into sending enormous amounts of aid to the Soviet Union, then showed little gratitude to the Allies, despite “timely interventions” that helped defeat Hitler’s forces at Stalingrad and Kursk. Stalin also forced Churchill and Roosevelt into “swallowing” his slander of the International Red Cross after it accused him of having thousands of Polish officers killed and buried in a mass grave in the Katyn Forest during the Soviet occupation of Poland in 1940. Packed with incisive character sketches and illuminating analyses of military and diplomatic maneuvers, this is a skillful and persuasive reframing of the causes, developments, and repercussions of WWII.

Starred review from February 1, 2021
A sweeping reassessment of World War II seeking to "illuminate critical matters long obscured by the obsessively German-centric literature" on the subject. Veteran historian McMeekin states bluntly that while Hitler wanted war, Stalin wanted it more. A loyal Marxist, he had no doubt that capitalist nations--among which he included Nazi Germany--were doomed. According to the author, throughout the 1930s, as war became more likely, Stalin worked to ensure that it would leave his enemies exhausted and ripe for revolution. The 1939 nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany seemed a dazzling coup for both nations, but Stalin got greedy. Piggybacking on Hitler's early victories, he snatched as much territory as Nazi Germany. As a result, several hundred miles of buffer between the Soviet Union and Germany disappeared, making Hitler's 1941 surprise attack possible. In his account of the titanic campaign that followed, McMeekin pays more attention than most military historians to the loathsome behavior of both sides to civilians and even their own soldiers. He shows less sympathy than most to Stalin's insults and demands for aid from the Allies and none whatsoever for Soviet representatives vacuuming up America's patents, technology, and services. The author maintains that Nazism vanished in 1945, but "the Soviet legacy lives on in the Communist governments of China, North Korea, and Vietnam, countries on which Hitler's short-lived Reich left not even a shadow." He adds that Allied efforts to cultivate Stalin before Hitler's invasion failed, and the massive American support afterward was entirely selfish. Consequently, the Soviets, having done most of the fighting, emerged with most of the fruits of victory. The author's provocative suggestion that America should have allowed the two evil empires to fight it out will ruffle feathers, but it effectively kills the idea that WWII was a battle of good vs. evil. Yet another winner for McMeekin, this also serves as a worthy companion to Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War, which argued that Britain should not have entered World War I. Brilliantly contrarian history.

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February 26, 2021

McMeekin (history, Bard Coll., Russian Origins of the First World War) seeks to add a new survey history of World War II's eastern front. Often thought of as "Hitler's War," the Second World War is here reexamined with Russian documents that only recently became available. McMeekin provides a solid summary of Stalin's early years, the events leading up to the war, and diplomacy between the Soviet Union and Germany. Far from praising Stalin, the book pulls no punches in describing the many atrocities, including those against Poles and Germans, that Soviet troops committed. Nor does McMeekin gloss over Western hypocrisy. A thorough analysis of Soviet diplomatic and military efforts, the work covers topics such as the Katyn Massacre and the Yalta Conference. Maps are clear and relevant and complement the text. An extensive bibliography contains many primary source documents. VERDICT This thoroughly researched book is best directed toward more serious readers of Second World War history. A fine addition to the corpus of World War II history, this may find a place on shelves next to works by Antony Beevor (Stalingrad, The Fall of Berlin), Stephen G. Fritz (Ostkrieg), and David Glantz and Jonathan M. House (When Titans Clashed).--Matthew Wayman, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., Schuylkill Haven

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