Hello, and thank you for listening to the history of World War II podcast, episode

191, Lenin's cruelty, Stalin's ambition.

Last time revolutionary Russia was suffering, the land under Lenin's control was shrinking

and though still under him were on the verge of starvation.

The latter was directly due to the former.

The Germans held the Ukraine, the Czechoslovak's western Siberia, the Kossaks, the Don, the

Kuban to the northeast of the Black Sea, the center of Russia.

The last two had been breakaway groups, taking advantage of the Bolsheviks' very real military

weakness.

But Lenin's party still controlled, had eaten through its stores of food, and the harvest

was still months away.

Food was needed now for Petrograd and Moscow.

If nothing changed, Lenin might end up losing these two cities, and his rule would have

certainly come to an end.

But the last aspect of this very large problem was for Stalin to handle.

Stalin landed in Zoretsin, modern-day Volgograd, on June 6, 1918, and it had to be held, or

else when the harvest did come, there would be no avenue to get it further north.

Of course Stalin, who didn't think much of his fellow Russians, was about to come into

contact with many non-Russian nationalities.

But if he could put aside his even greater cynicism of them, any progress here would

raise him in Lenin's eyes.

Back in Petrograd, the German ambassador Kaut Wilhelm Mirbach, who had been working on

...