Hello, and thank you for listening to The History of World War II podcast, episode

441, when Barbarossa begins, the world will hold its breath.

Picking up where we left off, in February 2016, as we cover the opening moves of Barbarossa,

it's worth going back and remembering that in the months leading up to the start of World

War II in Europe, September 1, 1939, London and Paris did have a chance to nail down Stalin's

Russia as an ally during the tension building summer that was 1939.

But as we have seen, London and Paris sent minor officials with no signing power on a slow

boat.

While Hitler was willing to fly his foreign minister, Ribbentrop, directly to Moscow, with

the ability to sign a non-aggression pact, Stalin, ever the realist, made his choice.

It's not that London and Paris wanted a real mutual assistance pact with Russia, they

just wanted a piece of paper that would scare Hitler into staying inside his own borders,

whereas Stalin wanted something more real and actionable, which he got from Berlin.

Thus it should come as no surprise that Stalin and Hitler, in the back of their minds,

were open to a deal between themselves.

It just needed a nudge, and that nudge was the farce that the British and the French

tried to play on the Soviet leader, who was not known for enjoying jokes at his expense.

And the main reason Stalin said yes was the shock that he felt as he watched, along with

the world, as the mighty French army fell in just six weeks.

But there was soon a twist.

After France fell, the battle of Britain got underway, and though Stalin had his newspapers,

like Prob to say nice or neutral things about Germany, as time went on, less was said

...