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Welcome to SpyC, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum.

I'm your host, Sasha Inber, and each week I take you into the

shadows of espionage, intelligence, and covert operations across the globe.

Half-truths, lies, distrust, frustration, and spying. These were part and parcel of the tenuous relationship between Franklin

D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, the big three who were eventually brought together

by their opposition to Adolf Hitler during World War II. From London, a British historian Tim Bouverie lays out the

dynamics. And to take a cue from an old Facebook relationship status, it's complicated.

Tim's new book, Allies at War, The Politics of Defeating Hitler, is out now.

Good morning from Washington.

Tim, I'm welcome to SpyCast.

Thank you.

It's great to be here.

So I wanted to start by stepping out of chronological order so we can just break down the dynamic.

Can we start by talking about what brought together the big three in this wartime

alliance? Well, it was really Adolf Hitler. There is no simpler or truer explanation than

that. When the war broke out in September of 1939, the United States, in conformity with legislation which had been

passed throughout the 1930s, proclaimed neutrality, while the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin

was collaborating with Hitler in a carve-up of Eastern and Central Europe. And this didn't necessarily fundamentally matter because there

was a very strong anti-Nazi alliance in Western Europe between Britain and France. And this was the

alliance which, after all, had held the line against the Germans on the Western Front for four

years during the First World War,

...