This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchel with Professor Sean McMeakin, whose wondrous and extremely rich new book.

Stalin's War tells the story of what we remember is the Second World War from the point of view of the Kremlin manipulating all sides, many different

sides through all of the machinations of September 1939 to the crisis that becomes the Cold

War in 1948. We're now in September 1940 when the tripartite pact is signed in Berlin, including the Japanese, the Italians, and the Germans, not Russia.

What's critical here is how Russia regarded this non-inclusion, given that Stalin had some kind of relationship with Berlin at this moment.

We go now to November 12, 1940.

Molotov, the gangster, who is now the representative of Stalin to foreign governments,

travels under what you'd have to say operatic circumstances from Moscow to Berlin.

He's received with people singing the international and Sean Assures this, they played it double time so that nobody in the area would

be tempted to sing. There were still lots of communists in Berlin in November of 1940. Ribbentrop,

Hitler, Himmler, and Keitel, the head of the army, greet Molotov. What they're concerned about is

the possibility that Moscow will enter into the tripartite pact, which is for peace. Sean, everything

about this is operatic. I want to go to what Hitler said to Molotov or might have said to Molotov when he greets him at the foreign ministry.

What did Hitler want from Molotov about the tripartite pact?

Well, the tripartite pack was in part a kind of cosmetic updating of the old anti-common turn pack, which had after all been directed against the Soviet Union.

Effectively, it was now against the Anglo-Saxons, as both the Germans and at times the Soviets

call them that is Britain in the United States.

So what Hitler is hoping is that he can get Molotov and Stalin to agree to this, that effectively

that the Anglo-Saxon imperialist domination of the world is unfair, and he's hoping that the Soviets will go along with this.

The problem is that the Soviets really have a kind of economic stranglehold over Germany, partly because of their positioning in Finland, partly because of their positioning in the Balkans.

Hitler relies on the Balkan supply route for things such as chrome, which they need in producing

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