SAME 1939 GAME PLAN TODAY: SET ALL AGAINST ALL AND GRAB WHAT WE CAN. 4/8: Stalin's War: A New History of World War II, Sean McMeekin, with Kevin Stillwell as narrator. Published by Basic Books. Audible Audiobook – Unabridged
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/392db86e-7d65-4c5d-b2a9-b781d5ee7250?shareToken=99d9180db57c2304848bc11f23ff97dc
World War II: Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and he was certainly dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. The Second World War was not Hitler’s war; it was Stalin’s war:
Drawing on ambitious new research in Soviet, European, and US archives, Stalin’s War revolutionizes our understanding of this global conflict by moving its epicenter to the east. Hitler’s genocidal ambition may have helped unleash Armageddon, but as McMeekin shows, the war which emerged in Europe in September 1939 was the one Stalin wanted, not Hitler. So, too, did the Pacific war of 1941–1945 fulfill Stalin’s goal of unleashing a devastating war of attrition between Japan and the “Anglo-Saxon” capitalist powers he viewed as his ultimate adversary.
McMeekin also reveals the extent to which Soviet Communism was rescued by the US and Britain’s self-defeating strategic moves, beginning with Lend-Lease aid, as American and British supply boards agreed almost blindly to every Soviet demand. Stalin’s war machine, McMeekin shows, was substantially reliant on American materiél from warplanes, tanks, trucks, jeeps, motorcycles, fuel, ammunition, and explosives, to industrial inputs and technology transfer, to the foodstuffs which fed the Red Army.
1943 CASABLANCA
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI in the world. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm John Batchel with Professor Sean McMeekin. |
| 0:08.0 | His new book is Stalin's War, an assembly of facts and quotes and observations and narrative |
| 0:16.0 | that add up to a surprising version of what happened between 1939 and 1948 and the beginning of the Cold War. |
| 0:26.3 | We go to the event that is celebrated as the beginning of the collapse of Germany. |
| 0:34.8 | However, it started as a massacre along the Russian Front of Germany. However, it was, it started as a, as a massacre along the Russian frontier with Germany. |
| 0:43.0 | Stalin, having gobbled up all the buffer states, I learned from the professor, has now a border |
| 0:48.4 | with Germany of thousands of miles. He's made himself vulnerable. In his greed for territory without |
| 0:54.0 | fighting, he's created |
| 0:55.9 | the conditions that on June 22nd, 1941, lead to Operation Barbarossa. The Germans jumping the |
| 1:03.6 | border and rolling, I think, Army Group Center or something significant, rolled 40 miles on the |
| 1:09.5 | first day. |
| 1:17.4 | The story told at the time was that Stalin was shocked, even to the point of having a nervous breakdown. |
| 1:18.8 | No one heard from him until he addressed the nation in July via radio, which at that point |
| 1:24.4 | was available for very few people. |
| 1:26.4 | But in any event, that's the story. |
| 1:29.8 | The facts mitigate that story. |
| 1:32.5 | Professor, where was Stalin June 22nd, June 21st, June 22nd, and all the way to his July address? |
| 1:40.4 | Oh, well, he was mostly in the Kremlin meeting with all of his ordinary advisors. I mean, as it was happening in real time, there's no sign of any kind of serious break where Stalin has any type of a breakdown or panic. There is a dramatic scene about a week into the war. Once all the horrendous reports are pouring in from the frontier, and there are different versions of what he says. You know, there's a catastrophe. Weed linens legacy down the toilet it's all done and there's a bit of a tantrum and he goes to his |
| 2:06.4 | dacha but this is only for a short period i mean of course he had to rest and sleep from time to time |
| 2:11.7 | but and the idea for example that there were that he disregarded all warnings about the war |
| 2:17.1 | an austria he didn't believe every intelligence report he got in part because it just got so many of for example, that there were, that he disregarded all warnings about the war. |
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