This is a CVSI in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Professor Sean McMeekin.

His new book is Stalin's War. An assembly of facts and quotes and observations and narrative that add up to a surprising version

of what happened between 1939 and 1948 and the beginning of the Cold War.

We go to the event that is celebrated as the beginning of the collapse of Germany.

However, it was, it started as a massacre

along the Russian frontier with Germany.

Stalin having gobbled up all the buffer states I learned from the professor has now a border with

Germany of thousands of miles.

He's made himself vulnerable.

In his greed for territory without fighting, he's

created the conditions that on June 22, 1941, lead to Operation Barbarossa, the Germans jumping the border and rolling, I think, Army Group Center

or something significant rolled 40 miles in the first day.

The story told at the time was that Stalin was shocked even to the point of having a nervous breakdown.

No one heard from him until he addressed the nation in July via radio, which at that point was available for very few people.

But in any event, that's the story.

The facts mitigate that story.

Professor, where was Stalin June 22nd, June 21st,

June 22nd, and all the way to his July address?

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 weekend of the war once all the horrendous

...