Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast.

The unscripted show that celebrates unsung heroes, Mythbust's historical lies, and rediscoveres

the forgotten stories that changed our world.

I'm your host, Scott Rank.

From 1941 to 1945, Joseph Stalin exchanged more than 600 messages with Winston Churchill

and Franklin Roosevelt.

The messages started after the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia and Operation Barbarossa,

and the messages touched on all aspects of the war.

But it wasn't just exchanging military intelligence, it was also personal greetings, where

Churchill and Stalin will wish each other happy birthday.

And toward the end of the war, when it was clear that Allied victory was inevitable,

they discussed what would happen in the post-war world, and surprisingly neither side really

expected a decades-long Cold War to happen.

So what was this correspondence like?

What does it tell us about the personality of these three leaders?

And what does it tell us about the limitations of diplomacy?

Today, I'm speaking with Professor David Reynolds, who's the author of the new book, The

Cremlin Letters, Stalin's wartime correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt.

His work with Professor Vladimir Pichotnov, who handled more of Stalin's correspondence,

particularly in Russian.

Their analysis of this correspondence illuminates the Allied alliance that really worked in a way

that the Axis alliance didn't, but also exposed the Allied alliance's limits and the issues

...