This is CBS Eye on the World. I'm John Bapsu with Professor Sean MacMacon, who's

wondrous and extremely rich new book. Stalin's War tells the story of what we

remember as 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

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 Assuresis. 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. Ribbendrop, Hitler, Himmler, and Kaisel, ahead of the army, Greek 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,

he agreed to him at the foreign ministry. What did Hitler want from Molotov

about the Tripartite pact? Well, the Tripartite pact was in part a kind of

cosmetic updating of the old anti-common-turned-pack, which had after all been

directed against the Soviet Union. Effectively, it was now against the Anglo-Saxons

...