This is CBS I In The World. I'm John Bachler with Professor Sean McMeacon. 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 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 22, June 21,

June 22, and all the way to his July address? 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. There's a catastrophe. We've flushed Lenin's legacy down the toilet.

It's all done. There's a bit of a tantrum and he goes to his dacha. But this is only for a short

period. I mean, of course, he had to rest and sleep from time to time. But yeah, and the idea,

for example, that there were that he disregarded all warnings about the war. In Austria, he didn't

believe every intelligence reporting got in part because he just got so many of them, but he couldn't

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