Was WW2 Stalin’s War?
Warfare
History Hit
4.5 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2022
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stalin, the 'Man of Steel' and supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century, is readily associated with his ruthless regime inside the USSR, and with his fierce opposition to Western Europe and the United States during the Cold War. Commonly, however, this is set aside for narratives of the Second World War, from which he emerged victorious with his Western Allies. Sean McMeekin has been taking a closer look at this. Was Stalin partially to blame for the beginning of the Second World War? And did the USSR emerge in a better position than both its opposition and its allies?
As the author of Stalin's War, historian and author Sean tells James more about Stalin, from his ruthless creation of an empire to the ramifications of his regime during World War 2.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Is it true that the only difference between Stalin and Hitler is that Stalin was a successful |
| 0:09.4 | murderous predator? With Hitler dead and the Third Reich in ruins, Stalin created an immense new communist |
| 0:17.4 | empire, the ramifications of which we still live with today. To tell us more about all of this, we have Sean Meekin on the |
| 0:26.1 | podcast. Sean is the author of a new book, Starlin's War, published by Penguin. It's described as both revisionist and provocative in the way that it |
| 0:36.2 | reassesses Stalin but also Churchill and Roosevelt. Now I'm going to leave it to you to decide whether or not you agree with Sean or not, but here he is on |
| 0:47.1 | Stalin's war. Enjoy. Hi Sean, welcome to Warfare. How you doing today? |
| 0:57.0 | Not too bad, James. How about yourself? |
| 0:59.0 | Pleasure to be here. |
| 1:00.0 | I'm good, thank you. Yes. |
| 1:02.0 | Now, congratulations on the new book, we're talking about |
| 1:04.8 | brighter things here, Stalin's war, which has been described as a provocative new revisionist |
| 1:10.9 | take on Stalin himself. So tell us Sean, what makes it new and provocative? |
| 1:17.0 | Well I suppose it's not necessarily my take on Stalin, I mean Stalin has taken some brick bats over the years. He's not someone |
| 1:24.8 | he's universally admired although he is kind of admired to a somewhat |
| 1:28.3 | surprising extent in modern Russia and of course even in his home country |
| 1:32.3 | country of origin of Georgia. |
| 1:33.6 | In the West, he's not generally speaking, |
| 1:35.4 | particularly admired. |
| 1:36.0 | I think it's probably more my interpretation of the war, |
| 1:38.4 | that is to say putting Stalin a little bit closer |
| 1:41.4 | to the center of the story of the Second World War, both in terms of its kind of long-term origins, |
| 1:47.0 | its outbreak even in September 1939, and its consequences. |
... |
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