One of history’s most significant speeches was delivered to a joint meeting of both houses of Congress on 8 December 1941, by the United States President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In his speech he focussed on the surprise attack that had been launched on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii by aircraft launched from 3 squadrons, 6 aircraft carriers, of the Empire of Japan following the breakdown in peace negotiations between Japan and the United States.

In this programme I am going to tell you a remarkable, true story, that has been learnt from the recent release of secret archives in Russia, after the fall of the USSR. It tells how Joseph Stalin manipulated both Japan and the United States into the war, one with the other, as part of his aims of saving the Soviet Union from the German invasion, which had gone far far worse for Russia than Stalin had ever imagined possible, to pursuing the eternal Communist goal of overthrowing every regime in the world that wasn’t Communist and replacing them with Communism.

Tag words: Chang Kai-shek; Mao Zedong; William Bullitt; Stalin; Nomonohan; Georgii Zhukov; BT7 tank; Khalkin Gol; Tripartite Pact; Operation Barbarossa; Yosuke Matsuoko; Fumimaro Konoe