From the time Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 until the defeat of Japan, World War II, or The Great Patriotic War, as the Russians like to call it, had been an absolute bonanza for Stalin. Sure tens of millions of Russians had died, been shockingly wounded, been psychologically damaged, but for Stalin that was all a cost of doing business – building an enormous empire in just 6 short years.

Stalin’s view of the horrors of World War II is captured in the comment he made during the Korean War. Things had stabilised at the 38th Parallel. But it suited Stalin to keep the war going. But the Koreans and the Chinese were losing a lot of men in the ongoing fighting. They begged Stalin to end the war. Stalin replied that there was no reason why the North Koreans and Chinese should not continue fighting. He replied:

“they lose nothing except for their men.”

Many of the soldiers fighting heroically for their Russian motherland suffered the loss of all four limbs – both legs and both arms. Those men were, quite frankly, rather unsightly and quite bad for morale. Stalin had them sent to towns above the Arctic Circle so no-on would have to look at them. The Russians called them samovars – like the Russian teapots that stand on four tiny stumps of legs.

The Americans and the British, well especially the Americans, had made sure that Russia awash with their military and civilian equipment. Whole factories were even shipped to Russia by the Americans and assembled there. No American secrets were kept from them, except for the atomic bomb, and they easily got that, what with so many spies and fellow travellers in the US, including at the White House.

Russia started the war as just being Russia but when it was over it had all of Central Europe, a lot of territory that the Japanese had owned, and it oversaw Mao Zedong taking over mainland China.

At Tehran Roosevelt and Churchill had given Stalin everything he wanted, or hadn’t been strong enough to oppose him and to say no.

Now, at Yalta, Roosevelt again raised his desire to have the Russians help to beat the Japanese, the empire of the Rising Sun, and end the war. A request he had made previously at Tehran, but now he needed to get it firmed up. That is what this programme’s all about.

Tag words: Stalin; Tehran Conference; Roosevelt; Churchill; Sakhalin Islands; Kurile Islands; Yalta Conference; Admiral Ellis Zacharias; General Marshall; Chiang Kai-shek; ALSIB; Guandong Army; Alger Hiss; Harry Hopkins; Oleg Smirnov; Marhsall Vasilevsky; President Truman; 38th parallel; Hamilton Fish III;