World War Two: 1941 and the Man of Steel


World War Two: 1941 and the Man of Steel

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AIR-RAID SIREN ECHOES

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He was a little man, about five foot five.

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In his sixties.

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Rather tubby.

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Enjoyed his drinks and his smokes.

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An unlikely hero perhaps,

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but in the dark days of the 20th century, he helped save Britain.

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This programme contains some strong language.

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And he was one of the biggest mass murderers in history.

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Stalin was his party name.

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We like to think that Britain's survival in the Second World War

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was secured by "Our Finest Hour" in 1940 -

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the Battle of Britain, Churchill's bulldog leadership.

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But more critical was what happened

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on the other side of Europe in 1941 -

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the horrific life-or-death struggle between Nazi Germany

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and the Soviet Union.

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And crucial to the outcome would be the leadership of Stalin.

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Stalin meant "man of steel",

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but the reality of his war in 1941 didn't live up to that name,

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as he lurched from crisis to crisis, coming close to a nervous breakdown.

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It was touch and go.

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In 1941, the Man of Steel blew it.

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His military bungling cost millions of lives,

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he nearly lost Moscow, and almost let Hitler win the war.

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I want to explore how, despite his spectacular mistakes,

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Stalin clung on to power and led an extraordinary fightback

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against Hitler's military machine.

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This is the Second World War from the less familiar Russian perspective -

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a story of dramatic twists and turns

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that helps us understand why Nazi Germany was eventually defeated,

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AND why a Stalinist "Iron Curtain" came down across half of Europe.

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This programme contains some strong language.

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Stalin would be the big winner from World War Two,

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but he had to learn to bend and compromise in order to win.

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He would even enter into perhaps the most bizarre shotgun marriage

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in diplomatic history, sealed with an arch-capitalist

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during a drunken evening at the Kremlin.

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Stalin had a strange, almost seductive charm.

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Winston Churchill, an unremitting enemy of communism,

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responded with respect, at times, even affection,

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towards the man he himself nicknamed Uncle Joe.

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This is the enduring mystery of Stalin -

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the friendly uncle and the Man of Steel,

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a titan of the Second World War, and a monster of the 20th century...

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who got away with it.

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The German invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa,

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started here on the Bug River,

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180 miles east of Warsaw, early on 22nd June 1941.

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And it began as a walk-over.

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Along a front 1,000 miles long,

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more than three million German troops, in three vast army groups,

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surged across the border, and deep into Soviet territory.

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Officially, the Soviet Union called it a "surprise attack",

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but more than that, it was a paralysed defence.

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Paralysed from the very top by the Man of Steel.

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For hours, Stalin would not even allow his commanders to fire back.

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It must surely go down

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as one of the most spectacular military blunders in history.

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By noon on Day One, a quarter of the Red Air Force had been destroyed -

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over 1,200 planes, many of them lined up on the ground, uncamouflaged.

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In Moscow, Stalin was beside himself with incredulous rage,

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lashing out at everyone around him.

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"This is a monstrous crime!

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"Those responsible must lose their heads!"

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But this was a disaster born in his paranoid mind,

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and in the brutal terrorized regime that he had created.

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1941 was a damning verdict,

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almost fatal,

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on 20 years of Soviet history.

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Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili seemed an unlikely leader -

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small, with a withered arm and a club foot,

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his sallow face pock-marked from smallpox.

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As a child in dirt-poor Georgia, deep in the Caucasus,

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he was regularly beaten by his shoemaker father.

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Nor did Stalin sound like a leader.

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With his flat, monotonous delivery,

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he was hardly a great orator,

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and he never lost his thick Georgian accent.

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This was an outsider's voice, and faintly ridiculous.

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One British wartime interpreter likened it to Wigan Pier, Lancashire -

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almost as if George Formby had been made dictator.

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TRANSLATION IN BROAD NORTHERN-ENGLISH ACCENT: For a job well done in constructing

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the Moscow Metro, we declare gratitude

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to the whole underground construction collective of engineers,

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technicians and workers, both male and female.

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Stalin wasn't an intellectual

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like Lenin and the Bolshevik elite.

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His doting mother wanted him to become a priest,

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but young Stalin was expelled from seminary.

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He found his true calling as a revolutionary bandit

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in the dying years of Tsarist rule.

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His speciality was bank robberies.

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In one heist in Tbilisi, he and his gang seized a quarter of a million roubles

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and left around 40 guards and bystanders dead.

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But Stalin was a crook with a cause.

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The proceeds of this and other raids helped fund the Bolsheviks

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in their bid for power.

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After the Revolution in 1917,

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Stalin concealed his ambitions behind a facade of dull reliability.

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A backroom boy, not a big hitter.

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He was made General Secretary of the Party.

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Sort of keeper of the card indexes.

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Neither he nor his administrative job

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appeared to pose a threat to rivals,

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but slowly, carefully, Stalin began accumulating power.

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Stalin made a career out of being under-estimated.

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Behind the unimpressive exterior, this was a man with a sharp mind,

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a formidable memory and a capacity to get to the heart of any problem.

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Unlike other dictators, Stalin wasn't a great talker,

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but he was a good listener,

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skilled at reading the tone and thrust of a conversation

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while disguising what he himself really thought.

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At meetings he would say little,

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waiting for his moment

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while doodling obsessively.

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This is one of Stalin's doodles.

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Hard lines, sharp angles, wolfs' snouts.

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A sinister glimpse behind the calm, modest exterior

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into a mind that was savage, vindictive, often paranoid.

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Here was a gangster, a street thug,

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but with a strategic brain

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and absolutely no respect for human life.

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In the power struggle after Lenin's death in 1924,

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Stalin employed his gangster logic to get rid of his rivals.

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He cleverly shifted his political allegiances, allying with the Right to eliminate the Left.

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Trotsky...

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Zinoviev... and then tacking leftward to kill off the Right - Rykov...

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Bukharin.

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And in the 1930s, Stalin stitched up the loyalists and close officials

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who'd helped him rise,

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subjecting thousands to macabre show trials, torture and death.

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Stalin had learnt that a well-timed beating or bullet could get him what he wanted.

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Nowhere was this lesson more brutally applied

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than in his handling of the army.

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Stalin was haunted by history, in particular how Napoleon Bonaparte

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had exploited the French Revolution to jump from corporal to emperor.

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Determined to weed out any upstart "Bonapartist" in his army,

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Stalin appointed a new class of political commissars to watch over his officers.

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And he purged hundreds of progressively minded generals,

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including Mikhail Tukhachevsky - a charismatic early exponent of tank warfare.

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The confession of treason extracted from Tukhachevsky

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was handed to Stalin spattered with blood.

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The Soviet leader was utterly unrepentant.

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"Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years?

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"No-one."

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Nobody was safe, except Stalin,

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and he controlled the surviving members of his inner circle through raw fear.

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Men like his foreign minister Molotov.

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Western diplomats called him Stone Arse because he was so stubborn,

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but in private, Molotov was totally under Stalin's thumb.

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When Stalin had his Jewish wife Polina thrown in jail,

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Molotov joined the rest of the Politburo

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in voting for her imprisonment.

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Stalin's oldest buddy was Voroshilov -

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a former metalworker who liked dressing up in military uniforms.

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Good company over a few drinks, but really rather thick, and no threat.

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Beria was head of Stalin's secret police.

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He liked to keep his hand in by doing some of the torture himself, using a truncheon.

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Then he relaxed by listening to records of Rachmaninov,

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or raping young women.

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But Stalin liked Beria, because he was a coward who never challenged the boss.

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Stalin had created an apparently unassailable position

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at the pinnacle of an autocratic state.

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But, of course, that system had a fundamental weakness.

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It depended on one man -

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on his strengths, but also on his whims and neuroses.

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A serious misjudgement by Stalin

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could plunge his servile regime into chaos,

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and that's what happened with a vengeance

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when war came in June 1941.

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By June 26th 1941, just four days after Barbarossa began,

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400,000 more Soviet soldiers were trapped as the Nazi pincers

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closed around Minsk, a key stronghold on the route to Moscow.

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EXPLOSIONS

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Barbarossa had hardly come out of the blue.

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Stalin, like everyone else, knew all about Hitler's demands

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for 'lebensraum' - living space for Germany in Russia.

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Stalin gambled on a deal with Hitler. In August 1939,

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he signed a pact with Germany that would carve up eastern Europe.

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Stalin got half of Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia,

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Latvia and Lithuania.

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He now expected Hitler to fight a long war for western Europe

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against Britain and France.

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-'Ja, der Englander ist getroffen.'

-But then Germany sliced through France in a month in 1940.

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Only Britain held out.

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Stalin's gamble had backfired disastrously.

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Victory in the west in 1940 left Hitler free to go east

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for living space in 1941,

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and now Stalin made another colossal error of judgement.

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BELL TOLLS

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In the spring of 1941, Hitler began massing his troops in Poland.

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It was no secret.

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The Kremlin accumulated a bulging intelligence dossier,

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including clear warnings from German deserters and the British.

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But Stalin, always suspicious about the capitalist West,

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assumed that much of the intelligence had been fabricated by Britain,

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with the aim of dragging him into its war with Hitler.

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Stalin refused to go onto a war footing, telling his generals...

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"Germany is busy up to her ears with the war in the West and I am certain

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"that Hitler will not risk a second front by attacking the Soviet Union."

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"Hitler is not such an idiot."

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Stalin didn't grasp that Hitler was intoxicated

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by a megalomaniac vision.

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He assumed that Hitler would act like he did,

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on hard-boiled calculations of national self-interest.

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This was Stalin's fundamental mistake.

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On June 29th, reports reached Moscow that the city of Minsk had fallen.

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It was only a week since the German invasion had begun.

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At this rate, the Germans expected to be in Moscow within a month.

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Suddenly, Stalin seemed to grasp the enormity of the disaster.

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He raged at his generals,

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reducing even Zhukov, his Chief of Staff, to tears.

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But then Stalin crumpled.

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"Everything's lost", he groaned.

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"I give up. Lenin founded our state,

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"and we've screwed it up!"

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Stalin was driven to his dacha on the outskirts of Moscow.

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There, he slumped in shock.

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PHONE RINGS

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Next day, he didn't come in to the Kremlin, or respond to phone calls.

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In the dictator's absence, no-one dared to take any decisions

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or sign any documents.

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Suddenly, there was a chilling vacuum at the heart of power.

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Was this a sinister game?

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The great actor testing the loyalty of his underlings,

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like the man he called his teacher, Ivan the Terrible?

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Waiting, watchful, ready to pounce on anyone who tried to seize power?

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That's certainly possible,

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but I think Stalin had really come close to a nervous breakdown,

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because what he faced was not just military defeat,

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but the collapse of everything he'd worked for within Russia.

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PHONE RINGS

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Stalin had revolutionised his country even more profoundly than Lenin.

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In the late 1920s, he embarked on a frenzied campaign of modernisation.

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The old Russia, dominated by a peasant mentality,

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rooted in the Orthodox religion, would be swept away

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to be replaced by five-year plans,

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collective farms, mass production -

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above all, gigantic steel works.

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It was a steel crusade for the Man of Steel.

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Stalin was determined that his communist state must match up to the capitalist West.

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It was, he claimed, a matter of life or death.

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"We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries.

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"We must make good this distance in ten years.

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"Either we do so, or we shall go under."

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Stalin's Russia did catch up.

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During the 1930s, iron and steel output increased fourfold.

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A country that produced only 700 trucks in 1928

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churned out more than 180,000 in 1938.

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Stalin's Second Revolution dragged Russia into the 20th century.

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But it couldn't have been accomplished without the utter ruthlessness that was his trademark.

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Just as he had eliminated opponents within his inner circle,

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Stalin simply swept away any of the wider Russian population

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who resisted industrialisation.

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Many were packed off to prison camps

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in the Arctic wastes of Siberia.

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This was the notorious Gulag,

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where nearly two million Soviet citizens were incarcerated in 1941.

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The forced collectivisation of agriculture was even more brutal.

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Peasants often fought back against state seizure of their land and livestock.

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As a last act of defiance,

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many killed their own animals.

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Half the Soviet Union's cattle were slaughtered.

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In the famine that followed, an estimated five million people died.

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PHONE RINGS

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This was Stalin's revolution -

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its triumph and its tragedy.

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Now it was all falling apart,

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and Stalin must have known that it was largely his fault.

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On June 30th 1941, with German Panzers rolling towards Moscow,

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the Politburo drove out to Stalin's dacha.

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They found him sitting in an armchair.

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Stalin looked up, haggard and nervous.

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"Why have you come?" he asked,

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apparently suspecting a coup.

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But the men in suits were on a very different mission.

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They wanted Stalin to return to take charge of a new State Defence Committee -

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a sort of War Cabinet.

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The relief on Stalin's face was transparent.

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"But," he asked,

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"can I lead the country to final victory?"

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"There may be more deserving candidates."

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His old crony Voroshilov spoke up -

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"There is none more worthy."

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Nodding, Stalin accepted his new role.

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Even at the moment when Stalin had screwed it all up,

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his yes men hadn't the guts to depose him.

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Or, more exactly and more chilling,

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after a decade in which they'd been both the agents and the victims of Stalinist terror,

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they couldn't imagine Russia without him.

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Now Stalin began to regain his nerve.

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His prime task was to steady the country, dispelling the swirl of rumour and panic.

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One old man in a Moscow street complained,

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"Why hasn't anybody spoken to us on the radio? They should say something, good or bad.

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"But we are completely in a fog."

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On July 3rd, Stalin finally broke his silence,

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with a speech relayed across the country through loudspeakers in factories and streets.

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"Hitler's troops have succeeded in capturing Lithuania,

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"the western part of Belorussia, part of Western Ukraine.

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"A grave danger hangs over our country."

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Stalin's delivery was as flat and toneless as ever.

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His Georgian accent still grated.

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But what he actually said was astounding.

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He frankly admitted that most of the western Soviet Union had been lost.

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He even addressed his people, not just as comrades,

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but as brothers and sisters, and dear friends.

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From the depths of the crisis,

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Stalin was attempting to build a new relationship with his people.

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But behind the soft soap was the old iron fist.

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Stalin intended to terrorize his army into fighting.

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He issued an order, drily known as number 270.

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"Those falling into encirclement are to fight to the last.

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"Those who prefer to surrender are to be destroyed by any available means,

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"while their families are to be deprived of all state allowances and assistance."

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This savage order was Stalin's handiwork, but he got his henchmen,

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including Molotov and Voroshilov, to add their names at the bottom.

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When Stalin's son Yakov was captured, Order 270 was applied to his family.

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His wife Yulia, Stalin's daughter-in-law,

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spent two years under arrest.

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Yakov was later shot at a POW camp near Lubeck -

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whether in an attempt to escape, or as deliberate act of suicide

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has never been clear.

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But flogging his own people was not enough.

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Russia couldn't survive the German onslaught alone.

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The only other power still fighting Germany

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was one that had tried to crush the Russian Revolution.

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Now in an extraordinary U-turn,

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Stalin reached out to the old capitalist enemy.

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Equally amazing, Britain's Prime Minister, a notorious Red-basher,

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was ready to meet Stalin halfway.

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CHURCHILL: 'I see the Russian soldiers guarding the fields

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'which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial.

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'I see, advancing upon all this in hideous onslaught, the Nazi War machine

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'with its clanking, heel-clicking, dandified Prussian officers.'

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It seemed as if Winston Churchill

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was going back on everything he'd been saying in the last 20 years.

0:29:060:29:11

After the Russian Revolution, he even wanted British troops to help

0:29:110:29:15

stamp out what he called the "foul baboonery of Bolshevism".

0:29:150:29:20

By 1941, Churchill's view was changing.

0:29:220:29:26

In part, he recognised that Stalin's Russia was very different from Lenin's anarchic state.

0:29:260:29:33

But this was also a matter of political expediency now,

0:29:330:29:37

because the Soviet Union was his enemy's enemy.

0:29:370:29:40

The day Barbarossa began,

0:29:400:29:43

Churchill told an aide,

0:29:430:29:45

"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference

0:29:450:29:50

"to the Devil in the House of Commons."

0:29:500:29:53

In telegrams to Stalin, Churchill promised tanks, planes and food.

0:30:060:30:11

But privately, the British didn't think the Russians would last a month

0:30:160:30:20

against the army that had smashed France.

0:30:200:30:23

Then Hitler would turn back on Britain.

0:30:230:30:26

CHURCHILL: 'His invasion of Russia is no more than a prelude

0:30:310:30:36

'to an attempted invasion of the British Isles.

0:30:360:30:39

'He hopes, no doubt, that all this may be accomplished before the winter comes.'

0:30:390:30:44

Today, we assume the Battle of Britain had been decided in 1940,

0:30:470:30:53

but that wasn't how Churchill saw things in 1941.

0:30:530:30:57

Just three days into the German assault on Russia,

0:30:570:31:01

he ordered that Britain's defences

0:31:010:31:04

must be at "concert pitch" for invasion from September 1st.

0:31:040:31:09

In September 1941,

0:31:140:31:17

it did indeed look as if Russia's big cities were doomed.

0:31:170:31:22

In the north, German troops laid siege to Leningrad -

0:31:220:31:26

the old Tsarist city of St Petersburg.

0:31:260:31:29

Hitler ordered it to be destroyed street by street,

0:31:310:31:34

and then razed to the ground.

0:31:340:31:36

Down south, German Panzers encircled Kiev - capital of the Ukraine.

0:31:400:31:46

Out of his depth, Stalin could only bluster and bully.

0:31:480:31:52

Hearing that Nikita Khrushchev, the local party boss,

0:31:520:31:56

was ready to surrender,

0:31:560:31:58

Stalin telephoned him in a rage.

0:31:580:32:02

"You should be ashamed of yourself!

0:32:020:32:05

"Do whatever it takes. If not, we'll make short work of you!"

0:32:070:32:12

Stalin rejected any retreat at Kiev,

0:32:200:32:23

thereby condemning over 600,000 Soviet troops

0:32:230:32:27

to German prisoner of war camps.

0:32:270:32:30

For most, that meant certain death.

0:32:300:32:33

After yet another disaster,

0:32:410:32:43

Stalin was in a state of panic.

0:32:430:32:46

He now sent Churchill an anguished appeal, written in his own hand,

0:32:460:32:52

urging Britain to mount a second front against Hitler,

0:32:520:32:55

a landing by some 30 divisions, several hundred thousand troops,

0:32:550:32:59

in the Balkans or France, before the end of the year.

0:32:590:33:04

But this was pure fantasy.

0:33:040:33:07

Churchill didn't have 30 useable divisions in the whole British Army.

0:33:070:33:11

With no help in sight, Stalin now faced the ultimate threat from Hitler,

0:33:140:33:20

who targeted Moscow itself in an offensive codenamed Operation Typhoon.

0:33:200:33:25

The name proved apt, because the Germans simply blew away the Red Army.

0:33:250:33:30

By October 5th, German tanks were only 80 miles from Moscow.

0:33:450:33:50

Stalin placed veteran general Georgi Zhukov in charge of the defence

0:33:520:33:57

of the Soviet capital, with one of his highly motivational pep talks.

0:33:570:34:02

"If Moscow falls...

0:34:020:34:04

"heads will roll."

0:34:040:34:07

The Germans were now approaching one of the sacred sites of Russian history,

0:34:210:34:26

renowned in literature, music and folk memory.

0:34:260:34:29

Stalin ordered a last stand here,

0:34:310:34:33

on what he called the Mozhaisk Line.

0:34:330:34:36

The Mozhaisk Line was largely a figment of Stalin's imagination,

0:34:390:34:45

but it was rooted in Russian history

0:34:450:34:48

because it ran across the old battlefield of Borodino.

0:34:480:34:52

Borodino was the epic battle between Napoleon's France and Tsarist Russia.

0:34:550:35:00

It was evoked in sound by Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture,

0:35:000:35:04

and immortalised in words by Tolstoy in War and Peace, his classic novel,

0:35:040:35:10

which was being serialized on Radio Moscow.

0:35:100:35:13

Now Russian troops slugged it out with the Germans

0:35:130:35:18

around the very earthworks where their ancestors had fought Napoleon's Grand Army.

0:35:180:35:24

Yet whatever Stalin's wishful thinking, the Russians were driven from the field of Borodino,

0:35:530:35:59

as in 1812, back towards the western outskirts of Moscow.

0:35:590:36:04

This was a critical moment.

0:36:120:36:14

The fate of Moscow, the very outcome of the Second World War,

0:36:140:36:19

hung in the balance.

0:36:190:36:21

Now Stalin wrestled with the same terrible question faced in 1812

0:36:270:36:32

by the Tsar's marshal, Mikhail Kutuzov -

0:36:320:36:35

whether to fight for Moscow, or abandon the city.

0:36:350:36:39

Here in 1812, Kutuzov decided to fall back and sacrifice Moscow,

0:36:390:36:47

in order to preserve his army and ultimately save Russia.

0:36:470:36:53

Now in 1941, Beria took a similar line, arguing,

0:36:530:36:57

"Moscow is not the Soviet Union.

0:36:570:37:00

"Defending Moscow is useless."

0:37:000:37:04

Zhukov, on the other hand, was sure Moscow could be held.

0:37:040:37:09

Stalin, torn between these conflicting views,

0:37:090:37:14

pored over a new biography of Kutuzov, underlining the sentence -

0:37:140:37:20

"Up to the last moment no-one knew what Kutuzov intended to do".

0:37:200:37:26

While Stalin dithered, his staff packed his belongings,

0:37:380:37:42

and made ready a special train.

0:37:420:37:45

Then, on the morning of October 15th,

0:37:470:37:50

Stalin authorised the government to prepare an evacuation to Kuibyshev,

0:37:500:37:55

500 miles east of Moscow.

0:37:550:37:57

According to minutes from the meeting, "Comrade Stalin himself

0:38:000:38:04

"will be evacuated tomorrow or later, depending on the situation".

0:38:040:38:10

Even at this, its most desperate moment, Stalin's regime

0:38:100:38:16

kept up its calculated yet gratuitous cruelty.

0:38:160:38:20

As the Soviet bureaucracy geared up to go, the jails were cleared out.

0:38:200:38:26

One victim was part of Stalin's inner circle.

0:38:260:38:29

Bronya, the wife of Alexander Poskrebyshev,

0:38:310:38:34

Stalin's secretary, the bald little gate-keeper of the Kremlin office.

0:38:340:38:39

Bronya had been imprisoned on trumped-up charges of treason.

0:38:390:38:43

Poskrebyshev was distraught,

0:38:450:38:47

but Stalin did nothing to help.

0:38:470:38:50

"Don't worry", he said sweetly.

0:38:500:38:53

"We'll find you another wife."

0:38:530:38:55

During the evacuation of Moscow, Bronya was executed.

0:39:030:39:08

Choking back his grief,

0:39:080:39:09

Poskrebyshev kept on working for Stalin round the clock.

0:39:090:39:14

"One death is a tragedy -

0:39:170:39:19

"a million deaths are a statistic."

0:39:190:39:22

That cliche is often attributed to Stalin.

0:39:220:39:25

Whether or not he actually said it,

0:39:250:39:28

that's certainly the way he did things -

0:39:280:39:30

inflicting cruelty on a mass scale,

0:39:300:39:33

but also at a personal level on close associates.

0:39:330:39:37

Poskrebyshev, Zhukov, Khrushchev, even his own family.

0:39:370:39:42

This was a man who, I think,

0:39:440:39:48

derived real sadistic pleasure

0:39:480:39:50

from playing with people's minds.

0:39:500:39:55

Stalin's own mind about evacuation was still undecided.

0:40:010:40:06

On October 16th 1941, the people of Moscow woke

0:40:060:40:09

to what seemed like a ghost town.

0:40:090:40:12

No buses, trams or even policemen.

0:40:120:40:15

Across the city, grey snowflakes were falling -

0:40:200:40:24

ashes from the burning of millions of official papers,

0:40:240:40:28

even party cards.

0:40:280:40:30

It seemed that Hitler would soon achieve his dream

0:40:300:40:36

of consigning Bolshevism to the rubbish heap of history.

0:40:360:40:39

Then suddenly, the city became infected with panic

0:40:420:40:45

as news of the evacuation spread.

0:40:450:40:49

Abandoned shops were looted.

0:40:490:40:51

Cars and trucks clogged the roads going east.

0:40:510:40:55

The game seemed to be up.

0:40:550:40:58

One man noted in his diary,

0:40:580:41:00

"Today Moscow is like an ant heap - people loaded down with goods

0:41:000:41:04

"going in all different directions.

0:41:040:41:06

"The Metro is closed, and people are saying it is to be blown up or flooded,

0:41:060:41:10

"and that the Germans will arrive tonight."

0:41:100:41:14

At an outlying railway siding, Stalin's train was ready.

0:41:190:41:24

According to one of his aides, the Soviet leader paced up and down

0:41:240:41:29

in his tattered greatcoat, weaving in and out of the steam,

0:41:290:41:33

still pondering.

0:41:330:41:35

Then he told his staff,

0:41:350:41:37

"No evacuation.

0:41:370:41:39

"We'll stay here until victory."

0:41:390:41:42

The evacuation order was revoked.

0:41:450:41:47

Hundreds of looters were shot, and the capital was placed under martial law.

0:41:500:41:54

No-one can really judge what tipped Stalin's decision.

0:41:560:42:01

Certainly he and Zhukov knew that fresh troops

0:42:010:42:04

were now being rushed west from Siberia.

0:42:040:42:07

But I think that Stalin's ego

0:42:070:42:10

and sense of history also played a part.

0:42:100:42:14

The outsider, the cobbler's son from faraway Georgia,

0:42:140:42:19

thought he could outdo Kutuzov,

0:42:190:42:22

one of the heroes of the Russian past.

0:42:220:42:25

He would save Russia AND save Moscow as well.

0:42:250:42:30

Stalin had now finally taken a grip on the crisis, and on himself.

0:42:330:42:39

His decision to stay in Moscow

0:42:390:42:41

and quell the panic was a critical turning point of World War II.

0:42:410:42:46

Despite appearances, all was not going Hitler's way.

0:42:460:42:49

Hitler had assumed that what he considered the Jew-ridden Bolshevik regime

0:42:520:42:59

would quickly collapse.

0:42:590:43:01

"You only have to kick in the door," he said, "and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."

0:43:010:43:06

But when Hitler did kick in the door,

0:43:090:43:12

the Soviet Union, though tottering, did not fall.

0:43:120:43:17

And the Russian people, whom in racist contempt

0:43:170:43:21

he dubbed "the Slavic rabbit family", bit back.

0:43:210:43:25

Hitler and his generals underestimated the resilience of Stalin and his state.

0:43:360:43:42

Even more, they underestimated the tenacity of the Russian people.

0:43:420:43:47

An early demonstration of Russian bravery

0:44:000:44:03

had been the defence of Brest in the very first week of Barbarossa.

0:44:030:44:08

The citadel here is still commemorated,

0:44:080:44:12

even by the youth of the 21st century, as a Hero Fortress

0:44:120:44:16

of the Soviet Union.

0:44:160:44:19

The Germans expected to capture it on day one of Barbarossa.

0:44:240:44:29

In fact, a few hundred Russians held out for eight days

0:44:290:44:33

against a whole German infantry division with 10,000 combat troops.

0:44:330:44:39

The Russians battled on in appalling conditions with virtually no water.

0:44:480:44:53

The Germans tried everything - tanks, shells, bombing.

0:44:550:45:00

Eventually they had to winkle out the defenders room by room.

0:45:000:45:04

One Russian soldier, Georgi Karbuk, recalled -

0:45:080:45:11

"The Germans deployed flamethrowers.

0:45:130:45:16

"They simply poked the nozzles into cellar windows and burned everything.

0:45:160:45:21

"Even the bricks melted.

0:45:210:45:24

"Others threw grenades into cellars where families were hiding."

0:45:240:45:28

Ultimately, the German 45th Infantry Division

0:45:320:45:35

did conquer the fortress here at Brest.

0:45:350:45:38

But it had lost nearly 500 men in a week,

0:45:380:45:42

more than it lost in a whole month in France in 1940.

0:45:420:45:47

For the German army, as well as the Russian people,

0:45:470:45:52

Brest was a foretaste of horrors to come.

0:45:520:45:55

TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

0:46:000:46:03

The will to resist the invaders was just as strong behind the front line.

0:46:070:46:12

Much of Soviet industry lay west of Moscow. Easy pickings for Hitler.

0:46:130:46:19

So the Russians dismantled some 1,500 factories, put them on trains

0:46:190:46:24

together with workers and families

0:46:240:46:26

and then rebuilt them east of the Ural Mountains.

0:46:260:46:29

The scale was incredible.

0:46:460:46:48

Over a million railway wagons were needed.

0:46:480:46:51

Placed end to end, it was estimated that they would've stretched

0:46:510:46:56

right across the country from Poland to the Pacific.

0:46:560:47:01

What made ordinary Russians - soldiers and civilians,

0:47:180:47:22

struggle so tenaciously?

0:47:220:47:25

Here's one story, which I think captures the spirit of Russian resistance in 1941.

0:47:280:47:33

Fleeing the German onslaught on the road to Moscow,

0:47:360:47:40

the war correspondent Vasily Grossman was given shelter by an old peasant woman.

0:47:410:47:46

She used up her tiny stock of supplies, welcoming him

0:47:460:47:50

with a good meal and a roaring fire,

0:47:500:47:53

all the while singing songs.

0:47:530:47:55

She told Grossman of her son fighting at the front and of her nightmares.

0:47:550:48:01

"The Devil came to me last night, and sank his claws into my hand.

0:48:030:48:09

"I started to pray, but the Devil took no notice.

0:48:090:48:13

"So I told him to fuck off, and then he did disappear."

0:48:130:48:17

Grossman was very struck by this typically Russian mix

0:48:210:48:26

of generosity and bloody-mindedness.

0:48:260:48:28

"If we do win in this terrible, cruel war,

0:48:300:48:34

"it will be because there are such noble hearts in our nation.

0:48:340:48:38

"They illuminate all our people with a miraculous light."

0:48:380:48:43

For this old woman, and for millions of Russians,

0:48:440:48:48

their defiance was rooted

0:48:480:48:50

in a deeper sense of homeland, of Russia's history and faith,

0:48:500:48:56

that stretched back long before Lenin and Stalin.

0:48:560:49:00

One popular wartime poem tapped into this mood,

0:49:080:49:13

imagining the ghosts of the old religious Russia

0:49:130:49:16

coming to the aid of Stalin's godless communists.

0:49:160:49:20

"It was as if at the graves in each Russian village

0:49:220:49:26

"Guarding the living with the sign of the cross

0:49:260:49:29

"Our ancestors were gathering to pray

0:49:290:49:32

"For their grandsons who no longer believe in a God."

0:49:320:49:36

With customary opportunism,

0:49:410:49:44

Stalin responded to this resurgent sense of history,

0:49:440:49:48

and Russians, in turn, responded to Stalin,

0:49:480:49:52

or more precisely, to the heroic image of Stalin

0:49:520:49:56

projected by the regime.

0:49:560:49:58

The Man of Steel, the modern Tsar,

0:49:580:50:01

became a symbol for the Russian people of their determination

0:50:010:50:06

to resist the new invaders.

0:50:060:50:09

Stalin accelerated his transformation into nationalist leader.

0:50:170:50:21

His speech for the Revolution Day parade in November invoked Lenin,

0:50:210:50:27

but also the Russian heroes who had repulsed earlier invaders,

0:50:270:50:31

including the Tsarist general Kutuzov.

0:50:310:50:35

The troops paraded through Red Square and marched straight on to the front.

0:50:410:50:46

Moscow was now under almost nightly attack from the Luftwaffe.

0:50:580:51:03

The Kremlin's air-raid shelters had not yet been completed,

0:51:080:51:11

so for a few days Stalin shared the ordeal of ordinary Muscovites,

0:51:110:51:16

dossing down in his greatcoat alongside them

0:51:160:51:19

in one of the Metro stations.

0:51:190:51:22

By December 2nd 1941, German advance units

0:51:320:51:35

were only a dozen miles from the Kremlin.

0:51:350:51:39

Its domes and spires glinted in the pale sun.

0:51:390:51:44

One German medical officer reached a tram stop on the road into the city.

0:51:470:51:52

"There was an old wooden bin attached to the wall.

0:51:550:51:58

"I felt inside and dragged out a handful of old tram tickets.

0:51:580:52:03

"We picked out the Cyrillic letters,

0:52:030:52:06

"which by now we knew spelled 'Moskva'."

0:52:060:52:10

But there was to be no easy ride into Moscow for those German soldiers.

0:52:100:52:15

This vast replica of a tank trap

0:52:150:52:17

marks the end of the line for them -

0:52:170:52:21

the point where Barbarossa, once molten fire, literally froze up.

0:52:210:52:27

Temperatures were now 30 below.

0:52:440:52:46

Tank and plane engines had to be heated for hours before they could be started.

0:52:480:52:53

Many German soldiers lacked winter clothing, even proper gloves -

0:52:530:52:58

victims of Hitler's hubris about a quick victory.

0:52:580:53:03

Seizing their chance, Stalin and Zhukov now planned a dramatic counterattack.

0:53:060:53:11

Before dawn on December 5th,

0:53:180:53:20

Soviet troops ploughed into the frozen Nazi pincers around Moscow.

0:53:200:53:25

GUNFIRE

0:53:250:53:29

Although the Germans weren't routed,

0:53:370:53:39

they were driven back 100 miles.

0:53:390:53:42

At last for the Russians, after six months of defeat, a first victory.

0:53:420:53:48

But could they keep it up?

0:53:480:53:50

Zhukov knew the limits of his army.

0:54:020:54:05

He wanted a targeted strike to save Moscow.

0:54:050:54:10

But Stalin was now on a roll.

0:54:100:54:13

Though no general, he had apparently done what Kutuzov could not do -

0:54:130:54:18

save Russia without sacrificing Moscow.

0:54:180:54:22

And like Hitler when he launched Barbarossa, Stalin now believed his enemy to be ripe for destruction.

0:54:220:54:30

Pacing around his study in the Kremlin, Stalin told his generals,

0:54:330:54:38

"The Germans are taken aback by their defeat near Moscow.

0:54:380:54:43

"Now is just the time to mount a general offensive."

0:54:430:54:47

Zhukov protested that he hadn't the resources to advance

0:54:470:54:51

in this way, all along the front.

0:54:510:54:54

Stalin would have none of this.

0:54:540:54:57

"Our task is not to give the Germans a breathing space.

0:54:570:55:01

"We must drive them westwards without a halt.

0:55:010:55:05

"This will ensure the complete defeat

0:55:050:55:09

"of the Nazi forces in 1942."

0:55:090:55:12

According to Zhukov, nobody else spoke up.

0:55:130:55:18

The dictator had browbeaten his generals.

0:55:180:55:22

The all-out New Year offensive went ahead and Stalin,

0:55:220:55:27

with customary vindictiveness, crossed Zhukov's name off the list

0:55:270:55:31

of those to be honoured for saving Moscow.

0:55:310:55:34

'Along the whole front, the great Russian counter-offensive,

0:55:370:55:42

'which Stalin personally worked out in every detail, springs to life.'

0:55:420:55:46

British newsreels recorded Stalin's great offensive.

0:55:460:55:50

The heroic Russians seemed to be the only ones effectively fighting the Germans.

0:55:500:55:55

Britain was still on the back foot.

0:55:590:56:01

And America, though at last in the war,

0:56:040:56:08

was in disarray after Japan's surprise attack at Pearl Harbour.

0:56:080:56:12

Yet in early 1942, Stalin was sniffing victory,

0:56:140:56:19

and like Hitler, it went to his head.

0:56:190:56:24

Having lost eastern Europe in 1941,

0:56:240:56:27

he was now determined to get it back.

0:56:270:56:30

He told Britain and America that Russia's rewards for victory

0:56:300:56:33

should include eastern Poland and the Baltic states -

0:56:330:56:38

the very territories signed over to him in 1939

0:56:380:56:41

as part of his pact with Hitler.

0:56:410:56:45

Now he wanted his allies to endorse the same dirty deal.

0:56:450:56:50

This obsessive haggling for territorial gain

0:56:520:56:56

may seem bizarrely premature to us now,

0:56:560:57:00

but I think it makes sense if we remember that Stalin, still on a high

0:57:000:57:06

from the success of the winter counter-offensives,

0:57:060:57:08

thought the war might be over within a few months.

0:57:080:57:12

So he was trying to strengthen his hand

0:57:120:57:16

for an upcoming peace conference.

0:57:160:57:19

Russian friendship was vital for Britain.

0:57:200:57:24

But handing over Poland and the Baltic states to the Soviets,

0:57:240:57:28

as Hitler had done, seemed utterly immoral.

0:57:280:57:30

After anguished debate, the British Government dug in.

0:57:300:57:36

So Stalin applied direct pressure.

0:57:360:57:38

He sent Molotov, his tough-guy foreign minister, to Britain,

0:57:380:57:42

to press Russia's case for territory.

0:57:420:57:45

'Early one morning in May, a powerful four-engined Soviet bomber came in to land at a northern aerodrome.

0:57:460:57:52

'Out of it stepped the Soviet people's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Monsieur Molotov,

0:57:520:57:56

'clad in heavy fur-lined flying kit.'

0:57:560:57:58

In front of the newsreel cameras, it was all smiles,

0:57:580:58:04

but behind the scenes, Molotov did not prove an easy guest.

0:58:040:58:08

Conscious, perhaps, that 20 years earlier,

0:58:140:58:17

his host Churchill had tried to strangle Bolshevism in its cradle,

0:58:170:58:23

Molotov and his aides slept with revolvers under their pillows.

0:58:230:58:28

Their rooms were also guarded round the clock

0:58:280:58:31

by grim Russian matriarchs dressed in black.

0:58:310:58:35

Molotov was notorious for his hard-nosed negotiating style,

0:58:420:58:47

but he could not get his way on carving up eastern Europe.

0:58:470:58:51

Churchill would only offer a general treaty of alliance,

0:58:510:58:55

and no promises about territory.

0:58:550:58:58

Molotov cabled the British offer to Stalin contemptuously.

0:59:000:59:05

"We consider this treaty unacceptable

0:59:050:59:08

"as it is an empty declaration which the Soviet Union does not need."

0:59:080:59:15

Molotov assumed Stalin would agree,

0:59:150:59:17

but, back in the Kremlin,

0:59:170:59:19

the mood was changing, as bad news filtered in from the front.

0:59:190:59:24

Buoyed up by over-confidence, and once again riding roughshod over generals like Zhukov,

0:59:310:59:36

in May 1942, Stalin had ordered a reckless new assault

0:59:360:59:41

to recapture Kharkov, second city of the Ukraine.

0:59:410:59:45

After a week of fighting, Khrushchev phoned to report

0:59:500:59:53

that the Soviet forces at Kharkov had driven themselves into a trap,

0:59:530:59:58

and were being encircled by the Germans.

0:59:581:00:01

Stalin refused even to take the call.

1:00:051:00:08

"Put down the phone.

1:00:081:00:10

"As if he knows what he's talking about!"

1:00:101:00:13

It was like June 1941 all over again.

1:00:331:00:37

Only after a quarter of a million men were captured

1:00:371:00:42

and 1,200 tanks were written off did Stalin face the facts.

1:00:421:00:47

With his regime on the ropes once more,

1:00:491:00:53

Stalin called off the offensive,

1:00:531:00:55

and rethought the priorities of his diplomacy.

1:00:551:00:59

Stalin dropped his demands for territory.

1:01:031:01:07

What mattered now was getting the Allies to mount a second front -

1:01:071:01:12

a British and American assault on mainland Europe

1:01:121:01:15

to divert German forces from Russia.

1:01:151:01:18

Stalin cabled Molotov in London.

1:01:181:01:21

He told him to stop protesting, sign the treaty with Britain

1:01:211:01:25

and firm up the Allies' commitment to a second front.

1:01:251:01:30

Molotov was flabbergasted, but the man whom the British regarded as the hardliner

1:01:301:01:36

grovelled abjectly to his boss.

1:01:361:01:39

"I shall act in accordance with the directive.

1:01:391:01:42

"I believe that the new draft treaty can also have positive value.

1:01:421:01:46

"I failed to appreciate it at once."

1:01:461:01:49

'At the Foreign Office, the Grand Alliance was entered into

1:01:491:01:53

'as signatures were appended to the document by the representatives of the high contracting parties.

1:01:531:01:57

'Full understanding was also reached with regard to the creating this year of a second front in Europe.'

1:01:571:02:03

In mid-1942, Hitler resumed his offensive.

1:02:071:02:11

The new campaign was directed southeast to seize Russia's oil in the Caucasus.

1:02:111:02:17

But Stalin still assumed that Hitler's real goal was Moscow.

1:02:191:02:22

Thanks to Stalin's misplaced deployments, the German advance was even swifter than in 1941.

1:02:271:02:32

By the end of the summer,

1:02:321:02:34

the swastika was flying over the highest point in the Caucasus.

1:02:341:02:39

The Red Army had lost another 600,000 prisoners,

1:02:391:02:43

and thousands more tanks.

1:02:431:02:46

The pattern was the same as 1941 -

1:02:551:02:59

armoured pincers, and mass encirclements,

1:02:591:03:02

rants from Stalin about "not one step back",

1:03:021:03:05

and new orders for blocking units

1:03:051:03:08

to shoot those trying to flee.

1:03:081:03:12

In July 1942, with the Red Army collapsing,

1:03:121:03:16

Stalin was once again desperate for help.

1:03:161:03:19

Stalin now really needed Churchill

1:03:251:03:26

to deliver on the promise of a second front in Europe in 1942.

1:03:261:03:32

But nothing seemed to be happening.

1:03:321:03:35

Stalin sensed that he was being betrayed by the old enemy.

1:03:351:03:40

"Personal and Secret.

1:03:401:03:42

"Premier Stalin to Premier Churchill.

1:03:421:03:45

"In spite of the agreed communique concerning the urgent tasks

1:03:451:03:49

"of creating a second front in 1942,

1:03:491:03:52

"the British Government postpones this matter until 1943."

1:03:521:03:57

Relations between London and Moscow were reaching crisis point.

1:03:591:04:03

As the German juggernaut rolled east, rumours swirled around

1:04:031:04:08

about Soviet capitulation and peace talks.

1:04:081:04:11

A new Nazi-Soviet Pact would be a disaster for Britain.

1:04:111:04:16

For the British, Stalin's military blunders

1:04:191:04:22

opened up a terrifying scenario.

1:04:221:04:25

Churchill's Chief of Staff, Alanbrooke, noted in his diary...

1:04:251:04:29

"While we are talking, the Germans are walking through the Caucasus.

1:04:291:04:35

"Our defences in Iraq and Persia are lamentably weak."

1:04:351:04:39

If the Germans smashed through the Caucasus to Iraq and Persia,

1:04:411:04:47

they would grab most of Britain's oil.

1:04:471:04:51

Neutral Turkey would probably throw in its lot with Hitler,

1:04:511:04:56

perhaps even allowing a link-up with Rommel's army in Egypt,

1:04:561:05:01

now steam-rollering towards the Suez Canal.

1:05:011:05:04

The Germans might even join forces with the Japanese to threaten

1:05:041:05:09

India from the west as well as east.

1:05:091:05:12

Nightmares, perhaps, but all too vivid and real at the time.

1:05:141:05:19

In 1941, Russia's collapse threatened to expose the British Isles

1:05:191:05:25

to the Nazi war machine.

1:05:251:05:28

In 1942, the whole British Empire seemed at stake

1:05:281:05:33

because of Stalin's military bungling.

1:05:331:05:37

While Stalin felt betrayed by Churchill over the promise of a second front,

1:05:411:05:45

Churchill doubted Stalin's ability

1:05:451:05:47

to hold out against Hitler.

1:05:471:05:50

Without trust, the alliance was doomed.

1:05:501:05:54

Churchill felt that he and Stalin had to meet face-to-face.

1:05:541:05:58

In the middle of August 1942,

1:06:011:06:03

after a long flight dodging German fighters,

1:06:031:06:08

Churchill arrived in Moscow.

1:06:081:06:10

Churchill was excited to meet Stalin for the first time,

1:06:101:06:13

and keen to get the measure of the man. But he was also anxious.

1:06:131:06:18

He was about to give Stalin an update on the second front that wouldn't be welcome.

1:06:201:06:24

It was, he said, "Like carrying a large lump of ice to the North Pole."

1:06:241:06:29

At seven that evening, Churchill was ushered into Stalin's office.

1:06:361:06:41

First impressions were not flattering.

1:06:411:06:44

At the door was a nervous dwarf -

1:06:441:06:47

actually Poskrebyshev or "Bald Head" as one snooty British official called him.

1:06:471:06:53

And Stalin himself didn't look particularly impressive,

1:06:531:06:57

attired as usual in lilac tunic,

1:06:571:07:00

baggy trousers and long boots.

1:07:001:07:04

This was actually standard Communist Party dress, but to the British,

1:07:041:07:07

he looked a bit of a yokel.

1:07:071:07:09

For Stalin, a gangster from the Caucasus, used to manipulating cronies and underlings,

1:07:141:07:20

having to negotiate with a grandee from the West,

1:07:201:07:25

face-to-face and on equal terms, was a new experience.

1:07:251:07:29

A first test, if you like, of his ability to play in the premier league of international diplomacy.

1:07:291:07:37

And I think that the records of his meetings with Churchill

1:07:371:07:41

throw a revealing light on Stalin's effectiveness as a statesman,

1:07:411:07:46

as he learnt to manage Russia's wartime alliances for his own ends.

1:07:461:07:52

To start with, the meeting was heavy going.

1:07:541:07:58

Stalin admitted the news from the Caucasus was bad.

1:07:581:08:02

Churchill spoke defensively about all the problems

1:08:021:08:05

of mounting a second front in France that year.

1:08:051:08:08

Stalin looked grim.

1:08:081:08:11

"What about a smaller operation?" he asked.

1:08:131:08:15

"Like recapturing the Channel Islands?"

1:08:151:08:18

Churchill said it would be "a waste of seed-corn"

1:08:181:08:22

for the real harvest which would come in 1943.

1:08:221:08:28

Stalin, who was used to wasting tons of seed-corn, replied testily,

1:08:281:08:34

"A man who isn't prepared to take risks cannot win a war."

1:08:341:08:40

But then Churchill revealed that he and the American President Franklin Roosevelt

1:08:401:08:45

had a top secret plan which would be every bit as good as a second front offensive against mainland Europe.

1:08:451:08:53

He drew a sketch of a crocodile.

1:08:531:08:56

Northern France, he said, was Hitler's hard snout,

1:08:561:09:01

but the Mediterranean was his soft belly.

1:09:011:09:06

Churchill promised that in the autumn, British and American troops

1:09:061:09:10

would land in Morocco and Algeria.

1:09:101:09:14

If North Africa was won in 1942, he said,

1:09:141:09:18

we will launch a deadly attack on Hitler next year.

1:09:181:09:23

Stalin was now fully engaged.

1:09:231:09:26

He asked a lot of questions.

1:09:261:09:29

The meeting broke up after 3½ hours.

1:09:301:09:33

The British Prime Minister was driven back to the dacha he had been assigned.

1:09:331:09:38

Churchill was jubilant.

1:09:421:09:45

"My strategy was sound", he crowed.

1:09:461:09:48

First, he had given Stalin the bad news,

1:09:481:09:52

then he'd offered glad tidings.

1:09:521:09:55

Stalin, he said, ended enthusiastic,

1:09:551:09:58

in a glow.

1:09:581:09:59

Churchill declared that Stalin was just a peasant

1:10:011:10:05

whom he knew exactly how to handle.

1:10:051:10:09

Too late, Churchill was warned that the room had probably been bugged,

1:10:091:10:14

and that his comments might well be passed on to Stalin.

1:10:141:10:18

But Churchill wasn't cowed, stalking up to the likely location

1:10:181:10:21

of a microphone and shouting,

1:10:211:10:24

"The Russians, I have been told, are not human beings at all.

1:10:241:10:30

"They are lower in the scale of nature than the orang-utan.

1:10:301:10:35

"Now, let them take that down

1:10:361:10:40

"and translate it into Russian."

1:10:401:10:43

It was a strange echo of Churchill's spluttering 20 years earlier

1:10:431:10:49

about "Bolshevik baboonery".

1:10:491:10:51

Whether his bombast got back to Stalin, we don't know,

1:10:511:10:55

but the next meeting between the two leaders was very different.

1:10:551:11:00

Perhaps Stalin felt insulted by Churchill's taunts, or maybe

1:11:021:11:07

he had seen through the so-called second front in the Mediterranean.

1:11:071:11:12

The evidence isn't clear, but Stalin now played the hard man.

1:11:121:11:16

Sitting back in his chair, eyes half closed, puffing at his pipe,

1:11:181:11:23

he tore Churchill to shreds.

1:11:231:11:26

He dismissed North Africa as an irrelevance.

1:11:261:11:31

He accused Churchill of breaking a firm promise about the second front.

1:11:311:11:37

He even mocked Britain for cowardice.

1:11:371:11:40

"If the British Army had been fighting the Germans as much as the Russian Army,

1:11:421:11:47

"it wouldn't be so frightened of them."

1:11:471:11:50

Churchill was livid!

1:11:501:11:53

He shouted back, giving as good as he got.

1:11:531:11:57

The second meeting ended in icy deadlock.

1:12:011:12:05

Next day at the dacha, Churchill fumed in the garden,

1:12:231:12:27

safely out of range of the bugs.

1:12:271:12:30

"That man has insulted me!

1:12:321:12:35

"From now on, he will have to fight his battles alone.

1:12:351:12:40

"I represent a great country,

1:12:401:12:42

"and I am not submissive by nature."

1:12:421:12:47

This was no longer a policy dispute,

1:12:511:12:54

a row about the second front.

1:12:541:12:57

It was a clash of cultures

1:12:571:13:00

between two proud men

1:13:001:13:02

representing two proud nations.

1:13:021:13:05

Each desperately needed the other,

1:13:051:13:09

but there was a limit to how far either would bend.

1:13:091:13:14

Unlike Stalin, Churchill wasn't surrounded by lackeys.

1:13:151:13:20

The British Ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr,

1:13:201:13:24

talked back at Churchill hard.

1:13:241:13:28

In a letter later, he recalled how he asked Churchill bluntly

1:13:281:13:33

whether he intended to "flounce off home".

1:13:331:13:37

"All because you are offended.

1:13:371:13:39

"Offended by a peasant who didn't know any better.

1:13:391:13:44

"You are an aristocrat.

1:13:441:13:46

"They are rough and inexperienced,

1:13:461:13:49

"straight from the plough and the lathe.

1:13:491:13:52

"Don't let your pride blur your judgement."

1:13:521:13:56

Noblesse oblige - that was the message.

1:13:561:14:00

Clark Kerr urged Churchill to unbend

1:14:001:14:03

and ask Stalin for another talk.

1:14:031:14:07

But would Stalin unbend as well?

1:14:071:14:12

In fact, for Stalin, the ground was also shifting.

1:14:151:14:19

He had just learned that the Germans had routed Soviet troops

1:14:191:14:23

on the Don River.

1:14:231:14:25

Stalingrad, the great industrial city

1:14:251:14:29

named after the Man of Steel himself, was now in Hitler's sights.

1:14:291:14:33

Round three between Stalin and Churchill

1:14:401:14:43

began at seven in the evening in Stalin's office.

1:14:431:14:47

The two leaders had a polite and business-like final discussion

1:14:501:14:54

about various aspects of the war.

1:14:541:14:57

But as Churchill got up to say goodbye,

1:14:571:15:00

Stalin became Mr Nice Guy all of a sudden.

1:15:001:15:04

"Why don't you come back to my apartment in the Kremlin and have a little drink, hm?"

1:15:061:15:11

The "little drink" mushroomed into dinner with a dictator -

1:15:171:15:21

a six-hour feast washed down with endless bottles of choice wine.

1:15:211:15:25

Stalin introduced Churchill to his daughter Svetlana and watched his reaction with a twinkle in his eye,

1:15:251:15:32

as if to say, "You see, even we Bolsheviks have family life."

1:15:321:15:37

The mood became progressively more unreal

1:15:401:15:43

as conversation lurched from the present to the past.

1:15:431:15:47

Churchill boasted about the military genius of his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough.

1:15:471:15:53

Stalin, with an impish smile,

1:15:551:15:59

said he thought the Duke of Wellington was more talented,

1:15:591:16:03

because he crushed Napoleon,

1:16:031:16:05

who presented the greatest danger in history.

1:16:051:16:09

Then Stalin got on to the collective farms campaign,

1:16:091:16:13

and the criminal resistance of the peasants.

1:16:131:16:17

It was, he said, a terrible struggle.

1:16:171:16:20

Ten million people, all very bad and difficult,

1:16:201:16:26

but necessary.

1:16:261:16:28

He hacked at a pig's head, picking at the flesh with his fingers.

1:16:351:16:40

Churchill had a vivid image of millions of men and women

1:16:401:16:44

being blotted out forever, but he held his tongue.

1:16:441:16:48

"With the World War going on all around us,

1:16:491:16:53

"it seemed vain to moralise aloud."

1:16:531:16:57

This final meeting cemented the alliance.

1:17:031:17:08

Churchill left Moscow with a new confidence in Stalin.

1:17:081:17:12

On the plane home next morning, nursing a massive hangover,

1:17:121:17:16

he murmured, "I was taken into the family. We ended friends."

1:17:161:17:21

'Of Joseph Stalin the Prime Minister has brought back an excellent impression

1:17:211:17:25

'of a great rugged war chief, blunt of speech, with a saving sense of humour.

1:17:251:17:30

'The two formed a friendship which promises well for the victory of the united nations.'

1:17:301:17:37

In the course of the war, Churchill's view of the Soviet Union

1:17:501:17:54

and the threat of what he called "Russian barbarism"

1:17:541:17:58

would yo-yo up and down,

1:17:581:18:00

but he retained his faith that Stalin was a man with whom he could do business.

1:18:001:18:06

For his part, Stalin had played a shrewd game of hot and cold

1:18:061:18:12

with Churchill, knocking him off balance.

1:18:121:18:14

This was a routine Stalin ploy.

1:18:141:18:17

But I believe there was something more behind his Mr Nice Guy act

1:18:191:18:24

when he invited Churchill to his flat.

1:18:241:18:28

Stalin, I think, made a deliberate decision

1:18:281:18:32

to open up, to show a more human side.

1:18:321:18:37

The bruiser had to become a charmer.

1:18:371:18:41

He couldn't afford to let the meeting end on a sour note,

1:18:411:18:46

because Russia's military situation had gone critical.

1:18:461:18:49

The Caucasus and Russian oil fields now seemed within Hitler's grasp.

1:18:541:18:59

The decisive battle would be in the cauldron of Stalingrad,

1:19:031:19:08

where two million Soviet and German troops became locked in a struggle to the death.

1:19:081:19:13

Churchill's much-vaunted offensive in the Mediterranean,

1:19:181:19:21

landing 100,000 troops on the beaches of North Africa

1:19:211:19:25

was a mere sideshow to this horrific climax of the war.

1:19:251:19:29

Having failed to wipe Leningrad and Moscow off the map,

1:19:321:19:36

Hitler was now determined to erase Stalingrad.

1:19:361:19:39

His orders were stark - male population to be destroyed,

1:19:411:19:45

female to be deported.

1:19:451:19:48

Hitler was becoming ever more the control freak as Supreme Commander.

1:19:571:20:03

But Stalin, the Man of Steel, who'd bent towards Churchill,

1:20:031:20:08

was also learning to be less rigid in dealing with his generals.

1:20:081:20:12

Swallowing his old fear of Bonapartism in the army,

1:20:151:20:20

Stalin dismantled the system of political commissars -

1:20:201:20:23

the apparatchiks who could question officers' orders

1:20:231:20:27

on party or ideological grounds.

1:20:271:20:30

Now, commanders were allowed to take decisions for military reasons alone.

1:20:301:20:35

Party hacks like Voroshilov were demoted,

1:20:361:20:40

while Stalin promoted Zhukov to Deputy Supreme Commander.

1:20:401:20:44

Zhukov knew the fate of Stalin's generals.

1:20:451:20:50

At first he tried to refuse the promotion,

1:20:501:20:54

claiming their temperaments were incompatible.

1:20:541:20:56

But Stalin was insistent -

1:20:561:20:58

"Let us subordinate our temperaments to the interests of the Motherland."

1:20:581:21:04

Zhukov wasn't just a one-man band.

1:21:061:21:09

Around him he built a capable staff of intelligent, efficient planners.

1:21:091:21:14

This was a decisive moment -

1:21:171:21:19

a sign that Stalin had the essential flexibility to survive.

1:21:191:21:23

In 1941, Stalin had appealed to nationalism, not communism,

1:21:271:21:31

in order to galvanize his people for war.

1:21:311:21:36

In 1942, he compromised again,

1:21:361:21:38

scrapping the ideology of party control

1:21:381:21:41

to give his top generals the freedom to fight.

1:21:411:21:47

While Russian soldiers battled heroically in the ruins of Stalingrad,

1:21:501:21:54

Zhukov and his staff formulated a bold plan to relieve the city.

1:21:541:22:00

And Stalin let them do it, finally releasing the reserves

1:22:001:22:03

he had retained to protect Moscow and not pushing Zhukov this time

1:22:031:22:09

into a premature assault.

1:22:091:22:11

In November 1942, the pincers closed again.

1:22:171:22:20

But they were Russian pincers, slicing through weak divisions

1:22:201:22:24

that guarded the rear of Hitler's army in Stalingrad.

1:22:241:22:29

It was the Germans who were now encircled.

1:22:301:22:33

Their final surrender in January 1943

1:22:381:22:41

coincided with the tenth anniversary of Hitler's seizure of power.

1:22:411:22:46

It was a devastating turn of fortune's wheel.

1:22:481:22:52

War correspondent Vasily Grossman witnessed the Russian victory.

1:22:541:22:59

"Prisoners move on and on in crowds, their mess tins rattling,

1:23:001:23:05

"belted with pieces of rope, or wire.

1:23:051:23:08

"Russian troops are marching.

1:23:081:23:11

"Their spirits are higher now.

1:23:111:23:13

"Ah, it would be great to get to Kiev."

1:23:131:23:17

Another man - "Ah, I'd like to get to Berlin."

1:23:171:23:20

The Red Army was now on the march.

1:23:231:23:26

So were the British and Americans by the end of 1942,

1:23:261:23:30

routing the Germans in North Africa as a springboard for control of the Mediterranean.

1:23:301:23:36

But it was the Eastern Front,

1:23:361:23:38

the great battles for Moscow and Stalingrad,

1:23:381:23:42

that turned World War Two,

1:23:421:23:44

beginning a fightback that would eventually entrench the Soviet Union

1:23:441:23:49

as a new superpower throughout Eastern Europe.

1:23:491:23:52

Not just Poland and the Baltic states,

1:23:521:23:56

but Hungary, Czechoslovakia and half of Germany itself.

1:23:561:23:59

The Second World War was a struggle

1:24:061:24:10

to defeat Hitler's genocidal imperialism.

1:24:101:24:13

Yet the man who gained most from victory was a dictator

1:24:131:24:16

as cruel and ruthless as his enemy.

1:24:161:24:19

The difference between victory and defeat was in large part, that Stalin eventually learned

1:24:231:24:29

from the mistakes that had cost millions of Russian lives,

1:24:291:24:33

whereas setbacks only made Hitler more unyielding in his fantasies.

1:24:331:24:39

Ultimately, Stalin, for all his Bolshevik ideology,

1:24:411:24:45

was a pragmatist with a keen eye for survival.

1:24:451:24:49

Although he was an outsider, his command over the Russian people

1:24:491:24:54

gained him an empire, bought with their blood,

1:24:541:24:58

that surpassed anything won by the Tsars.

1:24:581:25:02

So there was a ghastly moral compromise at the heart of the Allied victory.

1:25:021:25:07

In 1945, the defeat of one evil

1:25:071:25:11

helped entrench another evil across half of Europe

1:25:111:25:15

and in Russia itself.

1:25:151:25:18

Having learnt to loosen up his regime to win victory,

1:25:231:25:27

after the war, Stalin tightened his grip once again,

1:25:271:25:32

reverting to terror.

1:25:321:25:34

He put his generals back in their place, demoting the war hero Zhukov on charges of corruption,

1:25:341:25:39

and he clamped down on his people with renewed censorship

1:25:391:25:43

and another purge of the party.

1:25:431:25:46

In the 1950s, Vasily Grossman pondered the cost of victory,

1:25:491:25:53

reflecting on how the heroism of the war had saved Russia,

1:25:531:25:58

while also saving Stalin, and shoring up the Stalinist system.

1:25:581:26:04

His epic novel Life And Fate was modelled on Tolstoy's War and Peace.

1:26:041:26:10

At the fulcrum of his book,

1:26:121:26:14

Grossman evokes Stalin waiting anxiously for the start

1:26:141:26:19

of Zhukov's vital counter-offensive around Stalingrad.

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The passage is pure fiction,

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but also, I think, sublime poetic truth.

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Grossman imagines the dictator recalling the shambles of 1941 -

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his bumblings that nearly ruined Russia.

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In his mind's eye, behind Hitler's tanks,

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Stalin sees the millions of Russians he destroyed coming back to life.

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The prisoners of the Arctic Gulag breaking up through the permafrost.

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Emaciated peasants crawling out of the soil, all of them looking for him.

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Then Zhukov's pincers close.

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The Germans cannot escape.

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Stalingrad will be remembered as a triumph, not a disaster.

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Grossman now imagines Stalin's devoted secretary -

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bald little Poskrebyshev, whose wife was one of Stalin's victims -

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watching silent and motionless

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as his boss sits back,

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drinking in the wonderful news.

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To the victor, the spoils.

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"This was his hour of triumph.

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"He'd not only defeated his current enemy, he'd defeated his past.

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"In the villages, the grass would grow thicker over the tombs of 1930.

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"The snow and ice of the Arctic Circle would remain dumb and silent.

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"He knew better than anybody that no-one condemns a victor.

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"Very slowly and gently, his eyes closed.

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"He repeated the words of a song.

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"You're caught in the net, my pretty little bird

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"I won't let you go for anything in the world.

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"Poskrebyshev looked at Stalin, at his grey, thinning hair,

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"his pock-marked face, his closed eyes.

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"Suddenly, he felt the ends of his fingers grow cold."

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