Stalin's War: A New History of World War II

A prize-winning historian reveals how Stalin—not Hitler—was the animating force of World War II in this major new history.

World  War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between  good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was  not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and he was certainly  dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his  empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any  of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. The  Second World War was not Hitler’s war; it was Stalin’s war.

Drawing on ambitious new research in Soviet, European, and US archives, Stalin’s War revolutionizes  our understanding of this global conflict by moving its epicenter to  the east. Hitler’s genocidal ambition may have helped unleash  Armageddon, but as McMeekin shows, the war which emerged in Europe in  September 1939 was the one Stalin wanted, not Hitler. So, too, did the  Pacific war of 1941–1945 fulfill Stalin’s goal of unleashing a  devastating war of attrition between Japan and the “Anglo-Saxon”  capitalist powers he viewed as his ultimate adversary.

McMeekin  also reveals the extent to which Soviet Communism was rescued by the US  and Britain’s self-defeating strategic moves, beginning with Lend-Lease  aid, as American and British supply boards agreed almost blindly to  every Soviet demand. Stalin’s war machine, McMeekin shows, was  substantially reliant on American materiél from warplanes, tanks,  trucks, jeeps, motorcycles, fuel, ammunition, and explosives, to  industrial inputs and technology transfer, to the foodstuffs which fed  the Red Army.

This unreciprocated American generosity gave  Stalin’s armies the mobile striking power to conquer most of Eurasia,  from Berlin to Beijing, for Communism.

A groundbreaking reassessment of the Second World War, Stalin’s War is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the current world order.