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4:00

achieved by the Western allies.

4:03

And I think the Cold War exacerbated

4:05

the feeling that somehow because

4:07

Stalin was a wicked man,

4:11

that the achievements of the

4:13

Red Army were somehow less

4:15

significant than the extraordinary

4:18

resolution shown by those

4:20

on the Western front.

4:23

My own view is that in

4:25

broad terms that when

4:28

I say Stalin won the war, it

4:30

was Stalin's armies that broke the back

4:32

of the Wehrmacht. I

4:35

believe that Stalin would have

4:37

broken Hitler's armies regardless

4:41

of the intervention of the West,

4:43

but it would have taken much longer. And

4:47

that the importance of what was

4:49

achieved on the Western front following

4:52

D-Day, people have been referring

4:54

to D-Day as the breakthrough

4:56

turning point. It wasn't a turning

4:58

point. It was a very significant,

5:01

important event, which in fact in

5:03

the long run helped

5:05

secure Western Europe for freedom and

5:08

for democracy. Heaven

5:10

knows what would have happened had

5:12

Stalin's armies prevailed. And

5:15

maybe we don't know. And this is the

5:17

speculation historians don't like entering. But

5:19

here I go. It

5:21

could have been a deal

5:23

between post Hitler, German fascists,

5:27

Stalin controlling a very uncomfortably large part of Europe.

5:29

Yeah, this is all fascinating stuff because one of

5:31

the strengths of the book is that you do

5:34

link it to contemporary events

5:36

and you very much emphasize

5:38

the political element in the

5:41

grand military strategy. There's

5:44

a very, very large political, almost

5:46

a dominant political element in

5:48

what's happening both in the East and the

5:50

West. We'll talk about that a bit later

5:52

on. Now, I think you're absolutely right about

5:54

D-Day not being a turning point or hinge

5:56

moment, which is the sort of current

5:59

sort of trendy phrase. But

6:02

where would you say that

6:04

turning point was on the, it clearly came

6:06

on the Eastern front, but

6:08

when and where did things start

6:10

swinging, the pendulum starts swinging back

6:12

the other way? I think that

6:15

you can go right back and my

6:17

book that you referred to before this

6:19

one, Barbarossa, subtitled How Hitler Lost the

6:21

War. I think there's very

6:24

persuasive evidence that took

6:27

all extent that matters. Hitler

6:30

could not have won the

6:32

war after being balked at

6:34

Moscow in the late autumn

6:36

of 1941. After

6:39

that, because it was Hitler we're dealing

6:41

with, we're not dealing with a

6:44

rational, say, military leader looking at

6:46

what was the least worst way

6:48

of solving a problem. He believed

6:51

that he could go further east. So you

6:53

had the huge, I think, I think

6:56

Antony Beever called Stalingrad

6:59

the psychological breaking

7:01

of the Nazis,

7:03

of the Wehrmacht. Whereas he,

7:05

I think, goes along with the

7:08

thought that it was Moscow that

7:10

was the military breaking. And then

7:12

you had the long retreat from

7:15

Stalingrad. I'm rather against turning points

7:17

because I think it's evolutionary war.

7:19

It's slow, grinding, horrible. There's no

7:22

sudden moments of elixirs that say,

7:24

ah, now we've done it. The

7:27

Russians certainly never said, now we've done it.

7:29

They knew exactly what they wanted to achieve,

7:32

however. Yeah. So by

7:34

the spring of 1944, the Germans are, by and

7:36

large, in

7:38

retreat. There's the odd counter attack, but

7:41

that's really just sort of a holding operation. When

7:44

do you actually see the

7:47

big pushback being formulated and

7:49

what are its basic elements

7:51

and who are the authors of

7:54

it? After the recovery

7:56

of TIEF, P.F. as it

7:58

then was, in the same managing

12:00

things you might say, with

12:02

disastrous consequences. But Stalin is

12:04

actually giving his marshals their

12:07

heads and his senior generals their

12:09

heads. Tell us that wonderful story

12:12

you've got in the book about

12:14

how Rokosofsky stands

12:16

up to him, something that this is a

12:18

man who's actually been through the purges. He

12:20

survived the purges, yet he's still got the

12:22

guts to stand up to

12:24

the great leader.

12:27

Rokosofsky, amongst always extremely

12:31

effective generals, was

12:33

always regarded as the gentleman

12:36

Soviet Red Army commander. He

12:39

had been, as you say, he had been tortured,

12:41

he'd been threatened with death, he'd

12:43

been imprisoned in 1938 during

12:46

Stalin's purges, accused of subversion

12:48

or any other outrage that

12:51

Stalin's paranoia had detected. And

12:54

he was just then told to go back to the front.

12:57

No, no apology, nothing, go back to the front. And

12:59

he was very important in

13:01

the sense of Moscow, he was

13:03

very important at Stalingrad.

13:06

And he was in

13:09

command of the first Belarusian

13:11

front, which was the

13:13

lead of the four Belarusian fronts

13:16

that were going to go

13:18

into Belarusia, a total of more than

13:20

two million men. He commanded

13:22

one of them. And he had convinced

13:24

himself because of the difficulties

13:26

they'd had during March and April, which

13:29

I touched on earlier, it's a sort

13:31

of suppressed in Soviet history. He

13:34

said, we can't take this town

13:36

city. It was called Bobruisk. There

13:39

were four that had to be

13:41

taken, which were being defined by

13:43

Hitler as fortress places.

13:46

And they were instructed the

13:48

Army Group Centre as the

13:51

other army groups to hold

13:53

those places at all cost.

13:56

In some extraordinary belief from

13:58

my perspective, Ryan

17:00

Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. With the price

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17:18

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22:00

village, for example, in

22:02

that period, 4344, when

22:05

you have absolutely no security,

22:07

you have no one who's

22:10

actually interested in you staying alive,

22:12

you'll pray to all sides, including

22:14

it, has to be said, the

22:16

partisans. Yeah, the partisans played an

22:18

important, some historians have underestimated, my

22:20

view, the role of the partisans.

22:23

The partisans, there were, in the

22:25

spring of 1944, around 140 plus

22:27

thousand partisans, Soviet

22:32

partisans or Allied partisans against

22:34

the Nazis. They were

22:36

in conflict often with each other. In

22:39

order to survive, they went

22:41

into villages pillaging visits, where

22:43

now inside Nazi

22:45

German territory, right? And

22:47

they're pillaging the villages. If any

22:50

villager is thought to have collaborated

22:52

with the Germans, they were too

22:55

often executed, fathers, mothers,

22:58

and children. Conversely,

23:01

when the Germans went in, the SS

23:04

went in, if they thought that

23:06

the villagers had been collaborating, and

23:08

where it took them to look, or

23:10

indeed a suspicion that you might be Jewish,

23:13

for you to be similarly executed

23:16

as a summary warning. And

23:19

this was official German policy. Patel,

23:21

who was the commander

23:23

in chief of the Wehrmacht,

23:25

he actually issued an order

23:27

saying that for every one

23:29

German soldier who was killed,

23:31

10 civilians must

23:33

be slaughtered as well. That

23:36

was an order. And then this reaps

23:38

its appalling apotheosis, of course, when you

23:40

get to what happened in Warsaw and

23:43

what happened in Budapest later in the

23:45

year. Now, if you actually

23:47

look at it on paper, Jonathan, the Red

23:49

Army should have won. It's got a huge

23:51

overmatch in all departments, in

23:53

armour and artillery, in men, in

23:55

aircraft. But having said

23:57

that, we shouldn't take away from them. skill

24:00

of the operation and of the

24:02

plan, and particularly the Maskirovka aspect of

24:04

it. Now, this is something that the

24:07

Russians did have a tradition

24:09

of. But in total, I'll list

24:12

something about the ruses,

24:14

the sort of the tricks

24:16

that the planners got up to in

24:18

order to wrong foot the Germans. It

24:20

was absolutely extraordinary.

24:22

Maskirovka essentially means deception. In

24:25

principle, it's not unlike Operation

24:27

Fortitude, which was designed to

24:30

persuade the Germans we

24:33

were going to attack the Paducale rather

24:35

than where we did attack. It

24:37

was very effective. But the scale

24:39

is what was so extraordinary. Because

24:42

the Germans were so outnumbered, the

24:44

more they keep German defenses on

24:46

the move, trying to fill

24:48

a gap here, trying to fill a gap there, the weaker

24:51

the Germans were becoming. And it

24:53

was hugely successful from Ukraine in

24:55

the early 1944, right

24:58

the way through to Bagration. And

25:01

it was a combination of

25:03

things. They did the usual

25:05

little standard techniques of dummy

25:07

tanks, airplanes flying noisily to

25:09

persuade the enemy that they

25:12

were there, and false intelligence,

25:14

radio signals with false stations,

25:16

false orders. But they also

25:18

had scores of thousands

25:20

of men who believed they were going

25:23

to be fighting at the front, taken

25:26

in opposite direction from the one that

25:28

actually they were the armies were going

25:30

to be fighting for. Meanwhile, they were

25:33

bringing up from the rear hundreds of

25:35

thousands of men. And in

25:37

the case of Bagration, the

25:39

Germans never saw it. Their

25:41

intelligence got as far only as

25:43

saying it could be that there is a

25:46

attack that might be launched here. This was

25:48

only days before. It was, it was, it

25:50

was a sort of for me, a sort

25:52

of parallel of how starting refused

25:55

to acknowledge that Operation Barbarossa was going to

25:57

start on despite all the intelligence. They

25:59

were dumped. orders, the trains,

26:02

moving people, moving soldiers and

26:04

weaponry, they would come up

26:06

in the daytime with fake

26:08

weapons and then remove them

26:10

again at night back on the trains.

26:13

They almost totally would wait until

26:16

it was too late, the German

26:18

defences. And that is, it wasn't

26:20

just one operation of Mascarevska. It

26:22

happened all the way through. In

26:25

Ukraine itself, there were 10 offences

26:27

in the spring of 1944. And

26:31

each of those had Mascarevska,

26:34

all different. So it was

26:36

incredibly well planned and coordinated.

26:38

And it goes back exactly

26:40

to your point. It was

26:42

not just force of weapons.

26:44

Of course, that super abundance

26:46

of weaponry and men was

26:48

very important. And one should

26:50

say, too, enormously helped in

26:52

particular areas, particularly by American

26:55

lendlies support of weapons

26:57

and particularly some kinds of technology.

27:01

But the Mascarevska effect,

27:04

it was regarded as a cinequine

27:06

known. You could not. It was

27:09

built into battle plans, Mascarevska. And

27:12

one or two of the great

27:14

previous historians this period have written

27:16

an entire books about Mascarevska

27:18

and how deception won the day

27:20

on the Eastern Front. Just as

27:22

I found that most people didn't

27:25

know what Bigracean meant, my peers

27:27

are peers. Actually, no one

27:29

knew what Mascarevska

27:31

meant. And indeed, until I discovered it, actually

27:33

discovered it when I was writing about Barbarossa.

27:35

But it was a, then

27:37

it wasn't much use because they were on

27:39

the retreat all the time. This is a

27:41

strong element of revenge in

27:44

behind Bigracean. I'll

27:46

pronounce it your way, Allefroncet.

27:51

We may be assaulted by

27:53

outraged Georgians, but we

27:55

might have to link to Mikaar Woons. what's

28:00

happened. This has been a war

28:03

without mercy on the

28:05

German side. And then of course, when it's

28:07

time to exact revenge, it's

28:09

done so very bloodily. But beneath

28:12

that, there's a strategic imperative,

28:14

isn't there, which is related,

28:17

which is that we cannot

28:19

allow a post-war

28:21

situation in which there

28:23

can be another barbaros, so there can be a

28:26

hostile Germany to

28:29

our West. And so we've got

28:31

to establish a political landscape which

28:34

prevents this from happening again. And

28:37

this, of course, lays the foundations for the

28:39

Cold War, doesn't it? So this is very

28:42

much an element in your book. I

28:44

think it's fundamental. We should not shy away

28:46

from the fact that the

28:48

revenge was as hideous

28:52

as the German Nazi

28:55

horrors perpetrated on the Eastern Front

28:57

were, not on the same scale,

28:59

but just as hideous. Anger,

29:02

hatred, the kind that just

29:04

was not there on the Western Front. And

29:09

the first of these was Nemelsdorf,

29:11

which was blown up

29:13

into a huge exaggerated account

29:15

by Gurdles, which happened

29:17

in the early New

29:20

York of 1944. But

29:23

after that, as it

29:25

happens, as Anthony Bieber has described so

29:27

incredibly powerfully in his book Berlin, the

29:30

kind of things that happened were awful. And

29:32

there was a sort of indifference to it.

29:34

And Zhukov, I think, a post, he was

29:36

a deputy chief of staff at Stalin, was

29:39

much easier about it. And some commanders were

29:41

saying, go on, indulge yourselves. Go on. There

29:43

are women there. Take them if

29:46

you want them. And that was

29:48

taken literally. Revenge, anger, lust. But

29:52

you're absolutely, importantly right.

29:55

The imperative, the political strategic

29:57

imperative from Stalin, Stalin's point

30:00

of view was to secure

30:02

the Soviet Union as then

30:05

was from any

30:07

threat of western succulent

30:09

another defeat. That was

30:12

paramount and Churchill

30:14

recognised this, Roosevelt recognised it

30:17

quite openly. The problem

30:19

was, the strategic problem from the

30:21

western allies point of view is that in this really

30:23

you have to go to Tehran if I may in

30:25

December 1943 where this was defined. The

30:29

real decisions strategically in diplomatic and

30:32

political terms were made at Tehran,

30:34

not at Yalta in February. Yalta

30:36

was a sort of codicil. There

30:38

was these secret agreements at Tehran,

30:41

quite extraordinary reading and

30:43

after Tehran the gain had been given away

30:45

from the western point of view. Recognition

30:47

of Stalin couldn't be stopped going as far

30:50

west as he wanted to therefore you had

30:52

to somehow negotiate with him to make sure

30:54

he didn't go too far and

30:57

Roosevelt was very much more at

30:59

ease about Stalin. His relationship with

31:02

Stalin was far better than Churchill's

31:04

relationship with Stalin. Churchill was

31:07

saying in sort of by May 1944

31:09

was saying to Anthony Eden,

31:11

Foreign Secretary, I fear the

31:13

very great evil is that they

31:16

will descend upon the world as

31:18

the Russian tide sweeps westward. Roosevelt

31:20

was entirely, entirely

31:23

at ease with this because he

31:25

believed that he and Stalin with

31:27

the support of Churchill and the

31:30

Chinese involved as well would police

31:32

the world so that independent nations

31:34

would be free of spheres of

31:36

influence, free of great powers. That

31:38

was his deeply held rather naive

31:40

view and very

31:43

telling phrase that Churchill reflecting

31:46

on what happened at the

31:48

Tehran conference said

31:50

there was I and I realised for

31:52

the first time what small country Britain

31:55

was. There on the right

31:57

was the great American Bison and on my

31:59

left left was the great Russian

32:01

bear and there was I in the middle,

32:03

a little British donkey.

32:07

He did not carry clout. Roosevelt

32:10

left to him the problem

32:12

of Poland. If you go from

32:14

the origins of the Second

32:16

World, well not the deep origins but

32:19

the immediate proximate origins of the Second

32:21

World War from Britain's perspective through to

32:23

the Cold War, it began, the

32:26

ostensible Karsus Belli was

32:28

Poland. Churchill spent

32:30

more time from Tehran

32:33

onwards trying to

32:36

persuade Stalin to yield Poland

32:38

to independence and self-determination politically

32:41

and then he did not

32:43

any other issue. Churchill

32:46

was not supported by Roosevelt who

32:48

stood on the sidelines and

32:51

you go forward to the point

32:53

where Stalin yielded nothing. The

32:57

Polish communists led

32:59

by a man called Berut were

33:01

basically satraps. They were Stalin's

33:03

gophers. The prime

33:06

minister in exile recognized

33:09

initially by all the big three

33:12

was living in London and

33:14

Michalayczyk his name was and

33:17

he was not able to

33:20

yield anything. Churchill had suggested

33:22

and had been agreed by

33:24

Stalin and had been

33:27

endorsed quietly by Roosevelt that

33:29

the Polish border with the Soviet

33:31

Union should shift roughly 200 miles

33:34

to the west, two steps left as

33:36

Churchill put it and that

33:38

the western border of Poland should

33:41

shift 200 miles further

33:43

into Germany and that is actually

33:46

what happened. Churchill tried to persuade

33:48

the exiled Poles that

33:50

they had to accept that and

33:53

that if they did they would

33:55

be able to get political freedom.

33:58

First of all they refused to

34:00

accept the refused to accept it,

34:02

Mikolajczyk eventually resigned because he couldn't

34:04

persuade his peers. Churchill

34:06

was tearing his hair out. If

34:09

you read the exchanges between him

34:11

and Mikolajczyk, which I have quite

34:13

extensively in the book, the

34:16

language he's using to Mikolajczyk in

34:18

desperation, to no doubt in my

34:20

mind he deeply and genuinely wanted

34:22

Poland to at least secure a

34:25

real measure of political independence, is

34:28

language that you can hardly believe

34:30

the politicians would use to one

34:33

another in extensive conversations. It's

34:35

all there. It was all recorded in those

34:37

days. And

34:39

Stalin smiled, sneered,

34:43

and never moved an

34:45

inch. The result, to

34:48

what I said at the very beginning of this passage, the

34:52

result was the total

34:54

gradual dismemberment of

34:56

Polish independence by

34:59

1947. And if

35:01

you like, Poland therefore being the cause

35:03

of the Second World War is also

35:05

the focus for what

35:08

became the Cold War. It was

35:10

what happened to Poland that finally

35:12

persuaded the Americans, now

35:14

with Truman, that I'm slightly oversimplified

35:16

to make the point that

35:19

Stalin was not a man of his word.

35:21

He could not be trusted. Churchill

35:24

never believed that he could be trusted.

35:27

The struggles after D-Day

35:29

between the Americans and the British,

35:32

because Churchill had never been

35:35

an enthusiast for D-Day. He'd

35:37

always feared huge

35:39

numbers of deaths in D-Day

35:41

itself, and subsequently he

35:44

wanted to attack through

35:46

the Balkans, from Italy up through

35:48

the Balkans, and encircle the Nazis

35:50

that way, and also stop the

35:52

Russians, the great Russian tide. And

35:54

the Americans would have none of

35:57

it. And it was very, very

35:59

bitter. the conversations

36:01

between Washington and London at

36:03

this point. We're talking now in the

36:06

summer of 1944 when the

36:08

Americans are insisting that they

36:11

do not go to Balkans, they will not provide

36:14

troops for the Balkans. He was

36:16

resisting all the way through. Churchill

36:18

wanted a different approach from

36:20

the one that eventually prevailed

36:23

and successfully so, mercifully. So

36:26

the idea that the big three

36:28

were all charms, simply not

36:30

true. And the idea that

36:33

Churchill and Roosevelt were always at

36:35

one with another, equally untrue, but

36:37

as Churchill himself said, he was

36:40

a little donkey. That's right.

36:42

And that becomes apparent, doesn't it? At

36:44

the beginning, he's in what appears to

36:46

be a partnership of equals with Roosevelt,

36:48

but with the passing of time very

36:50

rapidly, that changes. Just

36:53

before we finish, Jonathan, a

36:56

couple of things. One is you

36:58

very skillfully link the experiences

37:00

of 1944 with the Russian

37:02

mindset today, if you want

37:04

to put it like that.

37:06

Here we are celebrating or

37:08

commemorating D-Day on one side,

37:11

and I'm sure the Russians

37:13

are doing the same for

37:15

Bagration and their successes. But

37:17

what we take away from it is

37:20

very different, isn't it? We're saying this

37:22

is a great moment in human history, really,

37:24

where the forces of light start

37:27

to overcome the forces of darkness. If you like,

37:29

it's very much a sort of mannequine story.

37:33

On the Russian side, long before

37:35

the anniversary, throughout the Ukrainian crisis

37:38

and invasion and all the dreadful things

37:40

that have happened there since, they

37:42

keep harking back to the Second World War,

37:44

to the Great Patriotic War, as they call

37:46

it, and using it really

37:49

as, I think it has two uses. One

37:51

is there's not very much they can be

37:53

proud about in their recent history, and this

37:55

is something that they

37:58

take enormous pride in simply because... it's

38:01

something they can cling on to, to

38:04

reinforce their self-esteem. But they also

38:06

use all the historical aspects of

38:09

it to justify what they're doing.

38:12

And you say this eloquently in your book, can you

38:14

just explain your thinking to

38:16

the listeners? I do think there

38:18

is a chain between 1944 that

38:21

links the Russia

38:23

to Ukraine today.

38:26

And I think you touched

38:28

on it a light-eyed absolutely accurately. I

38:31

think two things. First of all, you

38:34

have running through Russian history,

38:37

total control of the media, except for

38:39

moments where it wasn't the case. So

38:42

what comes out of the Kremlin is

38:44

what most Russians learn, of course,

38:47

not all. That's

38:50

one aspect of where we are now. There are

38:52

two other things. First,

38:55

Russian people have always been obliged

38:57

to be obedient. But

39:00

they also have a sense of their grand

39:02

history, given through the

39:05

sieve of whoever was ruling at

39:07

the time, from the emperors onwards.

39:10

And so they look back nostalgically

39:14

to the days when there

39:17

was a Russian empire, when there

39:19

was Soviet Union, big and powerful,

39:22

when the leaders were respected, whether

39:24

it was Catherine the Great or

39:27

Stalin, and they

39:30

see Russia having been humiliated

39:32

and held in contempt by

39:34

the West as the

39:36

Soviet Union crumbled. They

39:38

don't make, in my view,

39:41

a big distinction between imperial

39:43

pre-revolutionary times and

39:46

the quasi-imperial, host-revolutionary times

39:49

of Soviet communism. So

39:51

when Putin comes along and says

39:53

he's going to restore Russian greatness,

39:57

that message falls on ready

39:59

ears. combine

40:01

that with the deep

40:03

underlying fear that there has long

40:05

been of Western

40:08

encirclement represented nowadays

40:10

Russian perspective by NATO and

40:13

you have the absolute

40:16

bedrock sense for many Russian people

40:18

that Putin is doing the right

40:21

thing. He is recovering territory that

40:23

is rightly Soviet. This

40:25

doesn't stand up in any

40:28

kind of international court of law

40:30

but psychologically it has enormous resonance

40:33

in Russia and I think a lot flows

40:35

from that. I think that I cannot and

40:38

again I stopped the book in

40:40

2014 with the invasion

40:42

unknown invasion or occupation of Crimea

40:45

is a walk over really because

40:48

I don't want to trespass into the future because

40:50

that's always very unwise to if you want the

40:53

book to have credibility in a

40:55

few years time so I shy away from

40:57

that but I cannot see on

40:59

the basis of the evidence we have so far

41:02

any circumstances in which Russia

41:05

will willingly yield either

41:07

Crimea or the Donetsk

41:10

and therefore I suspect for

41:12

all sorts of reasons that behind the

41:15

rhetoric from the west of victory which has no

41:17

meaning except rhetorical that

41:20

there must be a sense that without

41:22

in any way accepting the validity

41:24

of the occupation there will have

41:26

to be a ceasefire, an armistice

41:29

line something not dissimilar

41:31

it's extremely unsatisfactory not

41:34

dissimilar from the line that divides

41:36

north from South Korea, an orable

41:39

line but I suspect

41:41

that may be the least

41:43

worst temporary outcome. We'll end on

41:45

that note Jonathan because you've very

41:48

skillfully managed to combine the two

41:50

elements in our podcast with 1944

41:54

and our Ukraine podcast I think that's a good

41:56

we could talk for hours but I think we'll

41:58

have to end it there. there. Thanks so much

42:00

for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure to

42:03

talk to you. And we've learned a hell of

42:05

a lot. It's been very

42:07

enjoyable sort of someone who knows

42:09

this history. Thanks

42:11

a lot for that. Well, I really

42:13

enjoyed that. I hope you did too.

42:15

Join us on Friday for the latest

42:18

Ukraine episode. And of course, again, next

42:20

Wednesday for another episode of Battle Ground

42:22

44. Goodbye.