398. Stalin: The Great Terror (Part 4)

Soon after Stalin’s purges and mass violence, Nazi soldiers launch a surprise invasion of the Soviet Union, opening up the Eastern Front of World War II. Who was Stalin’s chief executioner who still holds a Guinness World Record for his number of executions? Why was Stalin surprised that Hitler invaded through Operation Barbarossa when his generals had been warning of an imminent attack? And how did the opening of the Eastern Front change the trajectory of the Second World War? In Episode 4 of this series, Anita Anand and William Dalrymple are joined once again by Giles Milton, author of The Stalin Affair, to discuss the purges, show trials, and Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Brought to you by Plaud. Empire listeners can use code 'EMPIRE' to get a 10% discount on their first order at this link: https://uk.plaud.ai/empire Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com. Email: [email protected] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Editor: Bruno Di Castri Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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  From a murder in Leningrad in 1934 to the ruins of Stalingrad nine years later, this is the story of how Stalin turned terror into the central weapon of his rule. Sergei Kirov was a popular party boss, and he was a possible rival to Stalin. Within months, he was shot dead in circumstances that were never properly investigated. So, did Stalin order the killing, or did he exploit it to unleash what we now know as the Great Terror? And after purging his army and ignoring repeated warnings of a German invasion, how did he use that same machinery of fear to stop the Soviet Union from collapsing? Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Anand.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  And me, William Durable.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  Now, in this episode, we are going to be talking a little less about who Stalin was and a little more about what he actually did with all of the power that he spent 30 years accumulating.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  It's a grim and dark episode. Now, in the last episode, which was also fairly grim and fairly dark, we left Trotsky dead in August 1940 with an ice pick in the back of his head.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  Oh, didn't we say it was an ice axe? Didn't we have this huge, in-depth conversation? It is, in fact, an ice axe.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Now, today, we're going to lay the groundwork for Stalin's extraordinary rise to the top. But we may have to go back a little in time to sow the seeds of the story with yet another gruesome murder, which is how we like to roll on this particular pod. We are joined once again by our gruesome friend Giles Milton.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  There's a build-up, Giles.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  I've never been introduced like that before. Thanks, Willie.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  I see. So the fragrant and charming Giles Milton. Giles, most importantly, I mean, those of you who've been following the series, has been our wonderful guide, and he is the author of The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance That Won the War. Can we start by just doing a pen sketch of Sergei Kirov and just how important Kirov was to the Bolshevik machine?

• 4:36Speaker 04

  He was an old, fairly revolutionary, a great friend of Stalin. He'd been a supporter of the Bolsheviks from the very beginning, really. And it became apparent as Stalin was tightening his grasp on power, that there was one potential rival, and that was Sergei Kirov. And I think that Stalin realized that Kirov represented a very real danger to his grip on power, and that it would be much easier to dispose of him, get rid of him. And so, as you said, he was to be murdered. The great mystery is, was Stalin actively implicated in his murder, or did other people see the way the wind was blowing and decided to take it into their own hands? We just don't know. It's a mystery that's gone on

• 5:20Speaker 04

  ever since it took place, and we don't know. But the consequences were to prove remarkable grim and gruesome, because this would unleash the Great Terror.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, just before we get into the mechanisms of the murder as well, we should say that, you know, Stalin is a paranoid nut by this point. And Kirov is, you know, he's a better-looking man. He's a more charismatic man. He speaks better.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  You like your men with the swept-back hair, that 1930s sort of tsunami of...

• 5:54Speaker 03

  You know, it's not a high bar. But, I mean, is it true? There's that kind of pettiness that Stalin was worried about, you know, that he is better-looking, he's more charismatic? I mean, you know, if he's still here. Because he never says he wants the job.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  You've got to choose your favorite Stalin pin-up, Anita. You thought that Stalin was a looker last time, but now you're going off with his rival. There were one, he's a bit paranoid.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Young Stalin, young Stalin.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  But he represented a threat to Stalin, that's for sure. He was extremely popular. And I think one thing that's absolutely fascinating about the launch of the Great Terror is that Stalin had watched, in fascination, the Reichstag fire, which had happened just a few months earlier. Many people will remember that the Reichstag in Berlin was set on fire. A communist named Marinus van der Lube was arrested, and all the blame was piled onto him and the communists. And Hitler used this to ban freedom of speech, to ban all the civil liberties, and to really take control of Germany at that point. And I think Stalin,

• 7:00Speaker 04

  it was in fact one of Stalin's closest comrades, Anasas Mikoyan, his son actually said that Stalin had watched the Reichstag fire with the greatest interest.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  In what sense, Giles? I mean, presumably it wasn't television coverage of this.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  He was following it on the newsreels, following it in the newspapers, and clearly thought this idea of hoaxing a conspiracy is a brilliant way to seize power, to seize even more power. And we'll never know if this was the case, but it was certainly, you know, we have it on pretty good authority from someone in Stalin's inner circle, that he saw the Reichstag fire as a model that he could use to really secure his total grip on power in the Soviet Union.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Giles, what was the method of the shooting? What was the circumstances? Was he sort of followed home and shot? What was the method used?

• 7:49Speaker 04

  It's very, very murky. He was shot by a failed junior functionary in the Bolshevik Party named Leonid Nikolayev, who burst into his office or in the corridors outside his office and shot him in the neck. And Leonid was immediately pronounced guilty and was executed. But there are numerous accounts that, you know, suggest otherwise. We just don't know. But what we do know is that everyone who was in Kirov's circle ended up dying in very mysterious circumstances very shortly afterwards.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Including even the kind of van drivers, apparently.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  These are the people who transported Nikolayev. So, I mean, the reason we can't know whether Nikolayev received direct orders from Stalin is the van drivers were arrested and mysteriously died in odd circumstances. Anyone who chatted to him as he was being transported, there's this whole sort of chain reaction of death. So, anyone who saw even Nikolayev is erased from the copybook. So, that's why we don't know. We don't know whether it's a direct order or not.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  And is this read, Giles, at the time as the beginning of a purge? Does everyone know what's going on, or is it successfully covered up?

• 8:59Speaker 04

  No, at the time, no one knew what was coming. But clearly, from Stalin's point of view, this was the ideal moment to purge all those who had supported Trotsky, of course, all those who were criticizing his management of the Soviet Union, which of course was causing absolute chaos, starvation in the countryside, the collectivization, the liquidation of the kulaks, the rich peasants. This was causing total economic catastrophe in the Soviet Union, and Stalin had plenty of critics. And I think he saw this death of Kirov as the ideal opportunity to pounce and to round

• 9:41Speaker 04

  up and execute anyone who might criticize him or stand in the way of his rule.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  And he starts with big names. I mean, it's not that, you know, he sort of starts small and works his way up. I mean, he goes straight for Grigory Zinoviev, who was one of Lenin's closest allies and one of the most powerful figures in, you know, the Bolshevik party after the 1917 revolution, and Lev Kamenev, who, you know, again, another sort of stalwart, one of the fathers of the revolution. Can you tell us, I mean, what happened? How were they rounded up on how were they put on trial, these show trials that started?

• 10:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, just to give the context, there are going to be three major show trials. One is called Trial of the Sixteen, the next one is called the Trial of the Seventeen, and then there's a Trial of the Twenty-One. And these are key people, key old Bolshevik figures who've really been with Stalin from the very beginning. They were the ones that spearheaded the revolution. And, you know, beyond that, of course, the terror is going to spread massively right across the Soviet Union, and it's going to implicate and in fact end in the deaths of perhaps up to 1.2 million people are going to be killed in the terror. But you're right to say the Trial of the Sixteen, the first trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev,

• 10:55Speaker 04

  these were two of the great supporters of the revolution, they could not be closer to the center of power. And you've got to remember what's remarkable about these trials, not only is Stalin rounding up some of his closest friends, you know, and supporters, but these people all live within the compound of the Kremlin. So, you know, they are maybe a few hundred meters from Stalin's, where Stalin lives, and he's now arresting them. And they're going to be charged principally with the murder of Kirov, they're going to be charged with planned assassination of Stalin and those in his inner circle, and they're going to be charged with the crime of wanting to restore capitalism to the Soviet Union.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  And of course, over all of this, as like an umbrella over all of this, is the fact that they are friends or associates of Trotsky. And so this is, you know, fairly weighty charges that are against them. It's going to be a show trial, it's going to be held in public, there are going to be reporters reporting on it, many, numerous witnesses. And of course, the chief prosecutor is going to be Vischinsky, one of the most monstrous chief prosecutors in history, which I'm sure we could come on to him in a minute.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  Well, let's come on to him now. Why was he monstrous? I mean, now you've teased us, don't leave us hanging, Giles. What was monstrous about him?

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Vischinsky was a fellow Bolshevik revolutionary. He was from a Polish Catholic family, well-to-do family, who joined the revolution and became an absolute stalwart of the revolution. In June 1933, so just before all this is beginning, he was made Prosecutor General of the Soviet Union. One of the quotes attributed to him, which I like, he says, "Give me the man and I will find the crime." And this was his approach to justice. He determined that people were guilty and he was going to find them guilty.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Who could complain at that, Giles? What unreasonable person would mind that approach to prosecution?

• 12:54Speaker 04

  So, you know, his hallmark was really, his signature was forced confessions, torture in the basement of the Lubyanka Prison. He didn't have the slightest need for any evidence, he would kind of force confessions out of everyone. And he used this incredibly colorful languages in his court cases. He would refer to decayed people, terrorists, thugs, degenerates, the dregs of society. This is really powerful stuff. And one little detail, which I find absolutely fascinating, is in the trials, as I said, there were numerous witnesses in these trials, journalists and whatever. One of them sitting in on those trials was Roland Freyzer, who was to become one of the Nazis' judges under Hitler.

• 13:37Speaker 04

  He listened to Vischinsky's means of operating and thought, "This will do very nicely for us back in Berlin." It is incredible, these methods being used by Stalin in the Soviet Union are then being exported to Nazi Germany. So these two regimes, which, you know, hate each other, are actually using exactly the same totalitarian methods to round up their people and kill them.

• 13:59Speaker 03

  There's also, I mean, you know, the cruelty of killing is one thing, but there's also this sort of new thing of, if you accept that you are guilty, we will send you to prison for, you know, five, 10 years. I mean, that's what they said, both to Zinoviev and to Kamenev. They said, you know, "Look, just go along with it, you'll go to prison for a long time, it won't be lovely, but you'll survive it." And then they get dragged out and shot anyway.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  Yes, I mean, that's Stalin's doing. He's the one that promises, "Yes, you'll be spared, your family will be fine, don't worry, just say you're guilty and I'll make sure you're okay. You'll have a couple of years in a gulag, but you'll be looked after." You know, well, not a bit of it. They say they're guilty, they admit to their guilt, which is of course fake, and then they are promptly shot on Stalin's orders, you know, the very next night. So that's a hallmark of these trials, they're overlaid with lies, with forced confessions, torture, there's not a single ounce of justice. And one little detail, which I think is very interesting, the show trials, as I say, they started with the Trial of the Sixteen and would go on to these other great public trials, but there was one trial, in fact Vischinsky's first trial, which I think is

• 15:08Speaker 04

  absolutely fascinating, because who did he bring haul into court? It was a load of Brits, because the British had signed an Anglo-Soviet trade agreement, and British companies had moved into the Soviet Union to try and get some work. And one of those companies was Metro Vickers, and they were helping to establish the electrification of the Soviet Union. But in 1933, they were accused, these British working in Moscow were accused of being spies. They were hauled into court, Vischinsky did his usual act of, you know, you're betraying the Soviet Union, charged them with espionage, and they were found guilty and they were chucked into prison. And those employees, led by Alan Monckhouse, they were extremely lucky that the UK cut

• 15:52Speaker 04

  off trade relations briefly with the Soviet Union, at which point they were all released and sent back home. But it's a little-known fact that these show trials, which will see many of the great sort of Bolshevik leaders executed, began with a British company, Metro Vickers, and all their employers also being found guilty of crimes they did not commit.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  And Giles, how quickly does this escalate? I mean, is it something that starts slowly, or does Stalin go all in straight away? I mean, does the Great Terror sort of go off like a jet plane?

• 16:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, it does, it does. So the first trial, the first big trial is in the summer of 1936. By January 1937, you have the Trial of the Seventeen, as it was called, these are people like Radek, the old Bolsheviks who'd been in there from the very beginning, they're all rounded up and they're all executed. And then you have the Trial of the Twenty-One, people like Yagoda and Bukharin, who is on the Central Committee. I mean, he is an absolute central figure, and as I said, both of them living in the Kremlin, very close to Stalin's apartment, they have been, it has to be said, critics of Stalin's approach to running the Soviet Union, particularly collectivization, which

• 17:04Speaker 04

  has caused massive problems with the grain harvest, it's called starvation across the Soviet Union. They're accused of being Trotskyites, they are put on trial, and again, they force confessions, torture, et cetera, and found guilty.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Now, presumably by this stage, Giles, you've already got this idea of sort of five-year plans, everyone's been given quotas of what they've got to produce, but the Politburo, in a kind of bizarre move at this point, actually gives a quota for the number of arrests, region by regions, and it assigns, just like it's, you know, as if it's steel production or the amount of coal that's meant to be produced from the mines. Seventy-two thousand nine hundred and fifty victims, 28% should be shot, the rest should be given eight to 10 years in prison or labor camps. Who comes up with this?

• 17:52Speaker 04

  Well, this is Stalin himself, and in fact Stalin personally signs off these.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Twenty-eight, not twenty-seven? I mean, does someone get in trouble if they do 29% of shooting rather than?

• 18:02Speaker 04

  It's insane, but you have this picture of Stalin sitting in his Kremlin office, going through these lists and saying, "No, we'll add a couple more here, no, don't, that one, maybe we'll save that one," you know. It was micromanagement on an insane level in how to kill people.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  And I mean, you know, we have these awful chilling albums, where, you know, sort of 383 separate booklets of names and lists, which presumably Stalin personally sort of sits, looks through, peruses, like he's ordering off a menu, and sort of writes names, adds numbers and directions of what's going to happen to them.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Deliveroo Stalin style.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  That's exactly what he did, he was micromanaging this whole affair. And so you have this, the Great Terror is spreading right across the Soviet Union. So the most farthest-flung provinces are being affected, people are being rounded up, completely innocent people, entire families convicted on trumped-up charges and executed. But perhaps, you know, then to bring it back to Moscow, there's still the big show trials of the big beasts is taking place. And at one point Stalin decides that the army and the navy need to be purged as well. And this is perhaps one of the most extraordinary and most damaging of the purges, when he decides, well, just look at some of the figures, there are five marshals in the Soviet Army, three

• 19:24Speaker 04

  of them are arrested and executed. There are 15 army commanders, 13 of them are arrested and executed, and there are nine navy generals, eight of them are arrested and executed. Now, this is going to be an absolute disaster that's going to come back and haunt Stalin, because of course, in a few years' time, Hitler is going to invade the Soviet Union. And when Stalin looks around to see, you know, who's actually going to counter this invasion, well, he's killed all his senior generals and some of the most successful ones at that.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  He has basically taken the legs out of his own Red Army by doing this, as you say. But it isn't just the big beasts that are being rounded up, I mean, there's this really terribly sad character, Osip Pytanitsky, who was, you know, he'd been on the Central Committee forever, you know, even before Stalin was on the Central Committee. And he's sort of brave enough, this elderly man, white-haired, stands up and says, "I don't like these show trials, this is not what we're having a revolution for." And he is sort of taken by Molotov around the corner and also executed. I mean, so it's just at any level you could be rounded up and taken away and deleted.

• 20:34Speaker 04

  And Anita, it should be said that, you know, several thousand Americans and Brits had moved to the Soviet Union, this sort of utopia, as they saw it, that had been created. And Henry Ford had set up factories in the Soviet Union. Many of these workers were now rounded up, sent to gulags, executed. Victor Herman, he was American gulag. John Chidesky executed, he was American. Pat Breslin, Irish, died in a gulag. An English feminist and suffragette who'd moved to the Soviet Union, editor of the Moscow Times, English language newspaper, arrested and executed. So this went way beyond just Soviet citizens. It was all these fellow travellers who'd moved to this utopia, find themselves either in a gulag or dead.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  We're going to take a break now, but when we get back, we're going to ask what's really going on in Stalin's mind as he unleashes this wave of terror on Russia.

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• 23:34Speaker 02

  So, welcome back. How was Stalin inspired by such delightful figures as Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan when he unleashed the great terror on the Soviet people in the 1930s?

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, we know a little bit about this because he underlines in a book, a line attributed to Genghis Khan, and it says, this is the line, "The deaths of the vanquished are necessary for the tranquility of the victors." And he also criticizes Ivan the Terrible for being too soft. So, you know, you know who he's trying to model himself on.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Can't argue with that, really. I mean, Ivan the Terrible, you know, these pinko liberals in Russian history.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  Giles, throughout this absolutely tawdry period of history where people are being dragged out and, you know, in front of their screaming families or along with their screaming families and executed, one man enters the Guinness Book of Records. Tell us a little bit about him.

• 24:28Speaker 04

  Well, if you're going to execute thousands of people, you really need a very, very proficient executioner. And Stalin was blessed with having Vasili Blochin, an ex-shepherd and bricklayer who decides to turn his hands to executing people. And he was, he was absolutely brilliant at it. He executed tens of thousands of people. At the infamous Katyn Forest massacre, he personally killed 7,000 people in 28 days. He worked all night long, 10 hours in a row, and he said he could kill one prisoner every three minutes. And this would earn him, as you say, he would enter the Guinness Book of Records as the

• 25:11Speaker 04

  most prolific executioner in history.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  He just shoots them? What, does he have a variety of methods or what's his, what's his preferred technique?

• 25:21Speaker 04

  So what did, what did he like to do? So he, first of all, he, he always dressed in the same clothes. He wore a leather butcher's apron, a leather hat and shoulder-length leather gloves. He would turn the prisoner around, hold his revolver up to the back of their neck and put a single shot into their brain. That was his preferred method of execution. It should be said, and perhaps, you know, it's not that surprising, he was also an alcoholic and mentally unstable, but.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  No, really? Okay. Surprise, shock.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  But yes, he killed, as I say, tens of thousands of people. And he, incidentally, personally killed Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, who had written these begging letters not to be killed. Stalin personally ordered them to be shot by his faithful Vasili Blochin.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  I mean, at some point, you've got to imagine Stalin's just sort of sitting there in a throne, going, "You can be dead, you can be dead, you can be dead, you can be dead." Because even the man who compiles his albums of death eventually gets put to death.

• 26:23Speaker 04

  It's quite extraordinary, really, that Stalin would just be signing off the lives of tens of thousands of people. And I don't know if I can just give a little, a little, because this is a rather grim story we're telling here, and there are, there are a few bright moments. And in the very, at the very moment when the show trials are at their worst, the American ambassador to Moscow, William Bullitt, decides to hold the greatest party that Moscow has ever seen. It is to be the Spring Ball, held on the 24th of August, 1935. And he imports a forest of birch trees. He has the main dining room table covered in tulips. He has a chicory lawn planted in the ballroom.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  He brings in an aviary, aviary with pheasants, with parrots, with 100 finches. He brings in mountain goats, 12 roosters and a baby bear.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  I'm glad he's got some mountain goats. I always feel that you need a tribe of mountain goats at your parties.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  Anyway, he brings these into the American Embassy or the American Residence, Speso House in Moscow. Then he invites all of Stalin's surviving commissars and they have a great, great party. And in fact, the only sort of down, down thing on the whole day or the whole evening is that the bear got terrifically drunk on champagne and vomited over one of the Soviet generals, which was a bit of a black spot of the, of the evening. But it is kind of extraordinary to think that this kind of gaiety is taking place in the heart of Moscow, where tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people are being sent to be executed.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Giles, I'm quite intrigued by what you were saying about the Kremlin itself, that they're all kind of living in a compound. Is it collegiate? Is this sort of communal dining? Are these people who are being, you know, informing on each other and, and executing each other?

• 28:15Speaker 03

  Toasting one evening and then sort of stabbing each other in the head.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Are they, are they all living together in, you know, cheek by jowl or are they in their little houses, living family lives? How does it work?

• 28:25Speaker 04

  No, they, they had their little apartments within the Kremlin compound. They'd often eat together. They get drunk together, they get horrendously drunk together. Interestingly, Stalin, everyone's always, you know, saying how he was drinking vodka all the time. Stalin didn't drink vodka. In fact, Stalin often didn't drink alcohol at these dinners. What he liked to do was get everyone else completely drunk and he remained completely sober. And actually, he did the same with some very amusing accounts of the American ambassador, the British ambassador, getting right royally drunk at these things and then realising that Stalin, his vodka glass, which he kept doing shots of, was actually full of water, not vodka at all.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  I mean, he did exactly that at Yalta. I mean, that's, that's the hilarious thing, you know, just, just to, and, and he acted drunk, he could act drunk as well. But when it came to memorising everything that had been said or getting his way, it's how he did it. You know, I did, I sort of threw this in as a line that the man who compiled his albums also ends up being put to death. I'm talking about Nikolai Yezov. And let's just stay with that for one second because he was the head of the secret police. He was, you know, one of the architects of the, the great terror as the pinnacle of the NKVD, the very feared NKVD. And Stalin just suddenly decides, in some kind of paranoid haze, after Yezov has helped him put thousands of people to death, that he has to go.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  And his replacement is a name that people probably will be familiar with. He's a Georgian and his name is Lovrenty Beria, who was so memorably played by Simon Russell Beale in The Death of Stalin. And this man, Giles, I mean, is a criminal. I mean, he is a rapist, he's a personal brute. I mean, he enjoys seeing the life leak out of somebody's eyes.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  He was one of the most monstrous henchmen of this entire regime, Beria. He had total control over everyone and everything. He, as you say, he was said to have raped numerous young women and then killed them. And in fact, when, many years later, I think it was in the seventies or eighties, his personal residence became the Italian Embassy in Moscow and they dug up the garden to do some, install some new drains and everything, and they came across dozens and dozens of skeletons of young women, almost certainly women that Beria had raped and then, and then killed. But, and you also mentioned Yezhov, who was head of the, the feared NKVD before Beria, and indeed before Yezhov, the Yagoda, who was head of the NKVD, both of them ended

• 30:59Speaker 04

  up being executed. This is a classic case of the sort of revolutionary, let revolution swallowing its own. So they, they end up in a, being, you know, being disposed of by Stalin and the monstrous Beria, who, who will then be head of this horrific, you know, police state, the, the NKVD throughout the next few years and indeed throughout the Second World War, where it's going to be, have a very busy job and Beria, yeah, a monstrous, bloodstained criminal.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  So we're heading, as you just said, towards the Second World War now. And tell us about the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, which is signed in 1939, the summer.

• 31:42Speaker 04

  In 1939, the two great powers, the two great autocratic powers of Europe, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, sworn enemies, stunned the world by announcing that they've entered into a pact together, a pact of friendship. This really comes as a, as a bolt from the blue, it shocks absolutely everyone. And it is to have profound and dire consequences because this pact enables Poland to be divided into two separate parts. Nazi Germany will invade the western part of Poland and the Soviet Union will swallow the eastern part of Poland. This, of course, is where Great Britain enters the war.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  This is really the beginning of the Second World War and it is started by this pact signed by Joachim von Ribbentrop and his opposite number Molotov in Moscow in 1939.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  And Stalin is very pleased with this, isn't he? He, he, he thinks this is a great masterstroke of diplomacy.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  Stalin is pleased with it and, and many people would say, well, it was a masterpiece of diplomacy because both dictators got what they wanted. It should be said, and this is a sort of footnote to history, but I love these little footnotes because they sometimes shed much light on things, that the British themselves had sent an emissary to Moscow to try and negotiate a deal with Stalin, similar to the Nazi Soviet Pact. So they were hoping to get in there first and sign some sort of alliance with Stalin. Unfortunately, listen to the man that they sent as their emissary. He was called, and I've had to write it down, Sir Reginald Alma Ranfurnly Plunkett Ern Earl Drax. He has, he has a quadruple-

• 33:23Speaker 02

  We don't have nearly enough of these people today.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  He has a quadruple-barreled surname. And when Stalin was told who the British had sent to negotiate, he simply said, they cannot be serious. And, and so poor old, poor old Sir Reginald arrived in the capital, found that he was not taken seriously. And he was still in Moscow when it was announced that actually Stalin had signed his pact with von Ribbentrop and so the Nazi Soviet deal was a done deal.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Oh, although, although can I just say, I mean, this is the tale of two bastards really, because they both think they're getting the better of each other and that they're going to, you know, shiv each other in the showers later. Because doesn't Stalin say Hitler thinks he's tricking us, but I think we've got the better of him? You know, that this is not something that is, you know, either of them has signed in amity. They both reckon that they're doing deals with people who are less than them and who they will ultimately betray.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  That's absolutely right. This is the ultimate betrayal pact, in fact. It, it has far reaching consequences, of course, because one of the parts of the deal is that the Soviet Union is going to supply huge numbers of, huge amounts of raw materials to Nazi Germany, which will help Hitler consolidate and, and build the, the Nazi war machine. So, yeah, it's profound consequences for both Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, for Europe and for the world. This really fires the gun that will start the, the Second World War.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Stalin uses the breathing space created by the pact to go after the Baltic States, doesn't he?

• 34:54Speaker 04

  He does, yeah. He's going to swallow as much territory as possible. As I said, he's moved his Red Army into Poland, bringing with it a wave of appalling terror, executions, assassinations, liquidating any sort of intellectual in Poland. Then he moves into the Baltic States, then he makes his move on Finland. This is Stalin grabbing as much territory as he can while he's got the opportunity.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  And then in the early hours of the 22nd of June, 1941, Giles, you have 3 million German troops crossing into Soviet territory. It's known as Operation Barbarossa. Our sister podcast here at Goalhanger, We Have Ways, has done a whole series on Operation Barbarossa quite, quite recently. And, and, you know, the thing about this is that, you know, a man who is endlessly suspicious of his friends, doesn't see that Hitler is about to betray him. I mean, it's so mad. How did he not see it coming?

• 35:49Speaker 04

  This, this is absolutely extraordinary. He has 3 million Wehrmacht troops on the border. This is going to be the greatest invasion in the history of warfare. There are tanks, there are jeeps, there are enormous amounts of military hardware on the border. On top of that, Stalin is being brought intelligence from his own military, from spies inside the embassy in Tokyo, for example. Even Winston Churchill, who's got very good intelligence on what's taking place, sends his ambassador to see Stalin to say, this is about to happen, you're about to be invaded. Stalin didn't want to believe it. He said Hitler will not betray the Nazi Soviet Pact. And even when in the early hours of the 22nd of June, 1941, when the first Germans start

• 36:33Speaker 04

  to cross the frontier, several of those Germans defect and tell us, and warn the Soviets what's taking place, this is immediately sent back to Moscow, to the Kremlin, to Joseph Stalin. He says, I want those deserters rounded up and shot. He doesn't believe what they're saying. So this is actually, causes a great crisis on the front line because this enables the, the Wehrmacht, the German army, to roll across the front frontier almost uncontested.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a, there's a really lovely, memorable line from Khrushchev decades later, when asked about this, he said, yeah, well, everyone knew, everyone knew what Hitler was going to do. The, the sparrows were chirping about it at every crossroad. So this is like just a really bonkers time in Stalin's already bonkers regime.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  And Beria is encouraging Stalin in his belief, isn't he? He's, he's, he's telling Stalin how wise he is not to believe these rumours that, that Hitler's got an invasion planned.

• 37:34Speaker 04

  That's right. And, and even as the armies are, you know, moving towards Minsk, Stalin still does not believe. He says, this might be just a, a little incursion or something like that. You know, I'm sure Hitler didn't order this at all. And what happens, which is quite extraordinary, when Stalin finally realises that this is a massive invasion, he has almost some sort of complete breakdown. He retires to his dacha in the countryside. He refuses to see anyone. He refuses to take any phone calls. And for three or four days, he is on his own and just denies any responsibility for the running of state. He does absolutely nothing. He won't see anyone.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  And it's all, almost like he's abnegating all responsibility for what's taking place, you know, on the frontiers of the Soviet Union.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so, you know, within days, you've got a sort of seemingly a collapse of, of, of the army, what is left of the army after his, his purges. And you've got Stalin disappearing in this nervous breakdown that you've just described. I mean, I, I'm thinking that this is kind of music to ears in London because if you've got these two big beasts fighting each other, that's two fronts for Hitler.

• 38:46Speaker 04

  Of course, this is going to have profound consequences for Great Britain. Churchill is woken on the morning of Sunday, the 22nd of June, by his personal secretary and told of this invasion. And for Churchill, this is perhaps one of the greatest moments of his life because he knows now that, that Hitler is fighting a war on two fronts. It is very, very good news. The first thing he does, even though it's like 5.30 in the morning, is he pulls out a cigar from his case and lights it in celebration of the news he's just been told. He actually has Antony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, staying at Chekens as well that weekend. And he goes around in his dressing gown to Antony Eden's bedroom, tells him the news and offers him a cigar as well.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  And Antony Eden demurs and said, no, I can't possibly smoke at this time in the morning. But this is a great moment for Great Britain because there is now the glimmer of hope that actually Hitler has overreached himself and that the Second World War is now at a turning point.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  So one of the things that happens during Barbarossa is that among the many, many troops that are rounded up and captured by the very fast advancing Wehrmacht, with these extraordinary tank regiments shooting through great acreages of Russia, is the son of Stalin, Yakov, from his first marriage, barely knew his father and is now in the army. He is captured. What happens to him, Giles?

• 40:12Speaker 04

  Well, you see Stalin has issued this order, you know, not one step back. And so anyone who is captured or surrenders, Stalin thinks, well, they simply deserve to be shot. It is greatly unfortunate that Yakov is indeed captured by the Germans and put into a prison of war camp. And there are sort of stories behind the scenes, there are attempts to negotiate Yakov's release. But Stalin simply says, no, I don't, I'm not doing any deal, you know, he might be my son, but he's got captured tough, you know. And extraordinary on the part of Stalin, simply almost disown his son because he's been dishonorable enough to get captured by the Wehrmacht.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  And he's still killing senior members of his army as well. There's, you know, a guy called General Pavlov, who saw the threat from the Nazis, who told his higher commands that, actually, you know, the Germans are coming for us, can I fight them back? And he's told, no, stand down, Hitler would never do this to Stalin. He's executed as well. So in the next episode, Giles, we're going to be joined by the wonderful Anthony Beaver, who is going to talk us through what the impact of having no senior commanders left has on Stalingrad, the great siege of Stalingrad. So let's leave this episode, Giles, with the Germans can see the gilded domes of Moscow, they are that close to taking the capital.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  They are literally just outside the capital, they're waiting to move in, it's absolute panic inside Moscow. Stalin transfers the government way to the east to the Urals, where they're going to be safe from bombing raids by the Luftwaffe. The entire diplomatic community is moved to a place called Kobychev, again, way to the east. The population of the city is also moved out. It is widely believed that the German army, the Wehrmacht, is about to seize control of Moscow. Only Stalin, in fact, remains in the Kremlin. He decides that he's going to stay there. The only thing that Hitler has not considered, as Napoleon did not consider before him, is that

• 42:21Speaker 04

  winter in the Russia is extremely cold, and the snow and the ice is about to descend on Moscow.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Winter is coming.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Winter is coming.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  If you want to hear the next episode right now and ad free, just head over to empirepoduk.com, empirepoduk.com. You can become a member and you get all of these series on demand. Giles, it's been absolutely fabulous having you. Thank you. You're a great storyteller and it is just a horrifyingly great story to tell. Thank you very much indeed.

• 42:52Speaker 04

  Well, thank you for having me on once again. Great pleasure.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arndt.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  And goodbye from me, William Dorrumpel.

• 43:08Speaker 03

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