Stalin's War - a conversation between the author and Big Serge. [Long but excellent read]

I have something very different and very exciting today, which I hope you will enjoy. Dr. Sean McMeekin is a name that readers may recognize from his regular appearance in my recommended reading segments at the ends of our regular history pieces. Dr McMeekin is a prolific author of what I like to call “muscular history”, particular the wars and revolutions of the early 20th Century. A Professor of European History and Culture at Bard College, Dr. McMeekin is the author, among other works, of The Russian Origins of the First World War, July 1914: Countdown to War, Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, The Russian Revolution: A New History, Stalin’s War, and To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. Some historians are fine scholars but rather dry writers, and some people are good writers and shoddy scholars, but I have always enjoyed the McMeekin corpus because it is muscular, interesting history which is actually enjoyable to read, with clear and direct prose.

In any case, a few weeks ago I reached out to Dr. McMeekin inquiring if he would be willing to have a conversation with me about his books, his approach to writing, and more generally about the World Wars. To my delight, he not only obliged but gave lengthy answers, which I hope you will enjoy as much as I did.

History buffs will love this deep dive into the intricracies of historical research and thoughtful commentary on the motivations of leaders and nation-states, that go far beyond the cheap and superficial prejudices that prevail in media today.

I think the book's author is exactly right, for example, in saying "Some also called me Russophobic, which is understandable, though I think it misses the point. To my mind, subjecting Russian strategic thinking, wartime diplomacy and maneuvering to the same scrutiny as those routinely applied to Germany and the other Powers is taking the country seriously on its own terms..." Virtually everything we read today about WWII in Europe for example revolves around "What was Hitler planning and thinking?" with almost nothing devoted to the strategies and goals of other powers and leaders, as if they were just passive props and background scenery.

There are a lot of great quotes I could pick from in here, but I'll offer this one as a teaser of how the events of WWII continue to plague us today:

"The passage of the Lend-Lease Act by Congress in March 1941, with its open-ended “good faith” clause allowing the President to commandeer American agricultural and industrial production on behalf of whatever foreign governments he chose to (in the end 36 of them!), basically killed off the constitutional order when it came to U.S. foreign policy. It is no accident that Congress has not declared war according to proper constitutional procedure since the winter of 1941-42. Maybe the U.S. was always fated to become a global power or “empire” of some kind, but the policies of the Roosevelt administration during the Second World War greatly accelerated the process and deprived Americans of any say in the matter, even through their elected representatives."

"Want to read something that will make your blood boil? Sean McMeekin’s account of how the Roosevelt administration sold out our world to the forces of global communism embodied by Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union will do just that. McMeekin brings the receipts as he describes the utter prostration of administration officials before their Soviet handlers, as America (and to a lesser extent, Britain) mortgaged their future in the face of constant Soviet lies and double-dealing.

This abject submission to Soviet needs went far beyond simply supplying mountains of material for free:Soviet malfeasance and malign influence all over the periphery of the Soviet empire were not only ignored but positively abetted by Western policy, plunging millions of people into communist misery for decades after the war. The shameful treatment of Serbian, Chinese, Yugoslavian, Polish, and Baltic patriots, fighting basically alone against first nazism and then communism, is a black stain on American honor, particularly when paired with our abject appeasement of Stalin and his murderous regime. American and British leadership knowingly looked the other way as Soviet atrocity piled on top of atrocity and the body count of murders and executions of civilians and captured soldiers reached the millions. It is a disgusting display of moral cowardice and should permanently blacken Roosevelt’s (and to a much lesser extent, as his position to influence events was significantly weaker, Churchill’s) reputation in history."

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