Churchill realized what Hitler was before anyone else did, but Stalin was a close second. It was because he realized that Hitler was a madman bent on war that he signed the Non-Aggression Pact with Germany.
The western allies thought Hitler’s aggression could be deterred by making a 3-way alliance that included the USSR. But their diplomatic overtures to Stalin were clumsy at best, and more like farcical. Stalin quickly realized that the western allied strategy to defeat Hitler involved the expenditure of copious amounts of Russian blood, while the allies would sit it out safely behind the Maginot Line. Stalin wanted none of that. In addition, he knew full well that his army would not be ready for war until 1942 or 1943, since he had tripled its size while simultaneously decapitating it by killing off most of the officers. In addition, Stalin gambled that Hitler and the western alliance would bleed each other to exhaustion in a war like World War 1, and allow him to “clean up” in Europe at little cost. Not a bad perception of reality, and a very good strategy in the circumstances.
But reality bites; France folded like a house of cards and Stalin wound up with an angry Hitler at the height of his power, standing on his door step a year before he was ready. Stalin’s reaction was not at all in keeping with his character; he went into denial. It seemed that Joseph Stalin, the man who trusted nobody, wound up trusting the one man nobody should have trusted in Adolph Hitler. So he refused to hear the warnings that the attack was imminent, while attempting a crash effort to get his army ready.
The man who was killed for telling Stalin the truth was Ivan Proskurov, an air force general who was head of Soviet military intelligence. He was outspoken about a great many things, the German preparations for invasion only being one of them. Another was done in a general staff meeting when he told Stalin that the reason for the high incidence of training accidents was the “flying coffins” that were being provided by Soviet industry to the air force. Stalin told him “that was a mistake.” Proskurov was “purged” with extreme prejudice.
The irony of all of this is that Stalin’s strategy guaranteed the one outcome he attempted to avoid. Hitler was defeated at the cost of copious amounts of Russian blood and the destruction of much of what Stalin had built during his five year plans. But Stalin wound up with half a loaf after all; he didn’t clean up in Europe, but he did wind up with the eastern half.
A very good book on this is David Murphy’s “What Stalin Knew.”
And as for Judy Garland’s film, looking like an adult at the end of it; was she popping pills like an adult then, too?
Yep. MGM was providing her with amphetamines for weight control and sleeping pills to counter-act the uppers for years. She will turn 21 on June 22, 1943, so it seems her child-star years are being artificially prolonged.
Mission To Moscow is literally repellent - I’ve never been able to sit all the way through it. Davies was a vile character.
“If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” Winston Churchill