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. The Second World War was not Hitler's war it was Stalin's war.ĭrawing 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. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. 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. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia-and he was certainly dead before it ended. World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events.
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