Sean McMeekin

In Stalin’s War, distinguished historian Sean McMeekin has produced a decidedly revisionist history of World War II. He argues convincingly that Stalin wanted WWII at least as much as Hitler did. Moreover, Stalin was far more successful than Hitler was in that war, hence, the title of the book.

McMeekin analyzes the war from Stalin’s perspective. The Soviet Union was the world’s first communist country and it considered all capitalist countries as enemies. A primary goal of Russian show more diplomacy was to infiltrate capitalist governments with the goal of providing support Russia’s interests and to foment animosity among capitalist states. There were literally hundreds of Russian paid agents in the Roosevelt administration. Indeed, Harry Hopkins, FDR’s most trusted advisor, although not directly paid by the U.S.S.R., was certainly what Lenin would call a “useful idiot.”

Importantly, before World War II, Stalin encountered the same risk of a two-front war that Germany had in 1914. In 1938, not only were the Germans aggressive to his west, but Japan was busily grabbing large chunks of China to his east. In fact, the Japanese Army in Manchuko (today’s Manchuria) was fighting several hundred thousand soldiers of the Red Army and threatening Vladivostok, Russia’s only port on the Pacific. Still, Germany posed a greater threat, being much closer to the bulk of Russia’s population.

To secure his eastern flank, Stalin executed a non-aggression pact that granted terms very favorable to Japan. In fact, he honored that agreement throughout the coming world war. One aspect of that treaty affected American airmen who had attacked Japan and had to bail out or crash-land in Russia to avoid capture by the Japanese. Russia treated them as hostile prisoners of war even though they were fighting for a country that was supplying the Russians with vital supplies. On the other hand, American merchant marine seamen fared much better — the Japanese navy did not attack American commercial ships bound for Vladivostok, which allowed safe passage for enormous amounts of war materiel to be supplied for Russia’s war with Germany.

Stalin did not feel not fully prepared for war with Germany despite the fact that the principal thrust of the Soviet Union’s Five Year Plans of the 1930s was the “mass manufacture of modern military hardware.” Consequently, he jumped at the chance of a non-aggression pact with Germany, which resulted in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. During the negotiations for the pact, Stalin suggested to Hitler the partition of Poland.

Hitler attacked Poland in September 1939 and quickly conquered the western half of the country. Stalin waited only a few days after Hitler’s invasion to launch his own invasion of Poland which ended up with the Russians controlling more of Poland that Germany did.

Stalin’s fondest hope was that Germany would star a war with France and England, and that Russia could watch from the sidelines as the capitalists mauled each other. Russia would then find itself the dominant power in Europe without having to expend blood or treasure. Unfortunately for him, Germany did start such a war, but won it so quickly and at such low cost that the Soviet Union found itself in great peril from Hitler.

After the successful attack on Poland, Hitler turned west and attacked and occupied France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway. Meanwhile, the Russians quickly conquered Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Moldavia. The Russians also tried to take Finland, but met effective and heroic resistance and had to settle for a small slice of the southeastern part of the country. ]

The stage was now set for Germany’s massive invasion of Russia. Here McMeekin tells a story quite different from what has come down from most western historians. The Russians may have been surprised by the timing of the attack, but they had been preparing for it for years. Contrary to popular opinion, the Germans did not have an advantage in tanks and artillery — the Russians had far more. Moreover, they greatly outnumbered the invaders.

McMeekin argues that the Russians maintained its advantage in armor and number of soldiers throughout the war, even in the early stages when they were clearly losing. In fact, the Germans were not as thoroughly mechanized as many western historians described — they relied on millions of horses rather than trucks for much movement of materiel. Ultimately, the Russians were able to out-maneuver and surround the Germans because they had enormous supplies of trucks and fighter planes that had been furnished at no charge by the United States.

Another myth that McMeekin counters is that the Germans had the vast majority of their troops on the Eastern Front. In fact, once Hitler had redeployed many divisions to the west for the famed Battle of the Bulge, there were more German soldiers in France and Italy than there were on the Eastern Front.

McMeekin is highly critical of Roosevelt and, to a lesser extent, Churchill regarding their dealings with Stalin. If the point of the war was to save Poland and Eastern Europe from foreign subjugation, then the war was an abysmal failure for the West. Churchill gets particularly low marks for abandoning Mikhailovich and the Chetniks in Yugoslavia so that Tito’s Communists could prevail there. The end of the war found Stalin in charge of all of Eastern Europe.

McMeekin argues that “the most lasting consequence of Stalin’s victories in 1945 was the impetus they had given to Communist expansion in Asia, above all in China.” Russia did not enter the war against Japan until the final weeks when the results were clear. However, Stalin was able to position many divisions in East Asia. From there, they could supply Mao’s communist forces with tanks, artillery, and other materiel. At the same time, the western powers soured on Chiang Kai-shek (the Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary and military leader who served as the leader of the Mainland Republic of China from 1928 until 1949, and then in Taiwan) and ceased helping him against Mao. McMeekin says, “the mystery is not that Mao won the Chinese Civil War, but that it took him three more years to do so.”

McMeekin concludes with several acerbic observations:

“By objective measures of territory conquered and war booty seized, Stalin was the victor in both Europe an Asia, and no one else came close.”

“The notion that a great American victory was achieved in 1945 is hard to square with the strategic reality of the Cold War, which required a gargantuan expenditure over decades merely to hold the line at the Fulda Gap before the USSR finally collapsed in 1991.”

“The ultimate price of victory was paid by the tens of millions of involuntary subjects of Stalin’s satellite regimes in Europe and Asia, including Maoist China, along with the millions of Soviet dissidents, returned Soviet POWs, and captured war prisoners who were herded into Gulag camps. . . . For subjects of his expanding slave empire, Stalin’s war did not end in 1945. Decades of oppression and new forms of terror were still to come.”

Evaluation: This is an unnerving book, beautifully written and forcefully argued.

(JAB) show less

McMeekin has argued elsewhere that World War One could rightly be thought of as the War of the Ottoman Succession, a war that lasted from 1909 to 1923. You could even argue, as McMeekin does in his concluding chapter on the pros and cons of Ottoman administration and what happened when it ended, that that war is still going on in the Middle East.

Of all the nations that inherited the remains of the Ottoman Empire, it was Turkey, in the heartland of the empire, that has had the most stable show more borders since 1923.

Edward Gibbon famously noted that we shouldn’t wonder that the Roman Empire it fell but that it lasted as long as it did. The same could be said of the Ottoman Empire. Some have put the date the irresistible rot set in as far back as 1529 when the empire failed to take Vienna. The famous remark about the empire being a “sick man” was uttered by Tsar Alexander Nicholas I to a British ambassador in 1853.

But the sick man’s greatest defense was, paradoxically, the number of his enemies. They wanted Ottoman lands and to deny them to other great powers. The two most important of those powers were Russia and England.

McMeekin’s 593-page history (with additional notes, bibliography, photos, and several very useful maps) shows how that theme played out again and again from the Turco-Russian War of 1877-1878 to Italy’s invasion of Tripoli in 1911 (a forgotten war that saw the first use of many military technologies) to Soviet Russia arming the Ottoman Empire against a Greek invasion in 1921, an invasion supported by Britain.
This history covers both combat on the battlefield (one source is, surprisingly, a Venezuelan mercenary with the Ottomans) and political intrigues. McMeekin covers the grand sweep of things with the occasional illuminating detail about personalities and small incidents. He also covers relevant events outside the empire like the intrigues of the British cabinet and Russian revolutionaries. And, of course, the turmoil of Ottoman politics – the coups, countercoups, and counter-counter coups between 1908 and 1909 – are covered.

McMeekin mentions several seldom-discussed events.

How the events of November and December 1912, specifically Serbia absorbing Albania, almost lead to the Great War nearly two years earlier.

On the question of the Armenian Genocide, goes into some of the controversies of whether it was genocide and also the motives and procedures of the war crime trails the Ottoman government held. McMeekin opts for a number between 650,000 and 700,000 for Armenian deportees dying. The number of a million Armenian dead seems unrealistic.

McMeekin goes into details as to why the Armenian National Committee’s proposal for British forces and the Armenian Legion to land in Alexandretta in July 1915 was rejected even though it was a sound strategy and would have used half the troops sent to reinforce failure at Gallipoli the next month.

Before the end of World War One, allies Germany and the Ottomans were shooting at each other because of increasing resentment of the German infidels by the Muslim population and because of the desire of both to procure the oil fields around Baku.

McMeekin particularly takes apart the myth of Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence’s major skill was self-promotion and bureaucratic in-fighting. His missions rarely achieved their objective. He lied spectacularly about Arab contributions in fighting the Ottomans, especially in the claims he made about Feisal and his Arabs taking Damascus. They, in fact, showed up two days after the British had already taken the city. But the British government was happy to go along with the story to cut France out of lands in Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula granted to them in the famous Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1916.

A major theme of McMeekin’s is, in fact, refuting the idea that the treaty created the modern Middle East. The agreements in Sykes-Picot didn’t even survive World War One. It was the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 that established the political contours of the modern Middle East.

The British cut the French out of negotiating an armistice with the Ottomans. The skillful British negotiators completely dominated the amateurish Ottoman delegates. The armistice of Mudros was signed on October 30, 1918. It amounted to a dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire which was to become a mere “rump state” in Anatolia.

But Mustafa Kemal was already taking steps to resist and had military supplies moved before he was recalled to Istanbul in November 1918.

In the negotiations at Versailles, there was support among victors and vanquished for American mandates over an Armenian homeland as well as Syria and Palestine. Wide support, that is, except among the American public and congress which, thankfully, wanted nothing to do with it.

In June 1919, the National Pact was formed by Kemal and others. It called for an army to resist the occupation by French and Greek forces, to stop demobilization of the Ottoman Army, and proclaimed that parts of the Empire with Turkish majorities were “indivisible”. The Arabs, though, could go their own way.

The Sevres Treaty coming out of Versailles in May 1920 enraged the Ottomans. Back were the “Capitulations” to foreign governments which they had finally gotten rid of during the war. They granted foreign powers control over Ottoman tax collecting and expenditures. Kemal responded by forming a new Grand National Assembly with Extraordinary Powers. On April 13, 1920, now celebrated in Turkey as National Sovereignty and Children’s Day, the capital was moved to Ankara. On March 16, 1921, Soviet Russia and “Kemalist Turkey” signed a treaty which agreed land that Turkey had taken back from the Russian Empire would remain Turkish.

The Turks lost every battle against the invading Greeks – until the last one, the historic Battle of Sakarya which occurred between August 23, 1921 and September 12, 1921. McMeekin calls it the “last real battle of the First World War”
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The thoroughly demoralized Greeks – now also dogged by European hostility regarding the many atrocities they had committed – retreated to the coast. There the great disaster of the burning of Smyrna occurred on September 15, 1922.

On November 1, 1922, the Ottoman Empire was done. The sultanate was abolished. (The caliphate would last until March 1924.)

The latter days of the Ottoman Empire are a remarkable story of constant impending disaster, diplomatic intrigue, sudden reversals of fortune, atrocities and bloodshed, and, ultimately, the story of Turkish resilience which carved, from seeming defeat, its own homeland.

Definitely recommended for all those with an interest in World War One or the Ottomans. show less

When I think of World War I, I mostly think of the Western Front and it's rare to encounter much about either the Eastern Front or the subject of this book: the numerous battles that centered around the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. McMeekin presents an Ottoman Empire that's weak, but not quite the "Sick Man" of Europe it was so widely believed to be. Russia also comes across stronger than the traditional narrative of World War I present - Russia was widely gaining ground against the show more Ottomans until their own internal revolutionary politics cause the advance to halt. Britain started off their Gallipoli campaign on the wrong foot - underestimating Ottoman strength and the support Germany was providing. While Britain and France ended with new territories, this more due to Ottoman collapse than military aptitude. An interesting read and on a topic that deserves more attention. show less

The thesis of this book is that Imperial Russia, using the criteria of Fritz Fischer’s famous Griff nach der Weltmacht aka Germany’s Aims in the First World War) bears as much responsibility for starting World War One as Imperial Germany.

McMeekin, using research into Turkish, Russian, French, German, and English archives, shows that Russia was anxious for war to pursue two objectives: the seizure of Constantinople and Persian lands on the other side of the Caucuses.

Russia consistently show more pursued those aims to the detriment of its allies almost to the end. The only time it abandoned them, during the post-Revolution Kerensky government, was probably the one time it should have continued them to help prevent a Bolshevik take over.
The reason for the long-term Russian goal of seizing Constantinople wasn’t just a symbolic significance as indicated by the names sometimes used for that city: the Second Rome or Tsargrad. Constantinople and the Bosporus Straits were key choke points that could be used to limit Russia’s trade. Roughly half of it passed through the area. The vulnerability it represented was brought home when Russia lost access to them briefly in 1912 during the Italian-Turkish War.

The Sick Man of Europe was, of course, already on the ropes by 1914. McMeekin even goes so far, with justification, to say that we could rightly dump the name World War One in favor of the War of the Ottoman Succession which lasted from 1911 to 1923. Already in 1910, Russian planners were developing plans to seize Constantinople, and they included an amphibious landing.

As to the standard story of Russia entering the war because of alliances with Serbia, McMeekin shows the Russians were perfectly willing to go against the Serbs when Russian interests were at stake. Protecting Serbia was an excuse. There is evidence, despite denials, that Russian knew in advance of the plot to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand. (McMeekin frequently points out contradictions between Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov said in his memoirs and actual archival records.)

That Russian mobilization for the war was unexpectedly quick was because Russia had already decided to go to war before July 24, 1914, possibly towards the beginning of the month.

The Russian defeat at Tannenberg was not falling on its sword for France. In its alliance with France, Russia explicitly claimed the right to not concentrate its forces to repel a German attack. It is true Russia met its commitments in invading East Prussia – but it used only a third of its military resources in the European theatre to do that. Throughout most of the Russians used most of the forces for was taking on the Austro-Hungarians in Galicia. Russia had the whip hand over its allies. It could always threaten a separate piece with Germany.

Very early in the war, Russia rejected a peace offer with the Ottoman Empire. That would have freed up forces for use against Germany. But Russia had no plans to remove troops from the Caucuses. They were to be used to move on Constantinople.

Gallipoli is a prime example of the Russian Empire using its political leverage. Russian begin requesting an invasion of the Dardanelles in November 1914. Not that they would contribute any forces though they had estimated about 300,000 men would be required to take Constantinople. The only thing definitely conceded by the Russians is they would stop violating British territory in Persia to pursue Turkish troops. On February 24, 1915, the Russians did concede to send a corps to assist with British and French operations. Ultimately, though, the only thing Russia did to assist the invasion was some insignificant naval bombardments on the Black Sea coast on April 25, 1915.

In regards to the Armenian Genocide, McMeekin sees Russian aid and incitement of the Kurdish and Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire– before the war and during it – as a typical example of following its own interests and letting allies take the hit for Russian goals.

Russia did the same in the Persian theatre of its war with the Turks. To gain Russian assistance, British policy went from no Russian intervention in Persia to begging for it. But, even after they entered Persia, they didn’t bother to relieve the siege of the British at Kut though they had forces only 150 miles away. While their assistance was requested in January 1916, they didn’t move for three months. On April 25, 1916, they were only a five-day march from Kut, but the British surrendered on April 29, 1916.

Kerensky’s government really did fall on its sword to protect its war allies. McMeekin suggests that, instead of the disastrous Galicia Offensive of 1917, the loyalty of the troops might have held with another push on Constantinople. Future White Commander Kolchak maintained the loyalty of his troops by advocating that.

This is an excellent book at the complicated politics proceeding the war, Russia’s goals and concerns, as well as how those affected the course of the war. McMeekin’s prose is clear and very readable with frequent attention called to how facts contradict later histories and memoirs. Even in its kindle edition, which I read, the maps are plentiful and useful. There’s also a very good index and some photos of the principals involved.

It stands as a needed revision to dominant accounts of the war and its origins. show less