Free After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe by Michael Jones

– America’s Lend-Lease programme (the economic programme through which the United States provided military aid to the Allies) being particularly valuable. Although the Red Army bore the brunt of the fighting, after D-Day the increasing economic aid and military support from the West brought the Allies closer together. As a result, the Big Three conference at Yalta in February 1945 was more outwardly harmonious than that of Teheran in November 1943 – the first time Britain, America and Russia had all met.
    As Stalin had fought for survival, so he realised that communist ideology alone would not save his state. Astutely he had broadened the scope of the war, appealing to Russian patriotism and his people’s love of their Motherland. He heralded this in his speech to the nation on Red Square, on 7 November 1941, and again in his ‘Not a Step Back!’ order on 28 July 1942. Although the Bolshevik revolution derided the Tsarist history that had preceded it, now military orders and medals evoking Russia’s heroes of the past – Alexander Nevsky, Mikhail Kutuzov, men who had repelled foreign invaders – were revived. However, Stalin was never willing to relinquish any shred of control, and with the military crisis past and Red Army soldiers now fighting in eastern Europe, communist ideology was fully restored and security stepped up. Stalin feared his soldiers experiencing life outside the Soviet Union.
    From his perspective, this was reasonable: a different world was opening up for Soviet troops, most of whom had never before travelled beyond their own country. Lieutenant Boris Martschenko wrote to his wife on May Day that he was inspired by the beauty of Vienna:
I spent yesterday visiting the city. I drove around it, and saw a lot, but much has still not sunk in yet. This is not just a city – it is an architectural fantasy. Budapest is a dirt-heap compared to Vienna.
I visited the Opera House. The back of it had burned down – but it remains a remarkable building. Who would have thought that I ever would have had a chance to see it. And, it is amusing to say, Vienna now resembles one of our own cities in holiday mood! From the windows of the houses red flags can be seen, hanging everywhere!
The civilians are cautious – they wait until they are in groups of 5–10 people before they approach us. But when they find I can speak some German, and make myself understood in conversation with them, they vie with each other in helpfulness!
    As Red Army soldiers were sharing their impressions of life outside Russia, Westerners were trying to make sense of the riddle of the Soviet Union. Stalin the man had impressed many Western observers at the Big Three conferences at Teheran and Yalta. On occasions he could be personable and charming and he was a strong and effective negotiator – always on top of his brief. Roosevelt had struck up a measure of empathy with Stalin and there was grudging yet real respect between the Soviet leader and Churchill. Yet fundamentally these two men did not trust each other.
    Churchill understood the ruthlessness of the Bolshevik state – and when Stalin made an apparent joke at the Teheran Conference about the need to purge the German officer corps after the end of the war, a comment that Roosevelt found innocuous, Churchill – with the massacre of Polish army officers at Katyn in his mind – left the room. Hugh Lunghi, a translator for Churchill at Teheran and Yalta, said the British prime minister was always aware of the secrecy of the Soviet state and its cruelty to those who stood in its way. ‘Whereas Hitler killed by categories,’ Lunghi remarked, ‘Stalin despatched by numbers.’ Stalin’s decision to halt his armies outside Warsaw in August 1944 – which allowed the Germans to crush the Polish resistance (opposed to Stalin’s puppet regime) – was seen by the British as clear evidence of both. ‘We were shocked by his callous refusal to let Allied planes use Soviet air bases