A cartoon that appeared in London’s
Evening Standard
in September 1939 shows Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin tipping their
hats and bowing to each other. “The scum of the Earth, I believe?” says
Hitler. “The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?” Stalin replies.
A month earlier, the two leaders had concluded a pact promising not to
interfere in each other’s aggressive military campaigns and devised a
secret plan to divvy up the lands between their countries. Moorhouse
captures the essence of the wretched deal better than anyone has before.
As they ripped Europe apart, Berlin and Moscow danced an awkward
ballet, straining to preserve their compact while mutual mistrust
mounted and their armies deported large segments of the local
populations in captured territories. Moorhouse concludes by tracing with
new detail the stages by which Hitler ultimately decided to invade the
Soviet Union and, on the other side, Stalin’s bewildered efforts to both
deny and prepare for the double-cross.
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