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Saving Stalin: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Cost of Allied Victory in Europe
In his trademark character-rich narrative style, John Kelly tells the story of how the relationship among Allied leaders forged victory in World War II--and created a new and dangerous post-war world.
In the summer of 1941, Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt's trusted advisor, arrived in Moscow to assess whether the US should send aid to Russia as it had to Britain. And unofficially he was there to determine whether Josef Stalin--the man who had starved four million Ukrainians to death in the early 1930s, another million in the purges of the late 1930s, and a further million in the labor camps of the Gulag--was worth saving. Hopkins sensed that saving Stalin was going to be a treacherous business.
In this powerful narrative, author John Kelly chronicles the turbulent wartime relationship between Britain, America, and the Soviet Union with a unique focus on unknown and unexplored aspects of the story, including how Britain and America employed the promise of a second front in France to restrain Soviet territorial ambitions and how the Soviets, in their turn, used threats of a separate peace with Germany to extract concessions from the western allies. Kelly paints a vivid picture of how the war impacted the relationship between the leaders and war managers among the Allies. In Saving Stalin, for the first time, the war becomes a major character, co-equal with the book's three other major characters: Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill.
In the summer of 1941, Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt's trusted advisor, arrived in Moscow to assess whether the US should send aid to Russia as it had to Britain. And unofficially he was there to determine whether Josef Stalin--the man who had starved four million Ukrainians to death in the early 1930s, another million in the purges of the late 1930s, and a further million in the labor camps of the Gulag--was worth saving. Hopkins sensed that saving Stalin was going to be a treacherous business.
In this powerful narrative, author John Kelly chronicles the turbulent wartime relationship between Britain, America, and the Soviet Union with a unique focus on unknown and unexplored aspects of the story, including how Britain and America employed the promise of a second front in France to restrain Soviet territorial ambitions and how the Soviets, in their turn, used threats of a separate peace with Germany to extract concessions from the western allies. Kelly paints a vivid picture of how the war impacted the relationship between the leaders and war managers among the Allies. In Saving Stalin, for the first time, the war becomes a major character, co-equal with the book's three other major characters: Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill.
384 pages, Hardcover
Published October 6, 2020
14 people are currently reading
196 people want to read
About the author
John Kelly
5 books114 followersJohn Kelly specializes in narrative history. He is the author of The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People; The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death; The Most Devastating Plague of all Time; Three on the Edge; and more. Kelly lives in New York City and Sandisfield, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 23, 2020
In this fantastically in-depth and detailed historical account, author John Kelly gives reader's the background to the infamous actions and stories that are more commonly told. I was impressed by this book. It is easy to read and interesting and reveals details about Roosevelt and Churchill's relationships with Stalin that you do not see in most popular history books about the era.
This book is long enough to make a good weekend reading project but isn't bogged down by unnecessary details. There are enough moments of levity, thanks to the author, to make the serious matter of this book more enjoyable than one expects. This would be a good choice for history students embarking upon their quest to understand the micro-relations between the world powers of WWII.
Overall, I found that this book was both educational and entertaining and I would certainly recommend it to other readers.
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
This book is long enough to make a good weekend reading project but isn't bogged down by unnecessary details. There are enough moments of levity, thanks to the author, to make the serious matter of this book more enjoyable than one expects. This would be a good choice for history students embarking upon their quest to understand the micro-relations between the world powers of WWII.
Overall, I found that this book was both educational and entertaining and I would certainly recommend it to other readers.
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
June 29, 2021
The author took a not only good but important idea for a book and didn't do it quite as aggressively as it ought to have, in my view.
In particular, the thesis is correct: that the Second World War essentially amounted to the United States bailing out Soviet communism through Lend-Lease.
However, I don't think even the author himself realizes how fundamental his own thesis is: it is probably the number one point that needs to be made when addressing the sacred cow and myth that the Second World War was "the Good War." In fact, that conflict was the evilest war in history, and the Allies were just as bad as the Axis -- worse actually. Not to mention it was completely avoidable.
The evils it unleashed were far greater than the evils we are told today -- falsely, it turns out -- it was supposedly necessary to prevent: the Soviets could barely even conquer Finland before FDR saved Stalinism through the massive financial aid of Lend-Lease. By the end of the war, American taxpayers had been forced to pay the bill for Joseph Stalin's new empire, a man more evil than Hitler. Not only that, this allowed communism to spread far beyond the U.S.S.R. -- it also made possible Mao's victory in China, the dictator who subsequently would become history's worst mass murderer in absolute numbers (70 million, more than Hitler and Stalin combined). Not to mention there would have been no Cold War if Hitler and Stalin had been allowed to fight eachother off. But since there was a Cold War, this gave the U.S. government an "excuse" to murder more foreigners in the proceeding decades.
I would also note that Joseph Stalin was the only utimate beneficiary of the Second World War. Not America, not Britain, not the Germans, Jews, or Eastern European slavs -- not even Russia as a whole. Just Stalin. Everyone else paid dearly for it.
(Explaining why Allied war crimes were not necessary to prevent the vast majority of what happened under Hitler requires going far too off topic for this review, only to say for now that the Polish War Guarantee, not Munich, was the great blunder of the British that caused things to spiral out of control. See Pat Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War for more details.)
Still, even in this less aggressive form, this book covers a feature of the Second World War that is not emphasized enough, so it ought to be a major part of one's reading list of books on the conflict.
In particular, the thesis is correct: that the Second World War essentially amounted to the United States bailing out Soviet communism through Lend-Lease.
However, I don't think even the author himself realizes how fundamental his own thesis is: it is probably the number one point that needs to be made when addressing the sacred cow and myth that the Second World War was "the Good War." In fact, that conflict was the evilest war in history, and the Allies were just as bad as the Axis -- worse actually. Not to mention it was completely avoidable.
The evils it unleashed were far greater than the evils we are told today -- falsely, it turns out -- it was supposedly necessary to prevent: the Soviets could barely even conquer Finland before FDR saved Stalinism through the massive financial aid of Lend-Lease. By the end of the war, American taxpayers had been forced to pay the bill for Joseph Stalin's new empire, a man more evil than Hitler. Not only that, this allowed communism to spread far beyond the U.S.S.R. -- it also made possible Mao's victory in China, the dictator who subsequently would become history's worst mass murderer in absolute numbers (70 million, more than Hitler and Stalin combined). Not to mention there would have been no Cold War if Hitler and Stalin had been allowed to fight eachother off. But since there was a Cold War, this gave the U.S. government an "excuse" to murder more foreigners in the proceeding decades.
I would also note that Joseph Stalin was the only utimate beneficiary of the Second World War. Not America, not Britain, not the Germans, Jews, or Eastern European slavs -- not even Russia as a whole. Just Stalin. Everyone else paid dearly for it.
(Explaining why Allied war crimes were not necessary to prevent the vast majority of what happened under Hitler requires going far too off topic for this review, only to say for now that the Polish War Guarantee, not Munich, was the great blunder of the British that caused things to spiral out of control. See Pat Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War for more details.)
Still, even in this less aggressive form, this book covers a feature of the Second World War that is not emphasized enough, so it ought to be a major part of one's reading list of books on the conflict.
October 23, 2023
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I've given up after reading just under half-way through.
As others have pointed out, the book is not primarily an analysis of the wartime moral/real politic calculus of Roosevelt, Churchill & Stalin as the title and marketing materials would suggest, but rather a hodgepodge of stories from June, 1941 onward. It lacks cohesion, and is riddled with factual, narative, and referential errors and contradictions, both large and small. It would be futile to catalog them all.
One source of the problem comes from Kelly being one of those historians who puts more effort into "setting the stage" and embellishing the narative than acurately relating the substance of events. The more atmospherics and details inserted, the greater the chance of introducing error, or being caught out making things up. One example; please forgive the long quote.
"After a series of goodbyes at the White House, during the late afternoon of January 14, 1942, a Boeing flying boat carrying Winston Churchill and his entourage made a slow, lazy loop in the Virginia sky and turned southward. ... Washington, Richmond, Charlottesville: the twinkling lights of a dozen Southern cities illuminated the Boeing's journey southward. The night air grew warmer, the prime minister grew sleepier, and then, just above Fort Lauderdale, the Boeing turned eastward, and in twenty minutes it landed at the Bermuda International Airport."
Put baldly, the foregoing did not happen, indeed could not have happened. Churchill did indeed fly home via Bermuda. That much is true. But the quote describes a flight to the Bahamas, not Bermuda. Kelly confused the two countries. In his desire to gild the lilly, he made up a detailed "slow, lazy loop," "twinkling lights," sleepy prime minister, flying south to Fort Lauderdale story consistent with his mistake, not the facts.
Kelly sometimes lays the atmospherics so thick that even the narative disappears. An extreme example is his version of Roosevelt's 1942 White House meeting with Molotov. This was the first in person wartime meeting between the American President and a member of the Soviet inner circle, so you'd want to know what was discussed, and what were the points of agreement or disagreement. Instead, we're told that Molotov's interpreter was Ukrainian with a thick accent, pockmarked face, and a gold tooth; that during the meeting Roosevelt seemed restless, drummed his pencil, and gazed out the window; and finally that he later said he'd never met anyone like Molotov before. That's it. Kelly says nothing about what was discussed, or what was concluded, nothing.
The remaining errors and ambiguities are all the more obvious because they fairly leap off the page to anyone reading this book for content rather than atmosphere. Kelly has a very cavalier conception of time, place, and sometimes even people. He tells us Sevastopol falls in mid July, and then immediately describes a speach by Molotov delivered "a few weeks" earlier, followed by describing another event happening "later that day." It's not until two pages later that we finally get a specific date to help anchor all the foregoing. We're told the Afrika Korps at El Alamein "was no longer the Afrika Korps of 1942" in spite of the year still being 1942. We have things like Von Kluge being introduced as commander of Army Group Center while Bock is described as commander of Army Group Center on the very next page. Chuikov arrives in Stalingrad on September 12, and arrives in Stalingrad on September 13 in the very next paragraph. Germany's 6th army begins Operation Blue with 250,000 troops and 700,400!!! tanks. The numbers given for the Soviet tanks and aircraft are no less preposterous. And so on.
Kelly repeats stories and events as if relating them for the first time. We're twice told that the Germans murdered Soviet border guards on the eve of Barbarossa, and that Soviet border wives acted heroically once the invasion began. In an extreme case, he has the Soviets tell Stalingrad's defenders to hold "at all costs," and then has them issue an "at all costs" order to the defenders "a few days later," followed by a third "at all costs" reference, all in the same paragraph.
Finally, several reviewers have noticed a curious tendency for Kelly to use incorrect words that are near homophones of the correct ones. For example, General Marshall has "chilled" rather than chiseled features.
There's a plausible explanation for all these other issues. I'm personally convinced that rather than literally write the book, Kelly dictated much (most? all?) of it, and sent it off to be transcribed. His errors, contradictions, and ambiguities are so obvious and jarring because they leap off the page, and would never be made, or at least quickly corrected/clarrified by anyone actually writing them. On the other hand, they're consistent with the less disciplined, less self critical stream of thought which comes with dictation. The repetitions, contradictions, and time, date, place, personage vagaries are all easier to commit. The evidence of what was previously said disappears into the microphone rather than trailing behind on the written page (screen). Along with that, I'm confident Kelly didn't use incorrect words out of ignorance. Rather, I'd bet money that these are transcription errors enshrined or cleaned up by spell check.
Without the errors etc., and even with the bait and switch title, this is a three star book. But the errors etc. do exist. That drops it to two stars. I dropped it to one star because I believe the total editing appears to have been little more than running the manuscript through spell/grammer check. I'd like to think that if either the editors or Kelly had actually read his manuscript, most of the obvious errors, and certainly the incorrect words, would have been corrrected or cleaned up before going to press. That they weren't shows a cynical contempt for the reader. If the author can't be bothered to read his own book, why should anyone else.
As others have pointed out, the book is not primarily an analysis of the wartime moral/real politic calculus of Roosevelt, Churchill & Stalin as the title and marketing materials would suggest, but rather a hodgepodge of stories from June, 1941 onward. It lacks cohesion, and is riddled with factual, narative, and referential errors and contradictions, both large and small. It would be futile to catalog them all.
One source of the problem comes from Kelly being one of those historians who puts more effort into "setting the stage" and embellishing the narative than acurately relating the substance of events. The more atmospherics and details inserted, the greater the chance of introducing error, or being caught out making things up. One example; please forgive the long quote.
"After a series of goodbyes at the White House, during the late afternoon of January 14, 1942, a Boeing flying boat carrying Winston Churchill and his entourage made a slow, lazy loop in the Virginia sky and turned southward. ... Washington, Richmond, Charlottesville: the twinkling lights of a dozen Southern cities illuminated the Boeing's journey southward. The night air grew warmer, the prime minister grew sleepier, and then, just above Fort Lauderdale, the Boeing turned eastward, and in twenty minutes it landed at the Bermuda International Airport."
Put baldly, the foregoing did not happen, indeed could not have happened. Churchill did indeed fly home via Bermuda. That much is true. But the quote describes a flight to the Bahamas, not Bermuda. Kelly confused the two countries. In his desire to gild the lilly, he made up a detailed "slow, lazy loop," "twinkling lights," sleepy prime minister, flying south to Fort Lauderdale story consistent with his mistake, not the facts.
Kelly sometimes lays the atmospherics so thick that even the narative disappears. An extreme example is his version of Roosevelt's 1942 White House meeting with Molotov. This was the first in person wartime meeting between the American President and a member of the Soviet inner circle, so you'd want to know what was discussed, and what were the points of agreement or disagreement. Instead, we're told that Molotov's interpreter was Ukrainian with a thick accent, pockmarked face, and a gold tooth; that during the meeting Roosevelt seemed restless, drummed his pencil, and gazed out the window; and finally that he later said he'd never met anyone like Molotov before. That's it. Kelly says nothing about what was discussed, or what was concluded, nothing.
The remaining errors and ambiguities are all the more obvious because they fairly leap off the page to anyone reading this book for content rather than atmosphere. Kelly has a very cavalier conception of time, place, and sometimes even people. He tells us Sevastopol falls in mid July, and then immediately describes a speach by Molotov delivered "a few weeks" earlier, followed by describing another event happening "later that day." It's not until two pages later that we finally get a specific date to help anchor all the foregoing. We're told the Afrika Korps at El Alamein "was no longer the Afrika Korps of 1942" in spite of the year still being 1942. We have things like Von Kluge being introduced as commander of Army Group Center while Bock is described as commander of Army Group Center on the very next page. Chuikov arrives in Stalingrad on September 12, and arrives in Stalingrad on September 13 in the very next paragraph. Germany's 6th army begins Operation Blue with 250,000 troops and 700,400!!! tanks. The numbers given for the Soviet tanks and aircraft are no less preposterous. And so on.
Kelly repeats stories and events as if relating them for the first time. We're twice told that the Germans murdered Soviet border guards on the eve of Barbarossa, and that Soviet border wives acted heroically once the invasion began. In an extreme case, he has the Soviets tell Stalingrad's defenders to hold "at all costs," and then has them issue an "at all costs" order to the defenders "a few days later," followed by a third "at all costs" reference, all in the same paragraph.
Finally, several reviewers have noticed a curious tendency for Kelly to use incorrect words that are near homophones of the correct ones. For example, General Marshall has "chilled" rather than chiseled features.
There's a plausible explanation for all these other issues. I'm personally convinced that rather than literally write the book, Kelly dictated much (most? all?) of it, and sent it off to be transcribed. His errors, contradictions, and ambiguities are so obvious and jarring because they leap off the page, and would never be made, or at least quickly corrected/clarrified by anyone actually writing them. On the other hand, they're consistent with the less disciplined, less self critical stream of thought which comes with dictation. The repetitions, contradictions, and time, date, place, personage vagaries are all easier to commit. The evidence of what was previously said disappears into the microphone rather than trailing behind on the written page (screen). Along with that, I'm confident Kelly didn't use incorrect words out of ignorance. Rather, I'd bet money that these are transcription errors enshrined or cleaned up by spell check.
Without the errors etc., and even with the bait and switch title, this is a three star book. But the errors etc. do exist. That drops it to two stars. I dropped it to one star because I believe the total editing appears to have been little more than running the manuscript through spell/grammer check. I'd like to think that if either the editors or Kelly had actually read his manuscript, most of the obvious errors, and certainly the incorrect words, would have been corrrected or cleaned up before going to press. That they weren't shows a cynical contempt for the reader. If the author can't be bothered to read his own book, why should anyone else.
October 25, 2020
This well-researched history tracks how the course of World War II influenced Josef Stalin’s standing with his allies, so “saving” Stalin takes on multiple meanings. Readers will learn how Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill worked to keep Stalin as an ally in the early years, as he threatened to switch back to his pact with Adolf Hitler and later tried to placate him when he became “the indispensable ally,” fighting and winning on multiple fronts simultaneously.
The book, which relies on --- and credits --- a slew of WWII historians’ scholarship, details the ebb and flow in relations among Stalin, FDR, Churchill and other allies as Russia took a more crucial role in fighting off the Axis powers. FDR made more of a positive impression on him, in part because of the U.S.’s might, but also due to his charm and possibly because Stalin thought he could manipulate him more successfully than he could Churchill.
What comes across most clearly is Stalin’s desire to accrue power, measured in land mass, and his belief that bodies could be thrown at any problem --- Russian soldiers died in far greater numbers than their British or American counterparts. But he was also a consummate liar, willing to make the allies believe that he was playing by the same rules that governed them.
Though author John Kelly explores the interrelationships of the three leaders --- and demonstrates how frayed Churchill and FDR’s bond was towards the end of the war --- the book closely chronicles the course of the war from 1941 to Germany’s surrender in May 1945. It covers in great detail the buildup to Operation Overlord, which Stalin had been pushing for and Churchill had wanted control over, in terms of both timing and leadership. Kelly ultimately demonstrates how Hitler’s ability to control his own cabinet had weakened, as its members began to fear their conquerors more than their Führer’s wrath.
SAVING STALIN offers a thoughtful analysis of the compromises leaders made to win a war, the outcome of which would have been uncertain without those difficult choices.
Reviewed by Lorraine W. Shanley
The book, which relies on --- and credits --- a slew of WWII historians’ scholarship, details the ebb and flow in relations among Stalin, FDR, Churchill and other allies as Russia took a more crucial role in fighting off the Axis powers. FDR made more of a positive impression on him, in part because of the U.S.’s might, but also due to his charm and possibly because Stalin thought he could manipulate him more successfully than he could Churchill.
What comes across most clearly is Stalin’s desire to accrue power, measured in land mass, and his belief that bodies could be thrown at any problem --- Russian soldiers died in far greater numbers than their British or American counterparts. But he was also a consummate liar, willing to make the allies believe that he was playing by the same rules that governed them.
Though author John Kelly explores the interrelationships of the three leaders --- and demonstrates how frayed Churchill and FDR’s bond was towards the end of the war --- the book closely chronicles the course of the war from 1941 to Germany’s surrender in May 1945. It covers in great detail the buildup to Operation Overlord, which Stalin had been pushing for and Churchill had wanted control over, in terms of both timing and leadership. Kelly ultimately demonstrates how Hitler’s ability to control his own cabinet had weakened, as its members began to fear their conquerors more than their Führer’s wrath.
SAVING STALIN offers a thoughtful analysis of the compromises leaders made to win a war, the outcome of which would have been uncertain without those difficult choices.
Reviewed by Lorraine W. Shanley
January 27, 2021
“Saving Stalin: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the cost of Allied victory in Europe,” by John Kelly (Hachette, 2020). Disappointing, because it’s not really an accounting of the political cost of Allied victory. It’s a quick and dirty recap of the European war with emphasis on the Soviets and Stalin’s activities. He does describe what happened to Poland, and how hard, for Churchill especially, it was to betray these most loyal and ferocious Nazi-fighters. There does not seem to be original research---almost all the information is from previously published books, not even archives or interviews. Of course, it is terribly sad to see how Roosevelt declined just when he needed to be strongest, and how Churchill watched the British lose power. For some reason, he doesn’t speak much, if at all, about the extent of Soviet espionage, both in Germany and among the Allies. He doesn’t indicate, for example, that Stalin already knew of the Bomb when Truman told him about it. Not to be completely negative: it is very well-written, there is a lot of interesting detail about elements of the fighting and the strategy involved. Perhaps because this wraps a lot up into a moderately neat package. And it’s always fun to read about Truman’s snapping back at Molotov, who wasn’t used to being spoken to that way!
https://www.hachettebooks.com/titles/...
February 9, 2021
John Kelly quotes a poem by Solzhenitsyn -
Horingstrasse
It’s not been burned, just looted, rifled.
A moaning, by the walls, half muffled.
The mother’s wounded, still alive.
The little daughter’s on the mattress,
Dead. How many have been on it?
A platoon, a company perhaps?
A girl’s been turned into a woman,
A woman’s been turned into a corpse.
It all comes down to simple phrases:
Do not forget! Do not forgive!
Blood for blood! A tooth for a tooth!
The mother begs “ Tote mich, soldat!”.....
(Kill me soldier).
Horingstrasse
It’s not been burned, just looted, rifled.
A moaning, by the walls, half muffled.
The mother’s wounded, still alive.
The little daughter’s on the mattress,
Dead. How many have been on it?
A platoon, a company perhaps?
A girl’s been turned into a woman,
A woman’s been turned into a corpse.
It all comes down to simple phrases:
Do not forget! Do not forgive!
Blood for blood! A tooth for a tooth!
The mother begs “ Tote mich, soldat!”.....
(Kill me soldier).
January 16, 2024
This book looked interesting, but I didn't get through the first chapter. There were so much disjointed writing, sloppy errors, duplication that it seemed unreliable and not worthwhile
e.g. At 2 pm General Boldin says "Our troops are in full retreat..." when the German advance started at 3am.
At 4:30 am the Soviet airforce 'had lost twelve hundred aircraft in twelve hours'!
'At 7pm (sic) German time on the morning of June 22'
'air recognizance (sic)'
Was there no proof reading, sub-editing?
e.g. At 2 pm General Boldin says "Our troops are in full retreat..." when the German advance started at 3am.
At 4:30 am the Soviet airforce 'had lost twelve hundred aircraft in twelve hours'!
'At 7pm (sic) German time on the morning of June 22'
'air recognizance (sic)'
Was there no proof reading, sub-editing?
August 28, 2023
A terrible job of editing ; did anyone proofread this before it was published? Mistakes galore, and repeated paragraphs in different chapters; Really , nothing new in this book. In fact, because it was more an overview rather than a detailed history , much context was missing , distorting the story . For those with little knowledge of the times, I suppose it’s better than nothing.
July 3, 2023
Good survey of the war since its entering Barbarossa plan till its end in Europe, however, having awful mistakes in dates and relatives which could be checked at least in Wikipedia to make this book a masterpiece.
January 1, 2022
Very in depth and informative. Always learn something when reading. I love reading historical-non fiction books. Big book. Highly recommend for those doing research or history buffs.
October 26, 2020
Enthralling, prodigiously researched look at the complex interplay of personality among the Allied leaders during WWII. Author Kelly shows a sure command of the military battles and the diplomacy that won the war and helped shape the peace. (Full disclosure: I am an acquaintance of the author and a professional writer/historian.)
March 28, 2024
Very well done pop history account of the Allied approach to the European theater in WWII. Needed more/better editing and proofreading but that is to be expected given the sorry state of the publishing industry.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews