Will post some excerpts from this as I read it whenever it has something interesting to say.

But why Stalin’s War, and not Hitler’s? For McMeekin, the war begins in Asia, before Hitler’s rise to power, over the Chinese Eastern Railway, it ends four months after Hitler’s Death. Stalin was a central figure for the entire time

Hitler doesn’t invade the USSR until chapter17

Prologue is the scene of an address by Stalin to the Academy of the General Staff May 5th 1941. In this closed audience, he highlights the expected war with Germany and the inevitable colapse of the 1939 Pact. The Red Army, is however, technically superior.

Lenin could use the desperation of the “Post-War” powers. The British were aiming at any way to reestablish pre-war exports and receive any war credits back.

Lenin also knew that the Americans and Japanese had sabotaged the White Cause in order to deny the other East Siberia.

The Breakdown of US-Japanese relations in Siberia paved the way for an ultimate US-Japan confrontation. The 1922 Treaty against Japan was undertaken just as it had pulled back the last support for the Whites in Russia, followed by the 1924 immigration act. Blows against Japan.

The Soviets were not the only country to repudiate American debt, the British also did so in 1934, revoking access to US loans.

My own view is that this became the moment when American state department shifted to total dismantlement the British Empire as a strategic goal.

Despite the cessation of spying and aiding of Communists being a clause for US recognition of the Soviet Union, Soviet penetration of federal bureaucracy and industrial espionage increased after ties were restored.

American aviation has long been, it seems, an open book.