Drawing on astonishing unpublished diaries, letters and secret reports, Giles Milton’s The Stalin Affair reveals troves of new material about the most unlikely coalition in history.

In the summer of 1941, as Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin’s forces faced a catastrophic defeat which would make the Allies’ liberation of Europe virtually impossible. To avert this disaster, Britain and America mobilised a unique team of remarkable diplomats with the mission of keeping the Red Army in the war.

Into the heart of Stalin’s Moscow, President Roosevelt sent Averell Harriman, the fourth-richest man in America, and his brilliant young daughter, Kathy. Churchill despatched the reckless but inventive Archie Clark Kerr – and occasionally himself – to negotiate with the Kremlin’s wiliest operators. Together, this improbable group grappled with Stalin at his most cunning, to make victory possible. But they also discovered that the Soviet dictator had a terrifying master plan for the post-war world.

February 1945. At the Yalta Conference, Stalin thanks Roosevelt for ‘mobilising the world against Hitler’. There is a genuine belief that America and Britain can continue to cooperate with Stalin in the post-war world. However, the warmth of friendship between the ‘Big Three’ dissipates with alarming speed. Averell Harriman warns that, ‘the world is splitting into two irreconcilable camps’, with the Kremlin camp hell bent on swallowing as many countries in Eastern Europe as possible. It becomes clear that Stalin can no longer be trusted.

Read by Nigel Anthony
Abridged by Libby Spurrier
Producer: David Blount

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4 Show less