Naval War College Review

Volume 73 Number 4 Autumn 2020 Article 10

2020

The Kremlin Letters: Stalin’s Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt

John B. Hattendorf

David Reynolds

Vladimir Pechatnov

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Recommended Citation Hattendorf, John B.; Reynolds, David; and Pechatnov, Vladimir (2020) "The Kremlin Letters: Stalin’s Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt," Naval War College Review: Vol. 73 : No. 4 , Article 10. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol73/iss4/10

This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Hattendorf et al.: The Kremlin Letters: Stalin’s Wartime Correspondence with Churchi

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The Kremlin Letters: Stalin’s Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt, ed. David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2018. 660 pages. $35.

The distinguished Cambridge University project in 1950 as a means to counter professor of international history and what he considered Churchill’s highly specialist in twentieth-century his- selective use of their correspondence tory David Reynolds has joined with and to serve as a rebuttal to what he Vladimir Pechatnov of the Moscow State called the Western “falsifiers of history.” University of International Relations to In 1951, the project fell into abeyance, produce this major contribution to the but eventually reemerged in 1957 during history of the Second World War. The Khrushchev’s regime, with Soviet foreign volume is a carefully edited collection minister Andrey Gromyko as editor. of documents embedded within an In the mid-1970s, many Western archives archival-based interpretive narrative began to open their collections of analysis of Stalin’s wartime correspon- documents relating to the Second World dence with Prime Minister Winston War. Benefiting from this, the journalist Churchill and President Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt biographer Joseph Roosevelt between 1941 and 1945. P. Lash underscored the importance of Scholars have known the text of many the Roosevelt-Churchill relationship of the letters for some time. Winston with his book Roosevelt and Churchill, Churchill included some of Stalin’s letters 1939–1941: The Partnership That Saved to him in his six-volume memoir The the West (1976). This was followed by Second World War. U.S. State Department Professor Warren F. Kimball of Rutgers historians printed the texts of most of University, a former instructor at the those addressed to Franklin Roosevelt U.S. Naval Academy and rising academic in the volumes of the State Department’s expert on the Second World War, who documentary series, Foreign Relations published his meticulous, three-volume of the United States. In 1957, the Soviets edition Churchill & Roosevelt: The published the Russian-language texts Complete Correspondence (1984). These with an English translation, but without works relied on archival research that further contextual details. Interestingly, allowed historians to understand the full Stalin originally initiated the Soviet context in which the Churchill-Roosevelt

Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2020 1 168 NAVAL WARNaval COLLEGE War REVIEW College Review, Vol. 73 [2020], No. 4, Art. 10

correspondence took place, including records of staff discussion relating to the information on the drafts and staff writing of the messages. The editors have discussions related to some of the presented in this volume about 75 percent letters and the issues involved. of the total correspondence; they intend For many Western historians, the popular eventually to publish the full correspon- emphasis in the English-language litera- dence in an online edition. The editors ture on Churchill and Roosevelt obscured have given here the English-language a full appreciation and understanding version of the letters that Roosevelt and of Stalin’s role in the Western alliance. Churchill received, including errors of Although West German scholars at the translation and transmission, explaining German Armed Forces Militärgeschich- in the accompanying text the issues tliches Forschungsamt had begun their involved. Reynolds and Pechatnov pioneer work in the analysis of the history have selected documents that show the of Germany’s wartime eastern front character of these leaders as illustrated during the Cold War, their work was in their exchanges with each other, their not widely appreciated until the English plans to meet each other in the wartime translations appeared. The simulta- conferences at Tehran and Yalta, and neous events of the Cold War, during all the principal issues they discussed. which these initial Western historical This volume very successfully merges interpretations developed, by and large documentary scholarship with a clearly did not provide fertile ground for the written and engaging history of the growth of sympathetic appreciations of interrelationships between these three Stalin or of the Soviet role in the war, “unlikely musketeers.” Practitioners and despite some efforts in that direction. students of international relations, policy, Between 22 June 1941, when Germany and strategy as well as the general audi- invaded the Soviet Union, and Roose- ence of readers interested in the Second velt’s death on 12 April 1945, Churchill, World War will find this an invaluable Roosevelt, and Stalin exchanged 682 contribution to their understanding of messages in the form of secret enciphered the complex relationships among these telegrams. The messages normally were three important wartime leaders. sent in the originator’s language and JOHN B. HATTENDORF translated into the recipient’s language. The common practice of the time of changing the order of words in a sentence to make enemy decryption

difficult led to misunderstandings The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future and misinterpretations even beyond of High-Tech Warfare, by Christian Brose. New those presented by translation itself. York: Hachette, 2020. 320 pages. $28. The project that produced this volume The author, Christian Brose, worked lasted a decade and involved careful closely as an aide to Senator John research in British, American, and newly McCain, and therefore is well situated to opened Russian archives. The editors write knowledgeably about the current and their team developed a database and future challenges facing the military of more than five thousand documents forces of the United States. The result is that included all the surviving drafts and a profoundly challenging and important

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