STALIN HAD CONTINUED WEST AFTER BERLIN?

Having used the Allies for his own ends, the Soviet dictator plots to overthrow the rest of Europe

- David J Williamson

In February 1945, Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta in Crimea. The resurgence of the Soviet war machine following such heavy losses - and almost defeat - against the Nazis had played its part in Hitler's eventual downfall. Their prize, conceded to them by the Allies, was Eastern Europe. But out of collaboration and alliance was to emerge mutual distrust, rivalry and the uneasy standoff of the Cold War. Stalin was perhaps not as satisfied with the arrangement as he seemed to appear. He'd made gains, but he was not a dog to be fed scraps by the West. He thought it was the destiny of the world to be socialist and he was determined to make it happen.

At what point would an attack by the Soviet Union on its former Allies have had the most chance of success?

In 1945, Stalin had 12 million men in uniform and occupied half of Europe. But his armies were exhausted and, like the rest of Soviet society, not psychologically ready for an attack on their former Allies. Stalin needed to restore the pre-war levels of terror and paranoia before he could go to war again. The USSR did not become a nuclear power until 1949, although Stalin did not so much fear American unipolarity as the ability of the USA to totally destroy the USSR in an atomic war. By Soviet calculations, based on information supplied by [spies] Klaus Fuchs and Donald Maclean, the West would only have enough missiles in 1955.