Here on Our American Stories, we explore the incredible twists and turns of our nation’s past. Few chapters are as complex or as compelling as the wartime relationship between American President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin during World War II. It’s a true puzzle: how could the face of American democracy and capitalism find common cause, or even a working friendship, with a brutal totalitarian dictator like Stalin? This is the story of one of history’s most unexpected alliances, forged in a time of global crisis.
Before America entered the global conflict, the world was already in chaos. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi forces were sweeping across Europe, even initially forming an unlikely non-aggression pact with Stalin’s Soviet Union – a pact Hitler brutally broke. But when America was attacked at Pearl Harbor, facing a terrifying global war, strange bedfellows became necessary. Join us as we reveal the desperate circumstances and monumental decisions that brought President Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin together, forming a pivotal partnership that reshaped the course of the 20th century.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people the subject of. FDR’s relationship with Joseph Stalin during World War II is, for many observers, a puzzle. How could the leader of the free world and the face of American capitalism have had a working relationship, let alone something resembling a friendship, with a person who embodied the complete opposite: a brutal, ruthless, totalitarian dictator who perpetrated mass atrocities on a scale difficult to quantify? This is the story of one of the 20th century’s unlikeliest of alliances.
Here’s Greg Hangler.
On March 12, 1938, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi troops marched into Austria and annexed the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. By March 1939, all of Czechoslovakia is occupied by the Nazis. Stalin, like the Nazis, is happy to put ideological differences aside, so in August 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact, but they were allies in all but name. A difficult relationship. Considering these two socialist governments, Nazi fascism and Soviet communism hate each other. Here’s Georgie Dreganoff, a member of Stalin’s Third Assault Brigade.
Natoshta.
We were taught to think of the Fascists as our enemy, so to change our personal opinion and understanding that, with the signing of this pact, they were now our friends.
This, of course, was very difficult. Nashe.
Here’s historian Robert Glately.
Stalin was determined to give Hitler everything he needed, and…
thereby Germany would have no reason ever to attack the Soviet Union.
Adolf Hitler forms alliances with Italy, Japan, and now the Soviet Union to create the world’s most terrifying superpower. Here’s historian Sir Richard Evans.
Hitler came to believe that he was invincible.
Every time his generals urged caution, he overruled them. He believed that everything could be done if your willpower was strong enough.
But less than a year after the Non-Aggression Pact signed on June 25, 1940, Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, with four million Nazi troops, defeat France in a mere 46 days. After steamrolling through Europe, his empire now nearly encompasses all of it. Hitler sees the Soviets as subhuman mud people. Despite the non-aggression pact, Hitler thinks the Soviet Union will fall just as easily as France. He feels now is the time to do it. In the early hours of Sunday, the 22nd of June, 1941, Hitler orders a surprise invasion into the Soviet Union with more than three million Nazi troops.
Without warning, Hitler’s forces invaded the Soviet Union. It’s the largest land invasion in history.
In one incredible act of ego, Hitler turns his most powerful ally against him. Here’s Stalin’s personal interpreter, Valentine Breshkov.
And when Molotov came to Stalin’s office and told him, Stalin just lost his speech. He could not even speak. He just sat down and was silent for some time, because here he understood how Hitler practically tricked him, how he misjudged…
Hitler. Stalin’s misjudgment is monumental. In a month, German troops are 100 miles from Leningrad. Smolensk falls on July 16th, and Kiev is overrun in September. At a meeting of the Politburo, Stalin moans, “All that Lenin created, we have lost.” In desperation and at his weakest, Stalin has to form a surprising new relationship with the Allies.
Machine guns, .50-caliber, to defend our cities.
As early as 1941, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt begins helping Stalin by sending airplanes, tanks, and guns to the beleaguered Red Army.
And we can fight for three or four years.
If Hitler is going to be stopped, the war in the Soviet Union must be won. In October of 1941, German newspapers announced to the world that the war is effectively won. The British aren’t doing much to help the Soviets. Prime Minister Winston Churchill is of two minds. He despises communism, but he also values anyone who fights against the Nazis. Just before the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, he says, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” The British relationship with the Devil is not very effective, but Stalin knows he needs all the allies he can get, and he is about to gain a much more powerful one.
We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin.
The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air.
President Roosevelt just announced.
On December 7, 1941, for the first time in modern history, America is attacked by a foreign power. When the Japanese bombed the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor, over 2,400 Americans die, and nearly the entire U.S. naval fleet and the Pacific is destroyed.
And you’ve been listening to this story about how America and the Soviet Union came to be allies in World War II, and how Roosevelt and Stalin would soon become partners as well. The story of this alliance, how it happened, and what would happen next. The story continues here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories. Every day we set out to tell the stories of Americans past and present, from small towns to big cities and from all walks of life, doing extraordinary things that we truly can’t do this show without you. Our shows are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and make a donation to keep the stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of how FDR’s war pact with Stalin during World War II came to be. Let’s pick up where we last left off. Here is our own Greg Hangler.
It wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t easy.
That initial salvo, that initial conversation in dialogue, involved long ahead of any other chance of even winning the war. Stalin was negotiating for pieces of Poland and other parts of Europe.
after an Allied victory.
Repudiated, turned back, but they kept at it.
Then the tragic news comes, at least from the Soviet Union’s perspective, that America and England will not in 1942 be pursuing a land invasion in France.
Of course, that would be until June 6th of 1944.
1944 that that would happen, leaving Stalingrad and the Soviet Union on that Eastern Front on their own. When we come back, more of the story of the unlikely alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Here on Our American Stories.
And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of what many have called the Deal with the Devil. FDR’s World War II Pact, and Churchill’s, too, with Joseph Stalin. Let’s pick up where we last left off. Here again is our own Greg Hangler.
On the 19th of November, 1942, more than 1 million Red Army soldiers beat back the Nazis. Meanwhile, Roosevelt and Churchill open a kind of Second Front in North Africa against the Nazis.
The Yanks, already, the Doughboys are spread out for miles behind every tree and shrub, ready to strike the enemy or repel infiltration.
But the Western Allies faced tougher opposition from the Nazis than expected. This puts into jeopardy any plans to invade France in 1943, the real Second Front Stalin so craved. Then, in late November 1943, one of the most important meetings of the 20th century takes place at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, the capital of Iran. Here, for the first time, the leaders of the Alliance—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, the Big Three—will meet face-to-face for four days and for the first time attempt to win the war and shape the future of the post-war world. Moscow was about to fall to the Nazis. Stalin is at a low point, and Roosevelt sees an opportunity. Here again is Susan Butler.
FDR.
Told April Harriman on his way to Moscow to meet Stalin to work out Russia’s immediate armament needs, to pressure Stalin to open the churches. Years later, two months before Tehran, Stalin not only opened all the Russian Orthodox churches and seminaries throughout the Soviet Union, he freed the three Russian or patriarchs whom he had put in jail in 1925. The churches remained open throughout Stalin’s life.
Roosevelt’s tactic is to find a common bond with the paranoid, suspicious Stalin. He does this by teasing his friend, Winston Churchill.
His message to Stalin basically is, “I’m on your side. I’m not going to double-cross you. Trust me.”
On the third morning of the Tehran Conference, he finally breaks through.
I said, lifting my hand to cover a whisper—which, of course, had to be interpreted—”Winston is cranky this morning. He got up on the wrong side of the bed.” Vague smile passed over Stalin’s eyes, and I decided I was on the right track. I began to tease Churchill about his Britishness, about John Bull, about his cigars, about his habits. Winston got red and scowled, and the more he did so, the more Stalin smiled. Finally, Stalin broke into a deep, hearty guffaw, and for the first time in three days, I saw the light. The ice was broken, and we talked like men and brothers.
Stalin is always respectful towards Roosevelt, in stark contrast to the rudeness he sometimes displays towards Churchill, and more than respectful. Here’s Susan Butler telling us a story about one night at the Tehran Conference where Roosevelt struggles to sleep and what Uncle Joe does to help him with his insomnia.
Stalin had a habit, actually, of sort of wandering down into Roosevelt’s rooms. So after Stalin asked whether the President had slept, Roosevelt said yes, he said very well, but he had trouble falling asleep. And so the question is why. And then Roosevelt’s answer was that the frogs kept him away. And so…
Here’s Greg Hangler.
On March 12, 1938, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi troops marched into Austria and annexed the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. By March 1939, all of Czechoslovakia is occupied by the Nazis. Stalin, like the Nazis, is happy to put ideological differences aside, so in August 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact, but they were allies in all but name. A difficult relationship. Considering these two socialist governments, Nazi fascism and Soviet communism hate each other. Here’s Georgie Dreganoff, a member of Stalin’s Third Assault Brigade.
Natoshta.
We were taught to think of the Fascists as our enemy, so to change our personal opinion and understanding that, with the signing of this pact, they were now our friends.
This, of course, was very difficult. Nashe.
Here’s historian Robert Glately.
Stalin was determined to give Hitler everything he needed, and…
thereby Germany would have no reason ever to attack the Soviet Union.
Adolf Hitler forms alliances with Italy, Japan, and now the Soviet Union to create the world’s most terrifying superpower. Here’s historian Sir Richard Evans.
Hitler came to believe that he was invincible.
Every time his generals urged caution, he overruled them. He believed that everything could be done if your willpower was strong enough.
But less than a year after the Non-Aggression Pact signed on June 25, 1940, Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, with four million Nazi troops, defeat France in a mere 46 days. After steamrolling through Europe, his empire now nearly encompasses all of it. Hitler sees the Soviets as subhuman mud people. Despite the non-aggression pact, Hitler thinks the Soviet Union will fall just as easily as France. He feels now is the time to do it. In the early hours of Sunday, the 22nd of June, 1941, Hitler orders a surprise invasion into the Soviet Union with more than three million Nazi troops.
Without warning, Hitler’s forces invaded the Soviet Union. It’s the largest land invasion in history.
In one incredible act of ego, Hitler turns his most powerful ally against him. Here’s Stalin’s personal interpreter, Valentine Breshkov.
And when Molotov came to Stalin’s office and told him, Stalin just lost his speech. He could not even speak. He just sat down and was silent for some time, because here he understood how Hitler practically tricked him, how he misjudged…
Hitler. Stalin’s misjudgment is monumental. In a month, German troops are 100 miles from Leningrad. Smolensk falls on July 16th, and Kiev is overrun in September. At a meeting of the Politburo, Stalin moans, “All that Lenin created, we have lost.” In desperation and at his weakest, Stalin has to form a surprising new relationship with the Allies.
Machine guns, .50-caliber, to defend our cities.
As early as 1941, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt begins helping Stalin by sending airplanes, tanks, and guns to the beleaguered Red Army.
And we can fight for three or four years.
If Hitler is going to be stopped, the war in the Soviet Union must be won. In October of 1941, German newspapers announced to the world that the war is effectively won. The British aren’t doing much to help the Soviets. Prime Minister Winston Churchill is of two minds. He despises communism, but he also values anyone who fights against the Nazis. Just before the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, he says, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” The British relationship with the Devil is not very effective, but Stalin knows he needs all the allies he can get, and he is about to gain a much more powerful one.
We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin.
The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air.
President Roosevelt just announced.
On December 7, 1941, for the first time in modern history, America is attacked by a foreign power. When the Japanese bombed the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor, over 2,400 Americans die, and nearly the entire U.S. naval fleet and the Pacific is destroyed.
And you’ve been listening to this story about how America and the Soviet Union came to be allies in World War II, and how Roosevelt and Stalin would soon become partners as well. The story of this alliance, how it happened, and what would happen next. The story continues here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories. Every day we set out to tell the stories of Americans past and present, from small towns to big cities and from all walks of life, doing extraordinary things that we truly can’t do this show without you. Our shows are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and make a donation to keep the stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of how FDR’s war pact with Stalin during World War II came to be. Let’s pick up where we last left off. Here is our own Greg Hangler.
It wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t easy.
That initial salvo, that initial conversation in dialogue, involved long ahead of any other chance of even winning the war. Stalin was negotiating for pieces of Poland and other parts of Europe.
after an Allied victory.
Repudiated, turned back, but they kept at it.
Then the tragic news comes, at least from the Soviet Union’s perspective, that America and England will not in 1942 be pursuing a land invasion in France.
Of course, that would be until June 6th of 1944.
1944 that that would happen, leaving Stalingrad and the Soviet Union on that Eastern Front on their own. When we come back, more of the story of the unlikely alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Here on Our American Stories.
And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of what many have called the Deal with the Devil. FDR’s World War II Pact, and Churchill’s, too, with Joseph Stalin. Let’s pick up where we last left off. Here again is our own Greg Hangler.
On the 19th of November, 1942, more than 1 million Red Army soldiers beat back the Nazis. Meanwhile, Roosevelt and Churchill open a kind of Second Front in North Africa against the Nazis.
The Yanks, already, the Doughboys are spread out for miles behind every tree and shrub, ready to strike the enemy or repel infiltration.
But the Western Allies faced tougher opposition from the Nazis than expected. This puts into jeopardy any plans to invade France in 1943, the real Second Front Stalin so craved. Then, in late November 1943, one of the most important meetings of the 20th century takes place at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, the capital of Iran. Here, for the first time, the leaders of the Alliance—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, the Big Three—will meet face-to-face for four days and for the first time attempt to win the war and shape the future of the post-war world. Moscow was about to fall to the Nazis. Stalin is at a low point, and Roosevelt sees an opportunity. Here again is Susan Butler.
FDR.
Told April Harriman on his way to Moscow to meet Stalin to work out Russia’s immediate armament needs, to pressure Stalin to open the churches. Years later, two months before Tehran, Stalin not only opened all the Russian Orthodox churches and seminaries throughout the Soviet Union, he freed the three Russian or patriarchs whom he had put in jail in 1925. The churches remained open throughout Stalin’s life.
Roosevelt’s tactic is to find a common bond with the paranoid, suspicious Stalin. He does this by teasing his friend, Winston Churchill.
His message to Stalin basically is, “I’m on your side. I’m not going to double-cross you. Trust me.”
On the third morning of the Tehran Conference, he finally breaks through.
I said, lifting my hand to cover a whisper—which, of course, had to be interpreted—”Winston is cranky this morning. He got up on the wrong side of the bed.” Vague smile passed over Stalin’s eyes, and I decided I was on the right track. I began to tease Churchill about his Britishness, about John Bull, about his cigars, about his habits. Winston got red and scowled, and the more he did so, the more Stalin smiled. Finally, Stalin broke into a deep, hearty guffaw, and for the first time in three days, I saw the light. The ice was broken, and we talked like men and brothers.
Stalin is always respectful towards Roosevelt, in stark contrast to the rudeness he sometimes displays towards Churchill, and more than respectful. Here’s Susan Butler telling us a story about one night at the Tehran Conference where Roosevelt struggles to sleep and what Uncle Joe does to help him with his insomnia.
Stalin had a habit, actually, of sort of wandering down into Roosevelt’s rooms. So after Stalin asked whether the President had slept, Roosevelt said yes, he said very well, but he had trouble falling asleep. And so the question is why. And then Roosevelt’s answer was that the frogs kept him away. And so…
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