The Road to War episode 3: The USSR (1989) (start missing). The USSR’s path to WW2. Charles Wheeler.

Overview. The impact of the purges. Adherence to collective security and disillusion with it in the light of the Spanish civil war and the fate of Czechoslovakia. Fears of Japanese aggression in the east and of a war on two fronts. The Nazi-Soviet Pact. The Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in September 1939 and the partition of Poland. Deportations of Poles and the Katyn massacre. The Red Army’s failures in the winter war against Finland. Stalin’s appeasement of Hitler. Trade with Germany. Stalin’s shock at the speed of Hitler’s victory in France which ended Soviet hopes of a long conflict in western Europe. Modernisation of the Soviet military and its shortage of leaders after the purges. Tensions over German expansion on the USSR’s south-western flank. German reassurances. Stalin’s rejection of British and Soviet intelligence warnings of a German military build-up and invasion. The German invasion of June 22 1941. A little copyright trimming.