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Michael Jabara Carley, "Stalin's Gamble: The Search for Allies Against Hitler, 1930-1936" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
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- [00:00]
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Marshall Poe
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Ari Barbalat
Hello. Welcome to the New Books in History channel of the New Books Network Podcast. I am your host, Ari Barbalat. Today it is my honor to engage in a dialogue with Michael Carly. We will discuss his trilogy of published books on the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin in the years leading up to World War II and in the beginning years of World War II. The three books that constitute the trilogy are the first, Stalin's the Search for allies against Hitler, 1930-1936, published in Toronto by University of Toronto Press, 2023. The second is Stalin's Failed the Struggle for Collective Security, 1936-1939, also published in Toronto by University of Toronto Press, 2024. The third is Stalin's Great War Neutrality 1939-1941, published in Toronto by University of Toronto press, 2025. Michael Carley is Professor titular in the Department d' Histoire at the University de Montreal. Michael, it's an honor to be in your presence.
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Michael Carley
Thank you.
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Ari Barbalat
To begin very much. To begin, can you kindly tell us about yourself? Where did you grow up? What formative events in your life catalyze the reacher you would later become?
- [03:19]
Michael Carley
Well, I was born in the Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, New York in 1945. And I lived in the northeastern United States for a couple of years, for a few years until my father got a job as the head of a small advertising company in New Orleans, Louisiana. So I guess you could say, you know, I grew up, so to speak, in New Orleans. And I was. I went to school at a private school. You know, public education system in New Orleans wasn't all that good, I guess you could say, at the time. And the private school is called Metairie Park Country Day School. It's a private school. It was and is a private school. It's still there, it's still prospering, still functioning. And. Well, they had some interesting teachers in the school, in that school at the time, all them eccentric, especially English teachers. And one of them in particular was just a young guy who was only a few years older than we were, and he was interested in existentialism. Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, he's. And of course he was interested in American fiction. I don't know, we read books by William Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemingway, people like that. And one of his lines to us was, dare to think differently. Don't be afraid to think differently. Why think like everybody else, Denote everything. And you know, one of the books, one of the books we had to read was J.D. salinger's. Oh, I forget the title of the book now. Yeah, Catcher and Right. Young Kid, you know, Crazy. I identified with the kid in the novel. And my teachers eventually came to see me as a bit of a pain in the arse and wait, so, you know, I graduated from high school and ended up going to the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and you know, that was a crazy place in the 1960s when I was a kid. And it was kind of the focal point for first the American Civil Rights movement, then the anti war movement against the American intervention in Southeast Asia, Vietnam, the Vietnam, Vietnam War. And I kind of got swept up in that. And so much so that I, you know, after I finished my undergraduate degree at George Washington, I just packed up and left for Canada. It was the summer of 1967 and I ended up going to do my graduate work at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. And I got interested, well, I got interested in the history of the Russian Soviet Union when I was at George Washington. But I pursued it in, in the Kingston at Queens and eventually produced a thesis and then later monograph on the French intervention Russian Civil War and how should I say, that's from there on in. I was kind of focused on the interwar years in Europe and in particular on the Soviet Union and its relations with the Western powers. And when the Soviet archives were opened up at the beginning of the 1990s, you know, I got, I started going to Moscow to do research in the archives there and spent a lot of time in the archives there. And eventually that led to the production of the trilogy about. Well, actually it's a trilogy plus one because the first book I wrote on so foreign policy was Silent Conflict, which was published in 2014 and now have focused on Soviet policy in the 1920s. And then I just moved on to the 1930s, early 1941 and the early 1940s.
- [09:12]
Ari Barbalat
What inspired you to prepare this book? What message do you hope to convey to readers?
- [09:19]
Michael Carley
You know, what inspired me to write this trilogy, this three volume set, was my absolute fascination with the Russian archives. I've said this before, but when you get into the Soviet archives, it's like you've been living in a kind of a closed room where all dark, no light, you can't see anything, or you can see very little. And all of a sudden you pull up the shades in the window in the room and the light surges in and you can see things that you couldn't see before. You have fresh perspectives. Everything is, everything changes. And I've often said to my students over the years that. Well, I said a lot of things to my students, but one of the things I said was you really can't understand what was going on in Europe in the 1930s. You can't understand fully understanding the origin Second World War without studying the Soviet archives. And you know, historians, historians dream of getting into new archives that nobody else has seen before and learning new things and then publishing, you know, articles, books, whatever about their discoveries. And I was lucky twice in my professional life to have that opportunity. Once in Paris in the early 1970s and then again in Moscow in the 1990s and continuing right up until a few years ago, up until Covid. And you know, I was, you know, it's just, I discovered these things and they kind of proved out ideas that hadn't passed, but I wasn't, wasn't sure about. And I, and I felt that I had a lot of new things to say to my colleagues and to, to a generalized audience out in the English speaking world and in the Russian speaking world as well, because my books are being published and translated into Russian. What was the second part of the question?
- [12:15]
Ari Barbalat
What message do you hope to convey to readers in this trilogy?
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Michael Carley
The message is that everything you think you knew about the origin of the Second World War and the beginnings and even early contact the Second World War needed course correction. What you knew, what you may know, what you think you know, requires correction. Simple as that.
- [12:48]
Ari Barbalat
What are the primary themes in your book? What story and stories do your books tell?
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Michael Carley
Well, the general theme. When you look at the development of Soviet foreign policy in 1930s, the first thing that strikes you is how reasonable Soviet diplomats were, how sensible, how normal they seemed in treating all these complex problems that began in the early 1930s. And basically the big problem of that period after 1930 was the problem of Nazism and the growth of fascism in Germany and the rise to population power of Adolf Hitler from 1930 to early 1933 when he was named Chancellor of Germany. And that big problem became for Soviet foreign policy was how to react to the, to developments in, in Germany and what to do about them. And I would say that the Soviet government was one of the first, was, was one of the first governments to, to recognize the danger of Nazi Germany to European peace and security and the first power to take the initiative of looking for cooperation with other powers in Europe to defend against the rising danger of Nazi Germany to peace and security in Europe. I can go into some of the details, if you like, about the first moves on the part of Soviet diplomacy to do that.
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Ari Barbalat
Sure. Please kindly do so to the extent that you feel comfortable.
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Michael Carley
Okay, fine. Well, one thing I know you wanted to talk about was Mein Kampf. Mein Kampf was my struggle was this long book that Hitler wrote while he was in prison and in Germany in the mid-1920s. He didn't have anything to do. So he dictated a book to one of his comrades and it was published in, I think it was 1925, mein Kampf. Basically it's, it's Hitler's blueprint. It's Hitler's plan for the conquest of German domination in all of Europe, stretching out to the Ural Mountains, which is considered the border between Europe and Asia. And it was basically a blueprint for German aggression. And it identified Certain enemies. One being France, for example, and the more well known one being his targeting of the Jews and also less well known as his targeting of the Slavs. And if France in the west was a perennial enemy of Germany, Hitler saw the Soviet Union, run by communists, Bolsheviks and Bolshevik Jews, as a target to be destroyed and a place for colonization, Lebensraum, you know, living space for Germans to move into, up to the Oral mountains. So, you know, the plan was already laid out in the 1920s. Well, you know, in the 1920s, who was Hitler? Who's this kind of fringe politician? Nobody paid too much attention to him until 1930, when the Nazi party won more than 100 seats in the German Reichstag. And then the light bulb started going on and people thought to themselves, well, Kevin, we need to pay more attention to this guy and to the Nazi party and Nazi, Nazi fascist movement in Germany. And not too many people paid much attention to Mein Kampf, but Soviet diplomats did. And one of the Soviet diplomats who, who read Mein Kampf and took it seriously was the Soviet commissar or narcom for foreign affairs, Maxim Maximovich Litvinov. And in the middle of 1933, he began ringing the alarm bells about Nazi Germany, about Hitler threatening European security. And he began looking to various powers, Western powers, to unite in some form of collective security. Everybody was reluctant to call it an alliance, but basically that's what it was. All but an alliance against, a defensive alliance against Nazi Germany, which would deter Nazi aggression or defeat Nazi Germany in war if deterrence failed.
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Ari Barbalat
Your trilogy begins in 1930. What was the political situation like in the early 1930s?
- [20:03]
Michael Carley
Well, keep in mind that the great Depression started in 1929 in the United States and then, you know, gradually spread into. Into Europe. And it was, you know, disturbed. The economies of the United States and European economies made, you know, led to bankruptcies, the closing of businesses and factories, and large scale unemployment. And this was especially the case in Germany. The unemployment rate rose to something like, I don't know, 25%. And inflation led to the devaluation of paper money and so forth and so on. And this destabilization of the European economies, left. Led to the destabilization of European politics and eventually allowed Europe Hitler to become chancellor of Germany at the end of January 1933. And from then on, it was the big question was for all the European elites, who was enemy number one, the Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union? And there were debates about this question throughout the rest of the 1930s. And Litvinov got The question. Right. But a lot of the other European governments, European elites got it wrong. And you know, in a nutshell, that's what led to the outbreak of the Second World War in September. Pardon? In September 1939. I can, you know, if you like, I can talk about some of the details of what, of Soviet diplomacy and just what, what they tried to do during those. Sure. Thank you.
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Ari Barbalat
Thank you. Please do so.
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Michael Carley
Sure. First targets of Soviet interest were France and Poland. And France was an obvious choice because prior to the night World War I, France and Tsarist Russia had been allies and were allies during the First World War until the Russian Revolution 1917. And Poland was an ally of France. And if you wanted to be allied with France, you also had to have good constructive relations, at least with Poland. So France and Poland became targets of Soviet interests, so to speak, or the focal points of Soviet interest. And there was interest in a lot of interest to begin with in France, because there were French politicians who feared the revanchism of Germany and especially Nazi Germany. One of the most important of these French politicians was a man by the name of Edouard Heriot. He was a centrist politician and he was the leader of the radical Socialist Party in France this time. And he almost from the beginning, even back in the 1920s, wanted to improve French relations with Soviet Union. And he pursued this policy into the 1930s. And in the autumn of 1932, a pact of non aggression was concluded between France and the Soviet Union. It was a first step to better relations. And the basic argument of the French politicians who were in favor of this policy was that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And Ario made reference to the 16th, I think it was 16th century alliance between the French King Francois Premier and the Turkish Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. And Ario's argument was that if the French Catholic king could make an alliance with the Muslim sultan of Turkey, then against the common folk, then the French bourgeois and the French and Soviet Bolshevik could do the same thing in organizing defensive measures against the potential aggression of Nazi Germany. And so 1933, 1934, there was a gradual improvement of relations between France and the Soviet Union. But the efforts by the Soviet side to improve relationship with Poland failed. And Poland, in answer to the question, the question number one, in the 1930s, instead of turning towards the Soviet Union for protection against Nazi Germany, turned towards Nazi Germany to form signed a non aggression pact with Germany in the, in January 1934, and applying the question of who is enemy number one, thought that it was the Soviet Union that was the Russia that was the enemy number one and not Germany. And there was also the case of the United States. Litvinov made a trip to the United States in the fall of 1933. He had many numerous meetings with the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, and diplomatic relations with the United States were established. And we know that from the Soviet records of. Of the meetings between Litvinov and Roosevelt that Roosevelt was aware of the potential Germany, of a potential danger of Germany and also of imperial Japan to security not only in Europe, of course, but also in Asia. And he saw the value of improving US Soviet relations. This is the end of 1933 and the beginning of 1934. Same thing happened with relations with Czechoslovakia and with Romania. 1934 diplomatic relationship were established. Czechoslovakia became interested in better relations with the Soviet Union because it recognized the threat from Nazi Germany. And Romania did the same thing. The Meranian foreign ministry, a man by the name of Nicolai Titolescu, worked very, who was a Romanian foreign minister, worked very closely with the narcom Litvinov to improve relations with the Soviet Union. And the big surprise of all was that on his way back from his meetings with the Americans in 1933, the Finoff stopped off in Rome and had discussions with Benito Mussolini, who, as your listeners probably know, was the fascist head of the Italian government. And it may surprise your listeners that Litvinov tried to bring Italy, fascist Italy, into this sort of entente cordiale that Litvinov was organizing against Nazi Germany. So that's what the situation looked like at the beginning of 1934 and in the Soviet Union in Moscow. So it policy officially changed with the approval of a Soviet cabinet called the politburo in December of 33. And at the time, Litvinov gave a speech in and to a meeting of the central committee of the communist party. And he talked about the change in Soviet policy and the interest that the Soviet government had in collective security and mutual assistance against the Nazi menace. But he said, he said, and this was very important, that the Soviet Union alone could not guarantee European peace and security, that it had to have the assistance of the western powers. And if you look in this, in the various histories, narratives of this period written by western historians, even as far as I can remember, even Russian Soviet historians, this comment by Hitler, sorry, by Litvinov isn't noticed. And at the time it wasn't noticed at all by various western governments. But it was a crucial point that the Soviet Union by itself could not act as a guarantor of European security. So that's where the situation was beginning in 1934. And where should I go now on this narrative? Shall I talk about how the Soviet attempts failed? What would you like to talk about?
- [32:55]
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Marshall Poe
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Michael Carley
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Ari Barbalat
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Michael Carley
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Ari Barbalat
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Michael Carley
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- [33:41]
Ari Barbalat
I was curious to ask you, when did the Soviet Union Western powers first become concerned about Nazi Germany?
- [33:49]
Michael Carley
Well, as I said, and it was middle of 1933 for Soviet side and the French were always worried about Germany, whether it was Hitler or whether it was his predecessors. They were always afraid of revanchist Germany and of a new invasion of France by Germany, eventual invasion of France by Germany. In fact, Eduardo Ariel, I mentioned him earlier, he made a trip to Moscow in 1922 where he talked about these things with his Soviet counterparts and he predicted that Germany would attack France again in 1937. And he was only wrong by a little less than two years. So the French were. The French were afraid almost since almost from the beginning, from the end of the second First World War until right up until the 1930s and the arrival in power of Hitler. There were people in Britain who recognized the danger of Nazi Germany. There were people in Czechoslovakia who recognized the German danger. There were people in Romania that recognized the German danger. The problem was that the people who recognize this danger and there were some people that your listeners, the names they'll recognize right away were a couple of them. The most notable were Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, who was a colonel in the French army in the 1930s, who recognized the danger early on. Problem was for all these people was as members of governing political elites in Europe, they represented a minority opinion. And I repeat again the question number one in this period of the 1930s was who was enemy number one, Aussie Germany or The Soviet Union and many people, the majority, if I can use that word, majority, the majority of these governing elites, you know, the preponderant majority of these European elites, and this is probably going to surprise most of your listeners, didn't see fascism as a danger to themselves. They were more inclined to see Soviet Union has greater danger as a vector for the spreading of communism into Europe. Have to remember that the first World war led to the establishment of communism in Russia. And the fear was that a second world war would lead to the spread of communism into the middle of Europe. And so the idea was that Mussolini was kind of a soft. Was recognized as a kind of a soft fascist. Some people made fun of him, but people were willing to get along with him, including Churchill. Hitler was seen as a sort of rough fascist, but you know, if they sent him to a better tailor and they sent him to an upscale barber, you know, give him a fresh haircut, so forth and so on, he'd become more presentable and there wouldn't be a near, would be a necessity for an anti fascist alliance. In fact, it was open. There was open opposition to the kind of defensive alliance which the Soviet side was in effect proposing. And so between the beginning of 1934 and the beginning of 1936, all the potential allies of the Soviet Union against the rising menace of Nazi Germany fell away, one after the other. In a nutshell, that's what happened.
- [39:07]
Ari Barbalat
What insights are presented in this trilogy regarding the circulation and reception of Mein Kampf?
- [39:14]
Michael Carley
Well, it was. Was largely dismissed by most people. And when Soviet diplomats raised the question with German diplomats, the German diplomats dismissed it as, oh, you know, it was Hitler writing in the 1920s. What he thought then, he doesn't think now. It's nothing, don't worry about it. Hudler doesn't think that way now. And a lot of people in the west were willing to accept that explanation. Mein Kampf. But it was still there. People who read, some people who read it, like Litvinov, Soviet diplomats, some others in the west took it seriously. It was the blueprint for German domination of Europe. And it was the blueprint which Hitler actually went to work to establish right up until Operation Barbarossa and the invasion, German invasion, Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
- [40:49]
Ari Barbalat
Can you describe the Soviet attempts at improving relations with Western powers?
- [40:55]
Michael Carley
Britain was the last power brought into this. This would be Soviet coalition that Soviet side was trying to organize. I think the main point is, which I'd like to say to your listeners would be that and this May Surprise them, may shock them, even shock them, is that it was the Soviet side, the Soviet union in the 1930s that took the lead to resist and to form organize an alliance against the Soviet Union, against Nazi Germany. It wasn't the western boroughs. They dragged their feet. They dragged their feet repeatedly. Over time, they gradually checked out of the Soviet plan one after the other. And they left the Soviet Union basically isolated against Nazi Germany.
- [42:17]
Ari Barbalat
Can you comment on the Soviet Union's perceptions of Italy's invasion of Ethiopia or Abyssinia?
- [42:29]
Michael Carley
Well, you're referring to the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in autumn 1935.
- [42:36]
Ari Barbalat
Yes.
- [42:38]
Michael Carley
The Soviet perception was that it was a catastrophe. It was a catastrophe because it would mean. Because basically what it meant that was that it became impossible to have Italy inside of an anti Nazi alliance. When Hitler invaded Ethiopia, that caused an uproar in France and Britain. And of course, Hitler saw an opportunity to draw Mussolini to his side. And the attitude of the Soviet side in particular. Litvinov, who left a lot of. In the archives, left a lot of correspondence on this subject. Basically he was prepared to cut loose. I'm simplifying here because Lefinov's position was basically, it was complicated, but reduced to simple terms. He was prepared to cut loose Abyssinia in order to keep. In order to keep Italy inside of an anti. Naz. Potential anti Nazi alliance. And to make a long story short, that Soviet attempt was unsuccessful. And the Italian invasion of Abyssinia marked the beginning of closer relations between Italy and Nazi Germany and the exit of Italy from any Soviet plan for a defensive alliance against Nazi Germany. In a nutshell, that's the answer to your question.
- [45:01]
Ari Barbalat
How did the Soviet Union perceive the rhineland crisis of 1936?
- [45:07]
Michael Carley
Okay, these are kind of complicated questions. The Rhineland had been demilitarized. Rhineland were the German territories on the western side of the Rhine River. And those territories basically abutting France and Belgium were demilitarized according to the contents of the Versailles Treaty signed in June 1919. And demilitarization of the Rhineland was a military advantage for France in going to the assistance of allies in Eastern Europe, notably Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. And in March, early March of 1936, Hitler sent the German army, the Wehrmacht, into the demilitarized zone to refortify it against potential invasion by France and in so doing, took away from France with respect to the. To the. Going to the aid of its East European allies, took that advantage away from France and weakened thereby France's relations with various East European powers. When you read about this topic in Western literature, it doesn't seem like all that big a deal. When you read the Soviet papers, you understand that it was a very big deal because it called into the question, it called into question French determination and British determination to resist the strengthening of Nazi Germany. And the East European powers looked at this and suddenly realized that they couldn't count on France any longer as an ally to help them against a potential threat from Nazi Germany and really began to think about making their peace with Germany to avoid being threatened by Hitler at some point in the future. So, and Soviet side saw all of this. It was getting reports from its embassies all over Eastern Europe. And from the Soviet point of view, the failure of France and Putin to react to this, the movement of the Wehrmacht into the demilitarized zone was a catastrophe.
- [48:41]
Ari Barbalat
What went wrong in Soviet foreign policy in the 1930s? What kinds of errors or misjudgments or miscalculations did the Soviet Union make?
- [48:53]
Michael Carley
Chief miscalculation of the Soviet side was that it thought it could cooperate with the Western powers against Nazi Germany. And over time, over a period of six years, it discovered that that just wasn't possible. I wouldn't say that the Soviet side made any great errors. The biggest mistake they made made was to think that they could work with the Western powers in organizing collective security against Nazi Germany. They pursued that policy for six years and all their efforts failed. And that's a very simple but factual response to your, to your question.
- [49:53]
Ari Barbalat
Can you comment on the role or roles played by Mikhail Semenovich Ostrovsky?
- [49:59]
Michael Carley
Ostrovsky, right. Ostrovsky was a. Was a typical. Was a typical Soviet diplomat of this period. He was. He was. He was a diplomat's diplomat. He knew how to get along with Western counterparts. Before he became ambassador or a minister, a Soviet minister in Bucharest, he had been the head of the Soviet Oil trust. He was the representative of the Soviet oil trust in Paris. He had excellent relations with the French. He was well respected by the French. He spoke French. He was a Francopho. Francophile. He loved to use French expressions in his reports that he wrote to Moscow. And he was thought to be a good pick to go to Bucharest and in late 1934. And he worked very closely with the Foreign Minister Titlescu to improve relations with the Soviet Union and even to establish a pact of mutual assistance between Romania and Soviet Union. He was an outstanding. He was one of the most outstanding Soviet diplomats of the inner war years and maybe one of the. Probably one of the diplomats not so well known amongst the Soviet diplomats of that period.
- [51:56]
Ari Barbalat
Can you describe the Vicissitudes of Polish Soviet relations and Polish Romanian relations.
- [52:03]
Michael Carley
I wouldn't call them vicissitudes. I would call the Poles Polish government of this period the saboteur, spoiler of collective security and mutual assistance against Nazi Germany and fury. If you read Ostrovsky's dispatches and telegrams to Moscow during this period, Poland led a campaign in Bucharest to sabotage Soviet Romanian relations. And the Soviet it does. Some Polish military people even threatened to assassinate Titlescu to block the improvement of Romanian relations with the Soviet Union. And when Titlescu was squeezed out of power, sacked in effect In August of 1936, the Polish side celebrated his. His removal from power and. And saw that as a step in the direction of. Of wrecking Romanian Soviet relations. The Poles Polish government. I'm not talking about all Poles, talking about the Polish elite and the Polish government. They rejected overtures from the Soviet side to improve relations from 1933 onwards. And they sabotaged Soviet Romanian relations. The Poles played a very negative role in the 1930s in the years leading up to the beginning of the Second World War.
- [54:34]
Ari Barbalat
Can you elaborate on the importance of Maxim Litvinov?
- [54:38]
Michael Carley
Well, Maxim Maximovich Litvinov is one of the main actors along with Stalin in the first two volumes of my trilogy. He was born in czarist Poland. It was early 1870s. 1870s. My memory is correct. In a kind of a dysfunctional Jewish family. And he didn't go to university like many of his Bolshevik colleagues. Jews during that period had limited access to higher education in Russian universities. And Litvinov went to. Went into the Russian army and became an artillery man, a Russian gunner. And he became exposed to Marxist literature. He eventually joined the Russian Social Democratic movement which split into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks in 1903. And he became a gun runner and money launderer for the. For the Bolshevik party. You know, I like to have a little fun every once in a while about him. And I compare him to Butch Cassidy and Sundance. Git. He was a rascal, he was an adventurer. He was kind of an outlaw. During those years he spent a little time in czarist jails. But eventually he settled. In the 10 years before the outbreak of revolution in Russia, he settled in Britain. In London he married a young woman who was already an accomplished writer and novelist from a bourgeois British family. He became an editor for British publisher. And I expect if there hadn't been a Russian Revolution 1917, he probably would have become a member of the British labor left elite during the inter war years. But revolution did come in 1917 the Bolsheviks took power and the. Vinov became the sort of first semi official Soviet representative in London until he was arrested by the British authorities and they exchanged for some British people being held in Soviet Russia. And from then on he became a more important person, gradually more important person in the development of Soviet foreign policy. In the 20s he was deputy commissary for foreign affairs. And it's then that he forms a very interesting sort of relationship with Stalin. And if you look in the Soviet archives, you'll find that each year, basically from the mid-1920s on, there are volumes of Levinov's correspondence to Levinov to Stalin, going right up to 1939 when that Vinov was sacked and that Vinov's a very interesting sort of person. When he became a diplomat, he stopped being a revolutionary and he opposed the revolutionaries that were still inside the Bolshevik movement in the 1920s. It's a complicated story which I sort out in my first book, Silent Conflict, which readers may come to be interested in reading, published by Roman and Littlefield in 2014. Anyway, in 1930s he became the chief Soviet diplomat and the. And the chief spokesman person for Soviet foreign policy. He worked closely with Stalin. Litvinov was not pursuing a personal policy, he was pursuing a Soviet policy which he worked out in close relationship with Stalin. And if you want to understand what's going on in Soviet Foreign Policy, 1930, in the 1930s, your listeners will become more acquainted with him. He played a very important role in. In the inter war years in the development of Soviet foreign policy. And he was a. His policy was always. He was a kind of a Westerner, he was a Soviet patriot. But he saw that the best way to protect and further Soviet security was in good relations with the Western powers.
- [61:18]
Ari Barbalat
As Litvinov, what new perspectives are presented in your trilogy regarding Romanian foreign relations? Can you elaborate on the role of Nicolae Titulescu?
- [61:30]
Michael Carley
Titulescu was a very interesting guy. He was not part of the Romanian left. He wasn't a communist. He was. He was a kind of center right, typical Romanian politician. And he was. He played various roles in the Soviet government, in the Romanian government. And 1932, I think it was, he became foreign minister and of course in 1934 he took the initiative to improve relations with the Soviet government. He had excellent relations with Litvinov and the two of them worked together to conclude a pact. Sorry, a pact of mutual assistance. But Levinov, sorry, but Titlescu was kind of a lone ranger. He didn't have a lot of support for his policy, better relations with the Soviet Union and the far right in Romania, which was sympathetic to fascism or was fascist, opposed this policy. And they worked closely with the Poles to sabotage Titlescu's policy and to break up the closer relations between the Soviet Union and Romania. A lot of historians say that Romanian policy was just like Polish policy, hostile to the Soviet Union and more inclined to treat with Nazi tyranny. That's not true. The Romanian policy was more subtle, more sophisticated, even after the departure of Titlescuff from power. And it's only in 1939, especially 1940, that Romania throws in with Nazi Germany.
- [64:06]
Ari Barbalat
And you comment on Stalin's policies toward and perceptions of the Anschluss and the Czechoslovak crisis.
- [64:16]
Michael Carley
Right. Well, you know, if you look back now on developments in 1930s, you can see that Soviet policy, Soviet policy, collective security was doomed from 1936 onward. The British lost interest in early 1936. The United States was out, Italy was out. France was kind of in, but also out to Telescu was sacked in August. But we should talk briefly about the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War broke out in, in July of 1936. The government of Madrid was elected February of that year. It was a coalition government, front populaire of popular Front of various parties. And there was a mutiny of the Spanish army broke out in July, eventually, eventually led by Francisco Franco. And the significance of that event and the Spanish Civil War which followed and continued until March of 39, was that it polarized, it contributed, wasn't the sole factor, but it contributed to the polarization between right and left in Europe. Communists, fascists, left, right, socialists, so forth and so on. And it made it possible any kind of. Any hope of cooperation between the west and Western powers in Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. The only way that the Soviet policy could work was in large coalitions in the West, Left, center, right coalitions, political coalitions in favor of cooperation with Soviet Union. If polarization took place, that policy became impossible. And from, basically from the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Soviet policy was doomed. Wasn't so obvious at the time. And Litvinov continued, and Soviet policy continued to favor collective security. But it was like Litvinov in the Soviet side, kind of became like Don Picoti, you know, charging at windmills. Policy was destined to failure. And Anschluss and the Czechoslovak crisis in 1938 were events that sort of sealed the fate of the failure of Soviet policy. Anschluss was the German annexation of Austria, which occurred in March 1938. It immediately put into jeopardy the security of Czechoslovakia. Because if you look at a map, the western half of Czechoslovakia was then caught in a kind of pincer between a German pincer which surrounded that western half of Czechoslovakia and made its defense, Czechoslovak defense, very difficult. And there was the munich crisis in September 1938, which in a nutshell ended up with the French and the British, which I can only describe as despicable conduct, agreeing at the Munich Conference to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and of course in March of 39 led to the disappearance of Czechoslovakia and according to many, according to the Soviet, according to observers at the time, made inevitable the outbreak of World War II. I'm not going into great detail about all this, it would take hours to explain it all. But in a nutshell, that's my reply to your question.
- [70:18]
Ari Barbalat
Can you comment on the 1939 negotiations leading to the Nazi Soviet non aggression pact?
- [70:25]
Michael Carley
Absolutely. In the second volume of my trilogy I go into great detail about those events. And these events are not well known by the way amongst the every man and woman in the West. Basically what happened was that Soviet side made one last attempt to draw Britain and France into an alliance, an anti Nazi alliance. The Soviet overtures were made in April of 1939 and negotiations between two sides continued until August of 1939 when it became obvious to the Soviet side that the British and French weren't interested in a serious military alliance against Nazi Germany. And so they concluded the Nazi Soviet non aggression pact with Nazi Germany in late August 1939. There's a lot you could say about this period and there's a lot that every man and woman just doesn't know about these events. If you read sort of common ideas repeated often in the western historians in these days, but Western politicians. The Soviet Union double crossed France and Britain, stabbed Poland in the back, partnered with Stalin, partnered with Hitler and shared responsibility for the outbreak of World War II. That account of events in 1939 does not correspond to the evidence which researchers, which researchers will find not only in the Soviet archives but also in the French and British archives as well. In fact, the British were opposed to Soviet alliance proposals from the beginning. The French had a. Had. The French position was not so clear. But in the end they opposed a war fighting alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. When it was finally decided that the end of July 1939 that the French and British would send delegations to Moscow to negotiate for military and political cooperation against Aussie Germany, low level delegations were sent. The British head of delegation had no plenipotentiary powers had no written authorization to negotiate. The only instructions that the British delegation had official instructions from the Foreign Office were and I quote here, go very slowly. The French side, the head of delegation had a letter from the, from the Prince, from the President du conseil Premier saying he could talk, basically could talk to the Soviet side but he couldn't decide anything on, he didn't have any plenipotentiary powers. Instead of, instead of traveling to Moscow as quickly as possible they booked passage on a British, on a British merchantman which made a maximum speed of 13 knots and took five days to reach the Soviet Union. And the two delegations had so little to do while they were waiting, while they were making passage towards Soviet Union was that they, they had a, a deca tennis tournament amongst themselves. To make a long story short, when they got to actually negotiating the Soviet side saw that, that the French, that the two delegations weren't serious didn't have the plenipotentiary powers, didn't have instructions to conclude a war fighting alliance. And the Poles in a last act of folly, in a long list of efforts over the years to spoil collective security and mutual assistance against Nazi Germany it refused to cooperate in order to organize an alliance against an alliance of the last minute, an alliance of the last chance against Nazi Germany. And at the same time of course the Soviet side had begun to talk to German diplomats about a non aggression pact. Well at the beginning it was an amelioration and an improvement of relations a rapushma and then a non aggression pact which was ultimately signed. And the west accused the accused, the Soviet side of double crossing them. But at the same time, and this is less well known to the every man and woman in the west, the British were also negotiating with the Germans to, to improve relations. The British were never committed to concluding a, an anti Nazi alliance with Soviets before war broke out. It was Stalin looking at all of this, looking at what was going on finally concluded that the British and French weren't serious about negotiations and that the Soviet side would not be able to count on British and serious British and French support if a war broke out and the Soviet side would be left to fighting the Germans on their own while the British and the French sat on their hands. And so Stalin basically said all right, we're out of this. We'll stay out of the war as long as possible. Not as allies of Germany, although that word is often used in the west to describe the relationship. It was a marriage of convenience by the two sides. One political, British political cartoonist very well known David Lowe, drew a cartoon in September showing Hitler and solid walking arm in arm and each one of them is holding a pistol behind his back indicating the nature of their relationship. I don't know what else to say about the about the Nazi Soviet non Aggression Pact. There was a secret codicil which defines certain spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. If the situation in Eastern Europe were to change, in other words, if, if war was to break out and borders were to change. Part of that secret codicil arranged for spheres of influence in Poland, eventually essentially dividing the country in two under spheres of influence to Germany and to the Soviet Union. At the end of September, there were modifications brought to the arrangement which limited the Polish area taken over by the Soviet side to areas where there were majority Ukrainian and Belarusian populations. Ever since that period, the Soviet side has been condemned by the west for signing that agreement. Stab in the back, betrayal, so forth and so on. But those characterizations are not accurate. If one studies the various archives, as I've said before, and really from that point on you see a politicization of history with respect to those events where to this day the Soviet side has held in partnership with Hitler for the outbreak of World War II. And of course that characterization is not accurate. I don't know. There's a great deal that I could say about these events, but it would take hours to sort of sort out and it would weary or listeners scent and weary us too. But it's all explained in considerable detail in my trilogy and hopefully your readers will be their curiosity will be piqued and they'll go out to their library or to the bookstore and get hold of the volumes of my trilogy to follow exactly what happened during those during those during those years.
- [82:48]
Ari Barbalat
As we end today, I'm signing off as your host on the New Books and History Channel of the New Books Network podcast Ari Barbalat. Today I've been grateful to engage in a conversation with Michael Carley. He is professor titular in the Department d' Histoire at the Universite de Montreal, the University of Montreal. Today we've been engaged in a dialogue regarding his trilogy on Soviet foreign policy in the 1930s. The first volume is Stalin's the Search for allies against Hitler, 1930-1936, published in Toronto by University of Toronto Press, 2023. The second is Stalin's Failed the Struggle for Collective Security, 1936-1939, published in Toronto by University of Toronto Press, 2024. The third volume, Stalin's Great War and Neutrality, 1939-1941 published in Toronto by University of Toronto press 2025 than.
- [84:01]
Michael Carley
SAM.