Just came across this absolute trashfire of a book by an American prof. I know these revisionist takes about WWII are a dime a dozen… but this one seems particularly egregious in its claims that Stalin masterminded World War II and that the only reason for the USSR’s success was that the stupefied Allies fell for his dastardly plan.

This level of brazen stupidity and/or disingenuousness borders on incomprehensible.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/stalin-s-war-a-new-history-of-world-war-ii-sean-mcmeekin/15970381?ean=9781541672796

  • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    24 days ago

    Somehow it took me three hours to really process this, but the argument in the picture is literally an argument for WWII being Hirohito’s war, not Stalin’s! They are saying the war began with Japan’s invasion and it ended with Japan’s defeat, so it must be a leader who was in charge that whole time . . . so it was Stalin! That’s so ridiculous, so absolutely absurd that I can’t express it in words.

    The book has more to it, other theories about the war, but the other ones that I’ve seen are, if anything, even more ridiculous, like suggesting Stalin wanted to provoke war between Japan and the “Anglo-Saxon nations” for the sake of their mutual destruction, and thus WWII was his doing.

    Sorry for the double-post, I just feel so baffled by how transparently this dude is blaming Japanese imperialism on Stalin.

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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      23 days ago

      like suggesting Stalin wanted to provoke war between Japan and the “Anglo-Saxon nations” for the sake of their mutual destruction, and thus WWII was his doing.

      Lmao, this exact logic but used on actual history would place all fault for WW2 on USA, UK and France