Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

This is a production by the National History Center in cooperation with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program in Washington DC In 1941, history’s largest, most horrific war ever broke out, between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Some 55 million people were killed worldwide in WWII, half in the Soviet Union. Who was Joseph Stalin? Who was Adolf Hitler? Why did they clash? This lecture, based upon a book of the same name, uses a vast array of once secret documents to trace the rise of Soviet Communism and its deadly rivalry with Nazism. It analyzes why Great Powers go to war against each other, delivering lessons for today. Stephen Kotkin is the Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University, where he directs the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and co-directs the Program in the History and Practice of Diplomacy. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford