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Drawing on astonishing unpublished diaries, letters and secret reports, Giles Milton’s The Stalin Affair reveals troves of new material about the most unlikely coalition in history.

In the summer of 1941, as Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin’s forces faced a catastrophic defeat which would make the Allies’ liberation of Europe virtually impossible. To avert this disaster, Britain and America mobilised a unique team of remarkable diplomats with the mission of keeping the Red Army in the war.

Into the heart of Stalin’s Moscow, President Roosevelt sent Averell Harriman, the fourth-richest man in America, and his brilliant young daughter, Kathy. Churchill despatched the reckless but inventive Archie Clark Kerr – and occasionally himself – to negotiate with the Kremlin’s wiliest operators. Together, this improbable group grappled with Stalin at his most cunning, to make victory possible. But they also discovered that the Soviet dictator had a terrifying master plan for the post-war world.

October 1944. Concerned by the Red Army’s breakneck advance into Eastern Europe, Churchill visits Stalin in Moscow for a second time – and, producing what he refers to as his ‘naughty document’, suggests a deal with him, behind Roosevelt’s back. At the end of January 1945, the ‘Big Three’ meet again at the Yalta Conference – to plan the architecture of the post-war world.

Read by Nigel Anthony
Abridged by Libby Spurrier
Producer: David Blount

A Pier production for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4