Keen On

Exactly 85 years ago today, on 3 September 1939, the Second World War officially began with Britain’s declaration of war against Germany. Russians might argue, however, the real war began on 22 June 1941 with Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. While, for America, of course, the war began on December 7, 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. World War Two was then, in a sense, three wars rolled into one featuring the alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union and America against the Axis. But this alliance, for the historian Giles Milton, was a short-term affair rather than a marriage which would inevitably disintegrate after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Indeed, in his interesting new book, The Stalin Affair, Milton describes it as an “impossible alliance” that might have “won” the war but would lose the peace and trigger the Cold War. GILES MILTON is the internationally best-selling author of twelve works of narrative history, including Nathaniel’s Nutmeg and Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfa