Stalin's Folly The Tragic First Ten Days of World War II on the Eastern Front

There's another book called On Stalin's Team that I use a lot later that's about like the whole gang around Stalin.

There were still people around who were creating problems for him that were both personal problems but also problems of getting things done They were blocking getting things done And so he needed to get rid of them And the best way to do it is a purge And the best way to do that is to demonstrate that his arch enemies the ones who are the chief obstacles to getting anything done were responsible for the beloved Kirov's death And so that's exactly what he does

Stalin's propaganda was extremely effective and we have accounts of how he would work late into the night developing slogans for this day, for the next day, for the day after and I'll tell you after reading these accounts of the way he would work on the slogans that they were going to export to all of the parties worldwide I came to realize that if Stalin had been born in the United States he would have been a first-class advertising executive because he really understood how to get people to buy what he's selling he was a master at that