Noreen and Paul visit Berlin in November 1940 where Stalin’s Foreign Minister, Molotov, is wooed by Ribbentrop and Hitler: they want the USSR, already in bed with Germany in the Molotov-Ribbentrop (or Nazi-Soviet) Pact to join the Axis Alliance and carve up most of the world.

However, Churchill gatecrashes the party.

Paul Letters is a historian, journalist, educator and novelist. See paulletters.com for more history, including a daily ‘On-This-Day-75-Years-Ago’ Twitter feed and photographs. Plus the novel that combines: the real history of the Allies’ first strike against Nazi Germany; Paul’s granny’s escape (as a teenager) from 1939 Poland to 1940 Paris to wartime London; the ‘Double-Cross System’, the Special Operations Executive and assassination in Prague (aChanceKill.com).

This episode was first broadcast on 19 November 2015 on Noreen Mir’s 1-2-3 Show, RTHK Radio 3. Click ‘Subscribe’ to receive future podcasts automatically (or see the This Month in History website). Recorded at Radio Television Hong Kong Studios, Broadcast Drive, Kowloon, Hong Kong.

Podcast cover work by Gill Bertram.