“In his present mood, PM [Neville Chamberlain] says he will resign rather than sign alliance with Soviet” (Sir Alexander Cadogan, British Permanent Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, private diary entry, May 20th, 1939, quoted in Kotkin 2017, p. 642)
I haven't finished reading this. But I'm not sure about Louis XIV who, as you know predeceased Peter by a decade. If yiu need to correct please erase my comment.
when reading this i was struck wondering what elizabeth 1 may've had on history if she'd taken her russian suitor, rather than blowing him off as completely unwashed & stinky? if nothing else it indicated that although her court was the beginning of mi6, walsingham did author the code still followed, that empire wasn't yet so dedicated to the destruction of russia.
"...was a dinner given by Allen Dulles one night at the Chevy Chase Club in honor of Gehlen, who was visiting from his Munich headquarters. Gehlen led the discussion, advising us how to deal with ‘the Bear,’ his term for the Soviet menace. J. Edgar Hoover, sitting next to me, kept murmuring, ‘The Bear, the Bear. That’s it. The Bear.’” Gehlen liked to say that his cold-steel view of the Soviet adversary came from his hard-won experience on the eastern front. But it was also calculated to please American hard-liners, particularly his masters, the Dulles brothers. Some critics in Western security circles attacked the ideological bias of the Gehlen Organization’s intelligence reports, which exaggerated the Soviet bloc’s military strength and nuclear capability. But the “cooked” intelligence served the Dulleses by giving them more ammunition for their militant Cold War stance.
Talbot, David. The Devil's Chessboard (pp. 277-278). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
I haven't finished reading this. But I'm not sure about Louis XIV who, as you know predeceased Peter by a decade. If yiu need to correct please erase my comment.
when reading this i was struck wondering what elizabeth 1 may've had on history if she'd taken her russian suitor, rather than blowing him off as completely unwashed & stinky? if nothing else it indicated that although her court was the beginning of mi6, walsingham did author the code still followed, that empire wasn't yet so dedicated to the destruction of russia.
"...was a dinner given by Allen Dulles one night at the Chevy Chase Club in honor of Gehlen, who was visiting from his Munich headquarters. Gehlen led the discussion, advising us how to deal with ‘the Bear,’ his term for the Soviet menace. J. Edgar Hoover, sitting next to me, kept murmuring, ‘The Bear, the Bear. That’s it. The Bear.’” Gehlen liked to say that his cold-steel view of the Soviet adversary came from his hard-won experience on the eastern front. But it was also calculated to please American hard-liners, particularly his masters, the Dulles brothers. Some critics in Western security circles attacked the ideological bias of the Gehlen Organization’s intelligence reports, which exaggerated the Soviet bloc’s military strength and nuclear capability. But the “cooked” intelligence served the Dulleses by giving them more ammunition for their militant Cold War stance.
Talbot, David. The Devil's Chessboard (pp. 277-278). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
hey roger... great overview in a crunched up way! kudos...