Look past the questionable photograph and see Stalin the appeaser

 

The reappearance of this photograph on Twitter, questionably captioned as showing Stalin on learning of Barbarossa, provides nonetheless a reminder that Stalin was blind sided by the German attack despite almost unanimous and extensive evidence that it was coming.  Stalin was terrified that Hitler would attack and had striven to avoid anything that might have provoked him; he was a committed appeaser.

Hitler was too good an actor. Both Stalin and Neville Chamberlain saw him as a dangerously volatile and touchy leader. They did not spot that his outbursts were calculated pieces of theatre. Sir Horace Wilson,  Chamberlain's right hand man, was obsessively risk-averse and fed the prime minister's fear that Hitler would go to war if pushed; they shared the delusion that Hitler shared a normal human being's dislike of war. In reality Hitler revelled in the prospect of war.