Preface
Introduction: The Premises of Stalin's Foreign Policy

1. 'Potential Enemies': London and Moscow at Loggerheads
'The Truce of the Bear'
'He Who Sups with the Devil'
Cripps's Mission to Moscow

2. The Scramble for the Balkans
Soviet-Italian Collusion The Soviet Seizure of Bessarabia British Schemes for the Balkans The Vienna Award: The German Encroachment in the Balkans Clash over the Danube

3. On a Collision Course
Drang nach Osten: The Initial Plans Soviet Intelligence and the German Threat The Bulgarian Corridor to the Turkish Straits

4. The Road to 'Barbarossa'
Molotov's Visit to Berlin Hitler Opts for War Postscript: Preventive War?

5. The Curtain Falls on the Balkans
The British Perspective: Co-operation or Embroilment?
Bulgaria Turns to the Axis The Urge for the Straits

6. The Red Army on Alert
The Soviet Defence Plans The Bankruptcy of the Military The Gathering Clouds

7. At the Crossroads: The Yugoslav Coup d'Etat

8. Churchill's Warning to Stalin
British Intelligence and 'Barbarossa'
The 'Cryptic' Warning
Rumours of War and a Separate Peace
The Bogy of a Separate Peace
Aftermath

9. Japan: The Avenue to Germany

10. 'Appeasement': A New German-Soviet Pact?

11. The Special Threatening Military Period'
On the Alert Emergency Deployment

12. The Flight of Rudolf Hess to England
The Conspiracy The Mission
Fictitious Negotiations 'Running the Bolshevik Hare'
Hess as Perceived by the Kremlin

13. On the Eve of War
'Mobilization Is War!'
A Middle East Diversion: The Flaw in British Intelligence The Tass Communiqu?

14. Calamity
Self-Deception
London: 'This Avalanche Breathing Fire and Death'
22 June 1941: The Long Weekend

Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index