The years 1941–45 were just an interlude in an international struggle between Western democracies and Soviet totalitarianism, a struggle whose shape was obscured but not fundamentally altered by the threat posed to both sides by the rise of Fascism and Nazism at the heart of the continent. It was Germany that brought Russia and the West together in 1941, much as it had succeeded in doing before 1914. But the alliance was foredoomed. From 1918–34 the Soviet strategy in central and western Europe—splitting the Left and encouraging subversion and violent protest—helped shape an image of
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