A decisive intelligence failure? British intelligence on Soviet war potential and the 1939 Anglo-French-Soviet alliance that never was
Abstract
In 1939 the British Government tried to assess Soviet war potential in order to know
more about their potential ally, as part of the negotiations concerning an Anglo-French-Soviet
alliance. British assessments of Soviet economic and military strength (and the internal stability of
the Stalin regime) in this context have partly been neglected in earlier research, and it seems both
that British estimates were much more off the mark than earlier supposed, and that the gross
underestimation of Soviet strength in 1939 was probably a major factor in the British reluctance
to enter into an anti-Hitler coalition with the USSR.
University
Göteborg University, School of Business, Economics and Law
Institution
Department of Economic History
Collections
View/ Open
Date
2008-03-06Author
Kahn, Martin
Keywords
Economic History
Soviet Union
British Intelligence
Soviet war potential
Second World War
Soviet economy
Soviet military strength
Appeasement policy
Intelligence failures
Publication type
report
ISSN
1653-1000
Series/Report no.
Göteborg Papers in Economic History
12
Language
eng
Metadata
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