LAURENCE REES: And the single best leader of the war?

SIR MAX HASTINGS: I think you have to say Stalin was the most successful leader of the war, although he was by far the most horrible warlord. Who was the man who got most of what he wanted out of the Second World War?  The answer has to be Stalin. In 1941 everybody in Britain and America thought that Stalin was absolutely bound to lose, that Russia was bound to be defeated. Partly because in nationalistic terms the British found it unthinkable, that their own army having been beaten so often by the Germans, that the miserable Russians whom they despised should beat them. But the miserable Russians did beat them, the miserable Russians won the Second World War, so you have to award the palm to a tyrant who was in his way quite as horrible as Hitler, but was the most successful warlord in the Second World War.