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

SIMON SEBAG-MONTEFIORE: I suppose I’m answering all these questions about Russia, but I suppose the single best decision was Stalin’s decision to listen to his generals. It was the moment when he turned to his generals and said there’s an opportunity at Stalingrad isn’t there, what is it? Make a plan, the two of you. And he suddenly started treating the two generals, Vasilevsky and Zhukov, totally differently. And he shook their hands and he said go away, plan it, come back in two days time with a plan. And they stayed up all night and they came back with the plan and again Stalin receives them completely differently. And when he saw the plan which became Operation Uranus, the encirclement of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, he suddenly realised and said top secrecy, tell no one, and again he shook their hands in a way like a Tsar with his gentlemen officers. And I think that was the ultimate change, that was the moment.