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Hello and welcome to Battleground 44 with me, Patrick Bishop. Well, today we open our series looking at the personalities, motivations and style of the great warlords of the greatest war the world has ever seen. Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. What an extraordinary collection of individuals they were, crystallizing in their beings the very best and the very worst that humanity was capable of.
Their personalities could scarcely have been more contrasted. Yet fate put the destiny of the world in their hands, and their characters played an enormous part in shaping the outcome of the conflict. We're going to open the series today by looking at perhaps the most mysterious of that quartet, Stalin. Born Joseph Dugashvili in Georgia in 1878, the son of a bankrupt, drunken, wife-beating cobbler,
In 1944, he's been in more or less uncontested supreme power since the early 1930s as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He secured his dictatorship by murder and fear and is responsible for the deaths of millions of his own countrymen.
Millions more have died due to the appalling incompetence of his initial direction of the war with the Germans. Yet, in the spring of 1944, Stalin is riding high. The Red Army, after staggering losses and a chain of seemingly catastrophic defeats that brought the Germans to the gates of Moscow, has turned the tide.
Victory now looks certain, though still distant. Hitler, the former ally who treacherously turned on him in June 1941, boasting that he was going to bring the Soviet empire crashing down, now fears him. The great leaders of the free world, Roosevelt and Churchill, who all their lives have despised the communist creed of which he is the Red Pope, are now fawning on him,
him, anxious to maintain his favour and sustain the strange alliance of capitalism and communism that has formed against Hitler.
Well, with me to discuss this enigmatic figure is the international best-selling historian Giles Milton, whose latest book, The Stalin Affair, deals with the relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt and the man in the Kremlin. It's a masterpiece of narrative history, an absolutely enthralling account of the interaction between these men and their special envoys that will have you entranced and entertained in equal measure. Welcome, Giles. Thank you.
Thank you very much for having me on and thanks for that kind introduction. Now, as I say, Stalin is king of the hill in 1944. But let's just remind our listeners that it was a very different story back in June 1941, wasn't it? When Hitler breaks his non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and the panzers crash across the border, sweeping all before them.
Well, not unexpectedly, it must be said, because Stalin has been given plenty of warnings from reliable intelligence sources that this is imminent, but he's refused to believe them. His initial performance is pretty abject, isn't it, Giles? Absolutely. As you say, Stalin had been given intelligence from all sorts of different sources,
about the fact that Hitler was going to tear up the infamous Nazi-Soviet pact, which had brought the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union into the same sphere. He was about to tear that up and send the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union. Stalin had been warned by spies, by informers, by agents. He'd been warned by a spy in the Japanese embassy. He'd been warned by the German air ministry, an agent working inside there. And he'd been warned by Churchill himself,
that Hitler was going to invade the Soviet Union. And Stalin simply refused to believe a word of it, which meant that on the night of the 22nd of June, 1941, when the Wehrmacht tanks rolled over the frontier, the Soviet army was nowhere to be seen. There was simply no defense on the frontier of the Soviet Union.
And this, you know, Stalin means man of steel, yet his reaction to all this is absolutely the opposite of that. He's man of putty, isn't it? Even to his intimate astonishment, he just has a pretty much a kind of sort of moral and physical collapse.
It's almost like he has a complete breakdown, in fact, that he cannot believe the treachery that is unfolding before his eyes. And he retreats to his dacha. He leaves Moscow and retreats to his dacha and refuses to talk to anyone or see anyone for a few days while at this most critical moment, you know, as the Nazi war machine is steamrolling over the frontier and advancing at rapid pace into the Soviet Union, Stalin, upon whom everyone
absolutely everything in the Soviet Union depends is nowhere to be seen. And it will take members of his Politburo who dare, because remember going for an audience with Stalin was not something to be taken lightly, but they dare to drive out to Stalin's dacha and try to convince him that, hold on,
this is a moment where you really need to take control of the situation. And eventually, Stalin comes around to their point of view, and he agrees that he will run the Soviet war effort from that point on. Yeah, but there's almost a moment, isn't there, when he thinks they've actually come for him. He thinks this is it, you know, the game is up. He does. He thinks that they're going to betray him, they're going to stab him in the back. And it's wonderful to read the descriptions of these
Politburo members who themselves are terrified to have an audience with Stalin, they go into the room in the Dacha and they find that Stalin himself is terrified of them. He's cowering in an armchair and he thinks they're going to do away with him because he's been proven so wrong on every front. And the fact to have misjudged the intelligence or not even misjudged it, but wantonly denied the fact of what was taking place before his very eyes, you know, was a
a singular and massive failure on his part at the very beginning of the war. Yeah, so it's really sort of destroyed the idea of his infallibility. But he makes a pretty rapid recovery, doesn't he? And soon he's back to, as the Red Army falls back, he then orders this kind of pretty unrealistic thing
Stalin order that they have to stand and fight. Everything has to be destroyed. And that's the scorched earth policy is understandable, but the stand and fight to the last man thing definitely is not. You know, the great lesson of the defense of Russia is that you trade space for time. And that's certainly what happened with the Napoleonic invasion. But very soon it's back to the old Stalin. If you seem to fail, the penalty is death. So this is what happens to General Pavlov at
Minsk, after Minsk is lost, he's summoned back to the Kremlin and he and his senior staff members are all executed. So this carries on for a while.
And, you know, it's not a great way of fighting a war. And of course, the next period is one of defeat after defeat for the Russians. But that's not really what we're here to talk about. And what I'm really interested in is the subject of your book, which is the, you know, the fabulous way you deal with this extraordinary relationship that develops between these very opposed figures, Frank and Roosevelt over in America, and
the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Stalin himself. Now, you know, once this has happened, once Germany has declared war on the Soviet Union, everything changes, doesn't it? Just explain...
to our listeners how it is that the whole equation alters in a most dramatic and historical, epochal way. So a European, what is essentially a European war up until that point, now instantly becomes a world war, and what that means for the capitalist powers and their relationship with
with the Soviet Union. Well, let's focus in on Chekhov, the prime minister's country residence. So he's woken up on the morning after this invasion has taken place on that night of the 22nd of June. The prime minister is woken up and told that this invasion has taken place. This invasion, which to be fair, Churchill knew was coming. They've had ample intelligence to suggest that Hitler is going to invade the Soviet Union.
But nevertheless, Churchill has to make a decision on that very day of what does he now do. His first reaction, we're told, was a smile of satisfaction because for him, this was fantastic news. Hitler was now fighting a war on two fronts. He had Britain in the West and he had the Soviet Union in the East. This was good news from Churchill's point of view. But
Churchill, as many people will be familiar with, detested not only the Soviet Union and everything it stood for, but he particularly detested Stalin as its figurehead, as its leading figure. And indeed, Churchill had spent much of his political career castigating Stalin, castigating his commissars. And indeed, and of course, in 1918-19, at the end of the First World War, he'd sent British troops and munitions to try and snuff out this new revolutionary regime at birth. So he
Stalin was the anathema of everything that Churchill stood for. But he has to make a sort of pragmatic calculation on that day, the 22nd of June, 1941. Do I back Stalin or not? And it came down to a simple calculation. Who's worse, Hitler or Stalin? And Churchill decides that anyone being attacked by Hitler, by the Nazis,
will get British support. So that very evening he gives this live BBC broadcast from Chequers to the nation throwing his weight behind Stalin and the Soviet Union. And this is really, Patrick, an extraordinary turnaround, you know, in his political thinking and everything he stands for, Churchill, to actually say I'm now an ally of Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin. And of course
Just over the horizon, there's the other great British hope, which is America, of course. Since the very beginning, Churchill has been trying to persuade Roosevelt through personal diplomacy, through the power of his personality, to come into the war on Britain's side. That's a very long, tough struggle, which we won't go into here. But Roosevelt is making the same sort of... Roosevelt, his heart is with Britain, but the politics of the United States don't allow him to give as much support
aid as he would like. Now this changes the situation for the Americans and for Roosevelt as well, doesn't he? Tell us something about Roosevelt's reaction to that and how he and Churchill decide to basically form a kind of tag team now to draw Stalin as closely as possible to them and the Western cause as they can.
Yeah, Roosevelt's reaction is very interesting. It's much more reserved than Churchill's. In fact, he didn't say anything publicly for several days after Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union. And it's only, I think, on the third day where he gives a press conference where the journalists, as you can imagine, the White House press corps are bombarding him with questions. What are we going to do? Are we going to give weapons to Stalin? Whose side are we on here?
And Roosevelt says very, very little. But behind the scenes, an awful lot is taking place between the Soviet embassy in Washington and senior figures in the White House and in the State Department that essentially Roosevelt has taken the decision that he and the whole of American sort of military might will be thrown behind the Soviet Union. So he, like Churchill, will support and do everything he can
to support the Soviet war effort. Partly from, again, a coldly pragmatic decision. Roosevelt is terrified of American troops, of America being drawn into the war. He's terrified of the idea of sending young American men back
into the continent of Europe to fight yet another war. So he will do anything possible to avoid that. And he sees one way of avoiding it is just to throw as much weaponry as possible at Stalin and basically let him do the fighting. Which is something that Stalin understands very well, doesn't he? This is a recurring theme of the relationship that we're going to be talking about is this mutual need, but also mutual suspicion that goes through the whole thing. Now, one of the fascinating things about your book, Giles, is the way that you really
put front and center the idea of personal relationships and how important they are in warfare. I think there's been a tendency in the past in historiography to perhaps not overemphasize, but to lose sight of the importance of the personal, even in massive conflicts like this that depend, of course, hugely on manpower and material and all the rest of it. But
Often it does come down to how the war leaders get on with each other. This is particularly the case, I think, in the Second World War. So personal diplomacy becomes very important. And of course, the leaders themselves haven't got the time to be going back and forth, seeing each other. So the role of the envoy becomes important.
terrifically important. Now you've got some fascinating figures on all sides. It's agreed that there's got to be a personal link set up with the Kremlin as quickly as possible. So both the Americans and Brits scramble to get people in place who can be able to do this kind of shuttle diplomacy. So tell us about the outstanding figures here. On the American side we've got
Averill Harriman. And on the British side, we've got Lord Beaverbrook and then Archie Clark Kerr, who becomes the ambassador in Moscow. Tell us something about these men and about their role. You're absolutely right that these three towering personalities who are constantly vying and competing against each other, that's Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt, the three wartime leaders. But as you say, the Western leaders, so Churchill and Roosevelt, knew very little about Stalin. Stalin had really
ruled the Soviet Union as a virtual recluse. They knew nothing about him apart from the fact that he was a brutal murderer and had killed millions of his own subjects.
So they realized very early on that they needed some sort of emissary who could go to Moscow and hopefully work alongside Stalin inside the Kremlin and really find out what was taking place on the day-to-day level of the management of the war and the battles that were taking place, the victories, the losses that were taking place.
So as you say, Roosevelt chooses this extraordinary individual called, I believe it's Averill Harriman, I've been told. Averill Harriman, who is a railroad magnate. He's one of the richest men in America, a multimillionaire. Most unlikely choice, one would think, to be sent into communist Moscow. But Averill has incredible charm. He looks like a Hollywood superstar.
And he's already been in England for the better part of two years running the Lend-Lease program by which America is sending munitions to Britain. So Avril has forged a very, very close relationship with Winston Churchill. He's virtually living in Chequers or in 10 Downing Street in the early years of the war.
And now Roosevelt decides, well, this is the guy I'm going to send to Moscow to see if he can sort of spin the same magic on Stalin that he's spun on Winston Churchill. So after the initial invasion, Avril is sent to Moscow with Churchill's British choice, which is Lord Beaverbrook, newspaper magnate, owner of the Daily Express, again, the ultimate sort of capitalist. It's an
a kind of bizarre mission that is sent to Joseph Stalin. But they arrive in Moscow, they're whisked into the Kremlin. Both these men are somewhat nervous to meet this man whose reputation is hands covered in blood.
And it begins very, very badly. Stalin insults them. He's rude to them. He doesn't want to listen to them. But they realize that Stalin does know exactly what's taking place on the battlefront. He's micromanaging the war, not always in a good way, but he does understand that the Soviet Union is in real danger.
And when he realizes that these two multimillionaires have a direct line to Roosevelt and Churchill and can potentially ship vast quantities of weaponry, of tanks, of Jeeps, of vehicles, of planes, whatever, to the Soviet Union, he sort of pricks up his ears and takes notice. And thus begins, particularly with Avril, a longstanding relationship which will last for the duration of the war
where Averill finds himself in and out of the Kremlin and ultimately based in Moscow, working alongside Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin, and really comes to know Stalin incredibly well. And it's a fascinating his account of dealing with this monster in the Kremlin. Okay, we're going to take a break there. Do join us in part two and hear what Giles has to tell us about Joseph Stalin.
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It's interesting that these very opposed characters, people who you think would have nothing or very little kind of human overlap with Stalin, if you like, fare much better than the first British envoy who was sent there, Sir Stafford Cripps, who was a thoroughgoing socialist.
a teetotaler, a vegetarian, an austere, high-minded figure. So the initial idea was, well, he's sort of closer to the communist way of thinking than anyone else. So presumably they'll like the cut of his chin, but that doesn't turn out to be the case at all, does it? No, Stalin absolutely detested Sir Stafford Crick.
and refused ever to allow him into the Kremlin. And even Molotov, the foreign commissar, refused to see Cripps as well. And at one point, Churchill realizes, well, this is a bit of a problem for us because we have no ambassador who has the voice or the ear of Joseph Stalin. So
So Stafford Cripps is brought home and Lord Beaverbrook, who we've mentioned, he was only on a temporary mission to Joseph Stalin. Now they need a permanent representative who's Churchill's voice, if you like, in Moscow. And they alight on this absolutely fabulous figure, who's one of the sort of heroes, if you like, of my book, which is Archie Clark Kerr.
Now, he is the most unlikely choice of anyone you'd ever think of sending into Stalin's Kremlin. He's a flamboyant, eccentric, maverick bisexual who's the most colourful person possible. He's been ambassador in war-torn China for the last few years. He's an extraordinary individual in the sense that he seems to get on with anyone, particularly
warlords, brigands, anyone who's got a rather unsavory backstory, he seems to get on with them. And so he's sent to Moscow. And within a few weeks, he's in the Kremlin, he's in Stalin's bunker. And the two of them are sort of chatting like they're old mates. They bond over the fact they both are obsessed with pipe smoking.
And so Stalin invites Archie as he's known. Everyone calls him Archie. There's no question of calling him your excellency or he hates formality. He's a very modern character in that sense. And also a very amusing man, isn't he? I think at this point we've got to share with our listeners some of Archie's wit. He was very well known for sending back very irreverent messages, handwritten messages.
to his bosses back in the Foreign Office, giving a sort of character sketch, giving his, in a very sort of free and easy way, his assessment of the situation. But also, from time to time, just little anecdotes to make everyone laugh back at home. There's one that is famous in France
still to this day in foreign office law, which I think we ought to share with the listeners. Don't you, Giles? I do. But I think we should put a little warning here that, you know, for those with sensitive ears, they might want to block out the next 20 seconds or so because, well, it's not meant to be rude, or maybe it is meant to be rude, but it comes across as rude. But I'll read this out. This was...
a letter that Archie Clark Kerr wrote to his old friend Lord Reginald Pembroke. I should just preface this by the fact that Archie Clark Kerr wrote all his letters and memorandums with a quill pen. He used to keep a flock of geese in the embassy garden and whenever his quill broke he'd pluck another quill out of one of these rather protesting geese
and sharpen it off into a nib and write these letters. And this is the one he wrote to Lord Reginald Pembroke. This is in some of the darkest days of the Second World War when he's in Moscow. And he says as follows, he writes, my dear Reggie,
In these dark days, man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from heaven. My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God I do, all the light I can get. But I'm a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean and selfish about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time.
So I propose to share with you a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me that he's called Mustafa Kunt.
We all feel like that Reggie now and then, especially when spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards. It takes a Turk to do that. Classic story, classic story. I have to say, Patrick, that all of Archie's memos and telegrams, even the ones to the foreign office,
they're filled with this sort of stuff. And the Foreign Office, they absolutely loved it. They were in hoots of laughter when his telegrams arrived in Whitehall. And I've got these letters they send to Archie saying, we don't only want gossip, but please send us more. Now, despite all this, you know, kind of laddish banter and all the rest of it, he's a serious diplomat or diplomatist, as he would say. And his talents are really tested to the full when
Churchill comes to visit Stalin for the first time all the way to Moscow in August 1942. Now, again, initially he gets the nasty Stalin treatment. Stalin insults him. And, you know, robust though Churchill is, at a certain point he just can't take anymore. He says to Kerr, I'm not going to. I'm breaking off the visit. I'm going home. I won't be talked to like this. He's insulting me. He's insulting Great Britain.
And Kerr has to intervene, doesn't he, to keep Churchill on the rails, because the consequences of a flounce out like that could have potentially been disastrous, couldn't they? This is a real crisis, one of the first great crisis moments between the Western allies and Stalin. So Stalin, Churchill, as you say, he comes to Moscow in August 1942, hoping to sort of befriend...
his wartime comrade in arms. But Stalin is in a particularly foul mood, and Stalin could, he knew how to hurl out an insult. And he literally hurls out insult after insult at Churchill, including wonderfully barbed comments about, you know, Gallipoli in the First World War being the most stupid, idiotic operation ever undertaken, knowing that Churchill had his fingers all over it, you know. So Churchill was indeed absolutely furious. He said there's
No way I'm staying in Moscow. I'm going back to England. I'm breaking off this relationship. That is the end of the big three wartime alliance. Now, Archie realizes this is a complete point of crisis and Churchill will not be talked out of this decision. Everyone says,
All the figures around him who've come from London with him say, you can't do this. But he won't listen to them. He's in a foul mood. He says, I'm going back to London. And that's the end of the relationship. But Archie is not only has Archie known Churchill for many years, but he's the ultimate sort of charismatic, flattering individual. And he has this incredibly important conversation with Churchill.
At which point, he really persuades Churchill that this is absolutely catastrophic for the war effort, that this is a total disaster. And he has to rethink. And he points out that, you know, Stalin is not like him, this aristocratic, the man of the world, you know, Stalin is this
you know, peasant from Georgia, essentially, with an alcoholic father and wife beater and everything. He said, you've got to lay all that to one side. You've got to go and see Stalin man to man, have a man to man talk. This is a sort of way Archie talks. He says, you've got to go into the Kremlin, just the two of you and an interpreter. And you have to sit down and thrash things out and, you know,
become friends essentially and this after a much begrudging on the part of Churchill he agrees to do that night he goes back into the Kremlin he meets with Stalin with just the two of them and an interpreter and they suddenly get on like a house on fire and the whole wartime relationship this
crucial wartime relationship is at that point back on track. And I think it's important to point out that the importance of these emissaries, that Archie's role was to keep this relationship on track, which was extremely difficult. This was, throughout the war, a fraught relationship between men who really were from completely different worlds and backgrounds and political systems
They were not natural allies. And it took men like Averill Harriman and Archie Clark Kerr to really massage this relationship and make sure that it didn't fall apart, which it did, almost did, on several occasions during the war. So by 1944, early 1944, 80 years ago today-ish,
The alliance is working pretty successfully. You've had the Tehran conference back in November when the big three sit down. They pretty much thrash out the agenda for the remaining years.
phase of the war. Victory is in sight. So D-Day has agreed that there'll be a Russian offensive on the Eastern Front, which will obviously fix German forces in place and improve the chances of success of the invasion in the West. So it's all looking pretty good. But we all know by now that the power dynamic has changed quite a bit, doesn't it? And so when later in the year, victory is
pretty much assured. It's a good outcome, I think we can say, for Stalin. He's got pretty much agreement or at least no opposition to the idea of a Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe.
America has got out of it a kind of post-war scenario where the world lies at their feet in terms of sort of capitalist expansion, if not colonialist expansion. And the real loser in all this is Churchill. Now, Churchill is an emotional figure, or Churchill and the British, should I say. You know, Britain is already clear as exhausting itself in the struggle. It's also apparent that the empire is not going to survive very long after peace begins.
So Churchill's kind of an emotional figure. And I think he does sort of invest quite a lot in what he believed to be a friendship with France.
And it's becoming pretty clear that now he's the junior partner in the trio. He doesn't take this very well. Do you think he ever actually believed that there was more to the relationship than simply a pragmatic bonhomie that was useful at the time and that would just evaporate as soon as those interests have been served or that perhaps Britain might intervene?
his relationship with Stalin might actually benefit Britain in the post-war world. Well, I think it's really interesting to look at what these emissaries are writing about what's taking place on the ground, because they're seeing absolutely everything from an insider's perspective.
And what's fascinating, you mentioned Tehran, which happens on the eve of 1944. So it's a crucial meeting. And it's absolutely fascinating that both Roosevelt and Churchill are sort of vying for the attention of Stalin. They're both trying to be his mate, if you like. And I think that Churchill genuinely thought that he had carved out some sort of friendship with Stalin. It's extraordinary in what he writes about Stalin, that he thought that he could do business with this guy.
Roosevelt is constantly trying to play, become a closer friend of Stalin than Churchill. And so you get this awful sort of competition between the three leaders.
Stalin himself, all the emissaries say, was by far the most effective of the wartime leaders when it came to negotiating, when it came to sort of dividing up the spoils of war. Who was going to get what? As you say, victory was pretty much assured by 1944. They're already thinking of the future and they're thinking of who's going to get what.
And as you're right in saying the Red Army is now steamrolling forwards into Eastern and Central Europe, that Stalin is pretty much assured, he pretty much knows that he's going to get what he wants because the Red Army is already going to be in possession of these territories. So this puts him in an incredibly strong position when it comes to negotiating both
at Tehran in the end of 1943 and Yalta at the beginning of 1945. So yeah, these emissaries, they're very worried when they see Churchill, who they say is showing his age. He's exhausted. He's drinking extremely heavily. One of his aides criticizes him for drinking, as he put it,
bucketfuls of Caucasian champagne. That was at Yalta. Roosevelt was, of course, was a dying man. He was very sick. And by the time of the Yalta conference, he really is a dying man and looks visibly ill.
And in the midst of this, you have Stalin, a bullion, master of his brief. His Red Army is storming into Eastern Europe. He looks likely to get exactly what he wants. Tell us about your own personal feelings about you. You spent a lot of time with these men, haven't you, in your researches? I think we know Churchill fairly well. We know Roosevelt perhaps slightly less well. But we can get an idea of the man, about his personality, his motivations, etc. Most
difficult person to get your head around, remains Stalin, doesn't he? He's almost unknowable to me anyway. Did you feel at the end of your work that you'd actually got a grip on his personality? Well, I certainly discovered a very different Stalin from the one I had lodged in my head, if you like.
You think of this ruthless, murderous dictator who locks his own citizens up in gulag camps, has managed to knock off about 5 million Ukrainians in the famine that his own economic policies have caused. So we know that side of Stalin. Stalin, the hands drenched in blood. What really struck me and really struck both Averell Harriman and Archie Clark Kerr
was that there was a completely different side to Stalin when you saw him in person in his office in the Kremlin, that he was charming. He was courteous. He was well-read. He was master of his brief. This is a man who'd never really left the Soviet Union and yet had an incredible knowledge of the outside world. So he lectured Roosevelt at one point on the caste system in India. And so I think all of them were astonished and they just didn't quite...
quite know how to place him. In fact, Avril Harriman writes this account at the end of his time, his wartime years in Moscow. He said, I simply cannot square the murderous dictator that we all know Stalin to be with the charm and the courtesy that he showed me during my time in Moscow. And this is exactly the case with Archie Clark Kerr as well. He was always courteous. He was always charming. He was always there ready for a conversation. He was witty. He was extraordinarily well-read.
And as Avril said, he was by far the most effective of the three wartime leaders in the sense that he knew what he wanted. He knew how to get it. He was master of his brief and he simply ran circles around Churchill and Roosevelt at the two great wartime conferences of Tehran and Yalta. Fascinating. Thank you so much for joining us today, Giles.
Brilliant book. I urge our listeners to go out and buy it immediately. Thank you very much for having me on. Do join us on Friday when Saul and I will be discussing everything that's going on in Ukraine. Goodbye.