Truman’s decision to send American troops to Korea took the Soviets by surprise, given that all public statements from the U.S. More likely, say experts, is that President Harry S. It’s true that North Korea, a Soviet creation, needed Stalin’s approval to invade the South, but it’s doubtful that Stalin really intended to draw the Americans, a nuclear superpower, into the war. “It undoubtedly does.”īut while Stalin clearly wanted to portray himself as a chess grandmaster playing two steps ahead of his opponents, some historians are skeptical of the dictator’s account. “Does it not give us an advantage in the global balance of power ?” wrote Stalin. The Korean War (1950-1953) was the first armed conflict of the Cold War era, and historians agree that communist North Korea would not have invaded South Korea in 1950 without the approval of Joseph Stalin, the ruthless and autocratic leader of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1953.īut what was Stalin hoping to gain from a war in Korea? According to a letter dictated by Stalin himself months after the 1950 invasion, and discovered in Soviet archives in 2005, one of the main reasons that Stalin backed a communist invasion of South Korea was to “entangle” the United States in a costly war in East Asia and “distract” America’s attention away from Eastern Europe, Stalin’s real concern.
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