Sir Winston Churchill on Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin:

“It was a great stroke of luck for Russia that in the years of its hardest trials the country was led by the genius and unshakeable commander Stalin. He was the most outstanding personality, one who suited the fickle and harsh times in which his whole life unfolded. Stalin was a man of extraordinary energy and unbending will, sharp, tough and merciless in conversation, a man to whom even I, brought up here in the British Parliament, could offer no answer. Above all, Stalin had a great sense of humour and sarcasm and the gift of grasping ideas exactly. This power in him was so great that he seemed unsurpassed among the leaders of states in all times and among all peoples. Stalin made the greatest impression on us. He possessed a deep, utterly panic-free, logically reasoned wisdom. He was an invincible master of finding a way out of the most hopeless situation in difficult moments… He was an extraordinarily complex personality. He built an enormous empire and made it subject to himself. He was a man who destroyed his enemy with his own enemy. Stalin was the greatest dictator, without equal in the world, who took Russia with a wooden plough and left it with atomic weapons.”