D. N. Pritt

One essential piece of background is necessary before you read this book -- the author, Denis Pritt, was a well-known barrister and a Labour Party M.P. He was also one of the foremost apologists for the Stalin regime active in England in the 1930s. He was regarded by no less than George Orwell as one being in this class. Among other things, he defended the legality and integrity of the Moscow Great Purge Trials of the late 1930s, which he attended. With this in mind, a reading of "Must the War Spread?" gets some context. In this book, Pritt attacks the legitimacy of the Finnish government, and more or less uses a "tu quoque" argument against the UK, noting its use of client states and interventions (e.g., Greece during World War I) to justify Russia's invasion of Finland in the fall of 1939. This book came out in February of 1940, and a main theme of Pritt's was that there was an effort to "switch the war" from Germany to Russia. Granted, not a fabulous theme; it shows up in at least one David Low cartoon of the era, for example. But Pritt isn't terribly convincing in his arguments. Moreover, his arguments about the relative innocuous nature of Russia's dealings with the Baltic states would be rendered moot a few months after this book came out, when they were annexed. Pritt was thrown out of the Labour Party for his pro-Russian views; interestingly, he was not re-admitted after Barbarossa started. If you are familiar with events of the 1939-1940 period, and some earlier events (like the Metro-Vickers trial, here oddly referred to as "Metro-Vick"), the base metal beneath the gleaming surface becomes apparent. Recommended only if you want to know what the pro-Russian argument was as of 1939-1940.… (meer)