Despite this, Stalin played a vital, if often unappreciated, role in the creation of the Jewish state. At the United Nations, where the vote on independence was going to be close, he had his Ambassador Andrei Gromyko give an impassioned speech in 1947 on the terrible fate suffered by Jews in the war and their need to have an independent state. Stalin then organized the Eastern European Communist states to vote for the creation of Israel as a the decisive bloc that provided the two-thirds majority needed for victory in the UN vote of November 29, 1947.

In 1948 he allowed the Skoda factory in Czechoslovakia to ship desperately needed heavier weapons to the struggling new Israeli army. Of course, he also sold them to Syria, but Israeli intelligence interrupted the flow of weapons in Italy and brought them safely to Israel. David Ben-Gurion once said that without the Soviet arms the state would never have survived the onslaught of five Arab armies.

The obvious question is why Stalin, despite his anti-Semitic nature and statements, did these things? What did he hope to gain, and why shortly thereafter did he turn against Israel?