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In the third volume of his Second World War, now appearing serially in LIFE and the New York Times, Historian Winston Churchill reports a conversation he had with Joe Stalin in 1944. Stalin was much interested in Churchill's account of Rudolf Hess's flight in 1941 from Germany to Britain, but Stalin plainly believed that it was somehow part of a British-German plot to get together in an attack on Russia. When Churchill insisted that he had told all he knew of the Hess flight, Stalin was still incredulous. Churchill huffed: "When I make a statement of facts within my knowledge, I expect it to be accepted." Stalin only grinned knowingly. "There are lots of things," he said, "that happen even here in Russia which our secret service do not necessarily tell me."

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