Geoffrey Roberts

Geoffrey Roberts (born 1952) is a British historian of the Second World War. He specializes in Soviet diplomatic and military history of the Second World War. He is a professor of modern history at University College Cork in Ireland and was formerly head of the School of History at UCC.

Geoffrey Roberts was born in Deptford, south London in 1952. His father worked as a labourer at the local power station, while his mother worked as a cleaner and tea lady. A pupil of Addey and Stanhope Grammar School, he left aged 16 and started his working life as a clerk with the Greater London Council. In the 1970s, he was an International Relations undergraduate at North Staffordshire Polytechnic and postgraduate research student at the London School of Economics. In the 1980s, he worked in the Education Department of NALGO, the public sector trade union.

Roberts is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and teaches History and International Relations at University College Cork, Ireland. He has won many academic awards and prizes, including a Fulbright Scholarship to Harvard University and a Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellowship. He is a regular commentator on history and current affairs for British and Irish newspapers and a contributor to the History News Service, which syndicates articles to American media outlets. He has many radio and TV appearances to his credit and has acted as an historical consultant for documentary series such as Simon Berthon's highly praised Warlords, broadcast in 2005.

Roberts has come under criticism from Andrew Bacevich, who claims in a review in The National Interest that Roberts is overly sympathetic towards Stalin, taking the word of the Soviet leadership uncritically in his writings, thus presenting a biased view and significantly undermining the usefulness of his scholarship. According to Jonathan Haslam, Roberts relies too heavily on edited Soviet archival documents and goes too far in his conclusions, therefore making his accounts somewhat one sided and by no means telling a full story.

He returned to academic life in the 1990s following the publication of his acclaimed first book The Unholy Alliance: Stalin’s Pact with Hitler, 1989.
Many books and articles followed:

• West German Politics, 1972.
• The Unholy Alliance: Stalin’s Pact with Hitler, 1989. ISBN 0253351170
• The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War, 1995. ISBN 0312126034
• The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1945-1991, 1998. ISBN 0415192463
• Victory at Stalingrad: The Battle That Changed History, 2002. ISBN 0582771854
• Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953, Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN 0300112041
• Molotov: Stalin's Cold Warrior, 2012. ISBN 9781574889451
• Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov, 2012. ISBN 9781400066926