World War II
During the period of the operation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Johnson continued to support the Soviet line despite the fact that Britain was at war with Germany and he was accused of spreading defeatist propaganda. However, in line with the Soviet line, he supported the war effort after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, although his MI5 file reports that it was judged "undesirable for the Dean of Canterbury to be allowed to lecture to troops".
Johnson was arguably the most prominent of a number of Western church leaders during the Second World War, which is said to have persuaded Joseph Stalin to restore the Moscow Patriarchate. Stalin was successfully convinced that such a move would improve his relations with the Western Allies. "It was not the vanity of a former seminary dropout that moved the Soviet leader," Dmitri Volkogonov concluded, "but rather pragmatic considerations in relation with the Allies."
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