Well, Eoghan Harris in yesterday's Sunday Independent says Stalin never said any such thing.
In his critique of the Pope, Fintan made a mistake of attribution when he wrote: "John Paul himself was the catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet imperium, providing an ironic answer to Stalin's favourite question about how many divisions the Pope could muster."Could he really be right? Is this most used quote from the past week actually a fabrication?
Stalin said no such thing. But Fintan is not at fault. Winston Churchill is the flawed source. Following him, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations wrongly attributes the saying to Stalin. In fact it is a corruption of Napoleon's reply to his envoy to Rome, who had asked him how to treat the Pope: "Treat him as if he had two hundred thousand men."
