 Historian Werner Maser stated that "the claim that the Soviet Union was at the time threatened by Hitler, as Stalin supposed... is a legend, to whose creators Stalin himself belonged.In Maser's view, "neither Germany nor Japan were in a situation [of] invading the USSR even with the least perspective of success," which must not have been known to Stalin.Carr further stated that for a long time, the primary motive of Stalin's sudden change of course was assumed to be the fear of German aggressive intentions.