Today is May 9th, which Russia and some other countries of the Former Soviet Union celebrate as the end of the Second World War. (The Western Allies signed Germany's unconditional surrender May 8 but Stalin insisted on a separate signing the following day).
Since it was the only thing the USSR did right (more or less) in 70 years, and really Russia since, Putin is using "The Great Patriotic War" to build Russian support for nationalism and militarism. There is an official version which must not be disputed and archives are kept closed to make sure it is not. The article linked below dispells the 6 major myths spouted by the Kremlin.
One of the big myths is who started the war. Two books by Victor Suvorov shed some not uncontroversial light on it:
Victor Suvorov is a former
Soviet-Union army officer who fled in 1978 to England, where he worked as a
teacher and adviser for news agencies. Author of a number of bestsellers
about the history of the World War II, the Soviet Army special operations
troops and military intelligence, and the Red Army, he is one of the historians
who believe that Hitler started the war against Russia to prevent Stalin
attacking Germany first. (Goodreads)
The Chief Culprit is an
expanded version of Ice-Breaker. The
pros and cons of his thesis that Stalin was responsible for starting WWII and
that Hitler's invasion of USSR was to preempt Stalin's invasion of Europe can
be found here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet. He is
beginning to gather some support for his ideas. it is natural that he would be
resisted as historians have pretty much stuck to the Soviet line that
"they were not ready, Stalin was incompetent, etc". Some Russian
historians are certainly opposed to Suvorov and apparently an Israeli one as
well. One
of the criticisms is that Suvorov doesn't cite his sources. But as he said,
forget the documents, simply look at what was done and weigh it as for attack
or defense.
If Hitler had
delayed the invasion of the Soviet Union by two weeks, the Soviet Army would
have been on the English Channel by September. Europe would today be speaking
Russian and look much like East Germany prior to unification. That is the
conclusion one draws from Suvorov's book.
Anyone with an
interest in the history of the Second World War knows the general narrative of
the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Hitler fooled Stalin into signing
the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, bribing him with the secret protocols dividing up
Eastern Europe.
This allowed Hitler to fight on one front only without having
to watch his back and would deal with Russia later. The Germans were so
successful in overrunning Western Europe, North Africa, Norway, and the Balkans,
that Hitler decided to risk invading the Soviet Union. Destruction of the USSR
was his overriding goal all along (see Mein Kampf) - starving 1/3 of all Slavs, enslaving 1/3
and driving 1/3 behind the Urals.
The Red Army was
massed along the border with Germany with stockpiles of munitions, aircraft,
tanks, etc. The Red Army was badly led, Stalin having killed off all the
experienced officers in the 1937-38 purges, and did not have time to prepare
defenses. Stalin was convinced Hitler would not attack and disregarded warnings
of the pending German invasion, from among other sources Churchill and Sorge, a
spy in the German Embassy in Japan, who gave the exact date of the invasion.
The Red Army was
caught totally unprepared by the German attack and collapsed in utter
confusion, though they fought bravely. It took several weeks for the Soviet Army
to get organized and begin to provide any kind of solid defense. They were not
helped by Stalin who insisted that there should be no retreat and no territory
lost.
Originally
scheduled for April, Barbarossa was delayed until late June while the Germans
bailed out Mussolini in the Balkans and reinforced the Romanian oilfields.
Hitler was convinced that the war with the Soviet Union would be over in 4
months. However, even though in the first few weeks and months of the war, the
Nazi's captured over 4 million Red Army soldiers and destroyed or captured
thousands of aircraft and tanks, and millions of tonnes of munitions, they were
caught by winter at the gates of Moscow.
This is the
accepted story from German sources and official Soviet sources. For some
reason, no one questioned the official Soviet sources and no one asked the
obvious question, "What the hell were the Russians doing between Sept 1939
and June 1941 and more importantly, what were they thinking?"
We know the Soviet
Union supplied food and raw materials to the Germans. We know in September 1939
they invaded and annexed eastern Poland, fought the Winter War with Finland,
then in 1940 invaded and annexed the Baltics as per the agreement with Germany.
They also invaded and annexed Bessarabia which was not in the agreement and
which was too close for comfort to the Ploiesti oilfields, Germany's only oil
supply.
It is Suvorov's
belief that it was Stalin who fooled Hitler into facing west and that Hitler
was finished the moment he turned his back on the USSR. Stalin's logic goes
back to the very beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Socialism was
not supposed to be limited to one country, it was to be worldwide. After
Russia, the country most ready for revolution was Germany immediately after the
Great War. But by 1920, when the Russian civil war ended, it was too late. The
Red Army was beaten back at Warsaw in 1922 and the border established which held to 1939.
Stalin realized
that WWII was essential to the spread of Socialism; for Capitalist Europe
(Germany, France, and Britain), to destroy themselves. That is why the USSR
began helping Germany rearm, contrary to the Treaty of Versailles, long before
Hitler came on the scene. It is also why Stalin encouraged the rise of Hitler because he recognized his usefulness to the Socialist cause. Stalin referred to
Hitler as the "Icebreaker" who would open the way for a Socialist
conquest of Europe.
So when Zhukov
signaled Stalin in August that the Red Army was in position to annihilate the
Japanese Army North at Khalkhin-Gol (I was there in 1995) on the Mongolian-Manchurian border and
ensure Russia did not have to fight on two fronts, Molotov signed the infamous
agreement with Molotov.
As a
Russian Military Intelligence Officer Suvorov had access to documents that other historians did
not or the significance of which they did not understand. Suvorov describes in
well-documented detail what the Red Army was doing and what they were thinking.
He lists which officers commanded which armies, division, battalions, where and
when they were stationed, what their training and equipment was. He asks many
questions to which he then applies his knowledge of military strategy and
tactics to work out possible answers.
IF the Soviet Union
was determined to stay neutral and stay out of the war and their only concern
was to defend themselves against German aggression then WHY did they:
- Move their border
up against Germany, rather than leaving a buffer?
- Abandon and destroy
the Stalin-Line of defensive fortresses stretching from north to south, which
at least would have provided a fallback line of defense?
- Train a million
paratroopers and establish a marine landing invasion force stationed on the
Danube?
-
Train and organize a First Echelon army of millions and secretly move it up
against the Border with Germany and Romania?
- Train and organize
a Second Echelon army and secretly begin moving it towards the German border?
- Build roads and
railroads towards the German border and use them to move troops and to
stockpile millions of tonnes of fuel, munitions, etc. within 50 km of the border?
- Build airstrips
within 40 to 50 km of the border and part aircraft wingtip to wingtip?
- Train pilots not in
air to air combat but in air-to-ground bombing and strafing?
- Spend months of
detailed planning but have no defense plans?
These are
activities of an OFFENSIVE Army, not a defensive army. In other words, Stalin
was NOT waiting for Hitler, he was going to attack. Suvorov calculated the date
of July 6, 1941. Sunday morning was a favoured Soviet attack time. And
according to the railway schedule, the Second Echelon armies would begin
arriving at the front July 10, which meant they could actually be unloaded on
the other side of the border on German territory. On July 6, the disasters
which happened to the Red Army would have happened to the German army.
By May and early
June 1941, the actions of both armies on both sides of the border were mirror
images of each other. Both sides were well aware of the build-up of the other
side. Why didn't Stalin believe the warnings? He had no reason to trust
Churchill whose very survival depended on opening of an Eastern Front. Nor did
he trust Sorge who had been "recalled to Moscow" months previous but
refused, knowing what was waiting for him when he got there.
Stalin did trust
his own intelligence officers who were certain an attack would not be launched
even if Hitler were foolish enough to want to fight on two fronts. They were
monitoring two critical items which they knew Germany MUST have before an
attack on the USSR: winter clothing and winter lubricants. Hitler's hubris sunk
Stalin.
Suvorov's claims
have been disputed as revisionist. The mythology of the Great Patriotic War is
that the Soviet Union did not want to fight but was invaded without cause by the German
aggressor. Most of the documentation needed to prove Suvorov's version has of
course been destroyed, in particular, the detailed plans which every commander
along the front had in a red envelope in a safe which was to be opened on
command from Moscow. But there are enough clues left to indicate that Hitler
attacked when he did to preempt what he knew was coming and that it was just in time.
Until I find a
specific detailed rebuttal, I am inclined to go with Suvorov.
