Did Germany Prempt Russian attack?

The majority of those who looked at evidence from the Russian archives say no, the Soviet Union was not planning an immediate attack on Germany. But even if it was this was not an excuse for the German attack on the Soviet Union, and wasn't why the Germans attacked in any case. Hitler intended to carve out an empire in Eastern Europe whether the Soviets had anything planned or not.

tim gueguen 101867

That may be true. However the question is what 'immediate' means. From Hitler's point of view it seemed probable that Stalin would not allow Germany to defeat the British Empire. When Stalin signed non-aggression treaty with Germany in 1939 his motivation was to bring the 'capitalistic' powers Germany on one side and Britain and France on the other side into a war against each other. Obviously he wanted those powers to burn out their ressources in a long war. At the end the Soviet Union would have been left as the only relevant power in Europe. With the unexpected German victory in France this strategy had failed and now Stalin had to fear any further German advance. So he changed his strategy and began to obstruct Germanies political interests - e.g. in the Balkans or in Finnland. This behaviour became obvious during Molotov's visit in Berlin in November 1940. Therefore - and having in mind the large inforcements of the Soviet dislocations at the western borders of the Soviet Union - it was quite realistic for Hitler to assume that Stalin would launch an attack in the near future - e.g. in 1942.

Regards,

You've got this absolutely backwards. Apart from his ideological motives (which were the major driving force behind Barbarossa anyway, not military considerations) Hitler later in the war militarily justified the attack on the Soviet Union as a move designed to undercut the British, not the other way around. He stated that without the Soviet Union, England would collapse, especially after December 1941 when he expected the US to be fully occupied in the Pacific dealing with the Japanese first. According to David Glantz in his book on Barbarossa, as well as his book _Stumbling Colossas_, not to mention any number of other reputable books by scholars of the Third Reich, Hitler truly believed that the major reason Great Britain was resistant to his advances both politically and militarily was based upon a hope that they could get the Soviet Union into the war and cause Germany to have to fight the Soviets on the Eastern front. Thereby he'd either leave England alone until the Soviet Union could be defeated, or be forced to fight a two front war. Given that choice, the British believed he would not choose to fight a two front war due to his statements that fighting a two front war was one of the military mistakes that harmed Germany in WW I prior to the Russian revolution in 1917. Interestingly enough, Stalin also believed this idea and this is why he refused to believe reports from the British in 1941 that a German offensive was coming. Stalin going back to his days as a revolutionary in 1917 and during the Russian Civil War, distrusted the British (and Churchill personally for his actions in the British intervention) and believed Churchill wanted to use the blood of the Soviet Union to both save England as well as to eliminate Bolshevism.

When Stalin signed non-aggression

It is true that given his ultimate preference that Stalin wanted the Western powers to basically annihilate each other. However, it does not follow that he was willing in 1941 or 1942 to use his armed forces to create this condition rather than simply waiting until whatever territory he could get became available because the power controlling it didn't occupy it any longer. The available evidence actually indicates the exact opposite. While it was not offically dismantled until 1943, by 1941, Stalin had effectively dismantled the Comintern, the organization charged with exporting the revolution. With this effective dismantling of the Comintern, the Soviet Union no longer had an ideological body with the aim of exporting the revolution and Stalin did not have any intention to create a new one. He'd already declared by the 1930s that socialism prevailed in the Soviet Union and thuoroughly advocated the new ideological idea of socialism in one country, therefore there need not be a socialist revolution in the rest of Europe because socialism (or the Stalinist form of socialism, as opposed to the Marxist/Leninist version) had already prevailed in the Soviet Union. See Glantz's book _Stumbling Collossas_ as well as Gabriel Gorodetsky's book _Grand Delusion_ or any number of good books on Stalinism like those by Sheila Fitzpatrick or David L. Hoffmann. There are also a number of good articles on this in academic journals like the article by Teddy J. Uldricks 'The Icebreaker Controversy: Did Stalin Plan to Attack Hitler?' in a 1999 edition of the Slavic Review. Furthermore, if he was planning to attack Germany in 1941 or 1942, how does one explain the incredible appeasment by Stalin? He'd gone to great lengths to increase deliveries of raw materials to Germany and showed no signs of slowing down these deliveries. In fact, every time he was asked for more by Germany, he'd order his governemnt to give it to them regardless of how much they had to rape their own population and cause economic hardship for them to do it. Stalin was, in no uncertain terms, afraid of the German war machine. One must also remember that throughout his rule, like most dictators, Stalin's overriding concern was keeping himself in power, which usually meant he didn't care how many Soviet people he had to kill to do it. Given this and a, at best, very humble respect of the German war machine that had rolled over the rest of Europe, even a half-baked ideological logic for Stalin to take on Hitler isn't there. Stalin furthermore didn't understand the ideas of Lebensraum and Hitler's already well known plans (to everybody but Stalin anyway) to invade the Soviet Union sooner or later to gain territory, subjugate the Slavic peoples into slavery and eliminate the Jewish population. Nor did Stalin understand that Hitler fully belived that National Socialism as Hitler conceived of it was incompatable with Stalinist socialism and democracy both.

There's a problem with this idea however, and it's reality. Hitler knew much more about what was going on among the Soviet armed forces than you're giving him credit for, and also in many cases more than Stalin knew (or wished to know because reality didn't conform to the little unrealistic box he'd created for himself.) This is where the thesis of a Soviet 'immediate' attack on Germany falls apart completely because it assumes things that just aren't factually true. On paper the Soviets had a large army, but in reality this army was rather a joke and the Soviets and Hitler both knew it. It was understaffed, under trained, under supplied and just generally not much of an army. It could really be argued that by mid-1941, the Soviet army was in worse shape than they were in 1914, the only thing the Soviets had going for them by 1941 was a lot of available bodies to get shot at. It also was not in an offensive posture, nor was it in any good defensive posture either, Stalin would not allow it because it might provoke Hitler to respond because he felt threatened. Furthermore, documents of the time absolutely destroy any clam by V. Suvorov (aka Vladimir Rezun a former KGB officer who defected to the West in 1978. Rezun is the major author who asserts this half-baked thesis because he's got an ideological grudge against Stalin as well as the Soviet system entirely) that the Soviet army was as big of a threat to anybody. Documents, especially those pertaining to the war in Finland, refer to general sloppiness and of troops that are not well trained at all as well as major supply problems. This is hardly a picture of a Soviet monster war machine. There also were no tanks fitted with regular wheels ready to fly down the autobahn as Rezun asserts (without any evidence I might add.) Rezun also in this thesis declares himself a military strategic and tactical expert. He decides what would have been the best defensive posture for the Soviets in 1941, and when they don't follow it, he uses this as 'evidence' of a Soviet offensive. He also somehow declares that an army must be in an offensive or defensive posture and they're mutually exclusive, which is simply insane. The closest the Soviet army got to an offensive military posture was a plan by Zhukov in May 1941 to respond to the German invasion he knew was inevitable (because he saw real intelligence reports as opposed to the ones Stalin got that were tailored by his intelligence apparatus to conform to what he already believed) with a short counter offensive based upon Russian military theory Zhukov learned growing up. This offensive was not designed to take the war into Germany, merely disrupt the German invasion in its early stages and cause confusion and general havoc for the German command. This confusion would then allow the Soviets enough time to prepare their defenses in depth and repel the invasion. The plan was possibly discussed by Zhukov on May 14 with Stalin, but there is no concrete evidence of this. The available archival evidence however does suggest that it got no further than Gen. Vituitin on May 19th, was dismissed out of hand and never even read by Stalin. The plan was located by Gorodetsky in an archive in Russia, and it bears no signatures of anybody higher than Zhukov. In addition to the works I've mentioned above, there are also other fine works that completely discredit this thesis, most notably Gorodetsky's _The Icebreaker Myth_. The real reason this thesis even exists and is popular both in Germany and the former Soviet Union is one that underpins most conspiracy theories, psychological desires by certain people to believe it either in order to in some way rehabilitate the German invasion of the Soviet Union, or to further discredit Stalin as an evil man (which he was, and didn't need to invade Germany to deserve that reputation) that led the Soviet Union into ruin.

Regards,

There was a book written just after the Cold War that suggested that the Soviets were on the brink of invading Europe. But most of the evidence has been refuted.

The conclusion for most historians today is that the Soviets were either deployed in their peace-time barracks well away from the front lines or set up near the Nazi borders in anticipation of an attack. The Soviets had spent years setting up border defences and strongpoints on their original border, but Stalin believed that moving units further west would give them more time to deploy in case the Germans went on the offensive, slowing them down until the rest of the army could react. These plans didn't survive the reality of Barbarossa.

There ARE studies in plans about an invasion of Europe, just as the US army has invasion plans of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lybia and even France and Russia, but this doesn't mean that the US army actually intends to invade them. All armies make plans, and some are much more hypothetical than others, but are not an indication of the actual intentions of the USA.

Stalin probably planned to attack the Nazis some day, but he was still building his forces and letting them recover from the purges and such an attack was probably many months and years away. There would have been a fight sooner or later, Hilter, simply was much faster at implementing his plans.

It's only the rabid anti-communists that still staunchly support the pre-emptive German strike theory.

(snip lots of good arguments with which I agree)

...which was pretty much Churchill's intention.

He did intend to use Soviet blood (in the guise of a German invasion of the USSR) to save Britain itself.

Eliminating Bolshevism was considered nice to have but a second order priority.

More: USSR would be seen as _legitimate_ ruler of territories up to Spain. Just like it after all ended regarded as legitimate ruler of Central and Eastern Europe, which it was not before WWII.

The ultimate goal of war is political: war is but means to an end. If you come as 'liberator from Nazi oppression' as Stalin, you're not questioned (or at least not as strongly and not for decades) as occupant after the war even if you committed purges and crimes on 'liberated' territories.

That's much like saying Hitler did not support Nazi ideology bc he slaughtered 'brown shirts'.

Soviet Union did support communism: i.e. tolerated only its own model of it. Just like any totalist ideology: it doesn't tolerate mutation, dissent or another version.

Wrong on this count. Eliminating other flavors of commie ideology (e.g. like those dreamed of by Trotsky) doesn't mean opposition to commie ideology, only the tolerance of the only true version - their own.

No ideological statement in communism can be taken at the face value. Economically and socially communism is utterly divorced from reality, so nothing it says can be taken literally. This is akin to thinking that Catholic simply has to believe that the world was created in literally seven days, bc Bible says so. This is rather gross oversimplification and so is your argument.

Stalin's argument very well could be simply a tool in political argument of those stupid communists who expected world takeover immediately, now. Bc they feel like it, and the socialism is inevitable result of 'laws of motion of history, ya know', so implicitly 'nothing can stop us'. Stalin was realistic enough to understand this was nonsense, but as there's no reason in politics, but support, emotion, speculation and illusion, you can't count on rational argument being the most effective one in political terms (rather the opposite is true I'd say). Really, you take a single piece of the puzzle from a million-piece puzzle and you draw false conclusions from that single piece. It's called 'fallacy of composition' I think.

To make them dependent on it and then cut it off before the attack.

That's what bureaucratic routine does: it does not follow grand strategic thinking, it takes what is available and takes credit for that. Line of least resistance. This is fatal during and before war effort.

Sometimes you can hold off delivery and just before attack send the large 'burst' of them to clog enemy's rail lines to add to the confusion and problems of the enemy.

Remember that at the same time he was getting huge supply of industrial products he needed in return. German officials even complained to their superiors about how 'unreasonably large' are Soviet demands for those.

A factory equipped with German machinery is going to work for many years. The raw materials used up by Germans are just gone. So this strenghened Soviets more than Germans. That's not growing absolute advantage over Germans, but it's getting relative advantage. That's still a very desireable result.

It's there in economic logic of communism (strictly speaking the lack of it), not in Hitler's Germany. I have posted elsewhere on econ logic of war communism. Communism needs war to survive. It cannot improve in efficiency except when in conquest. If it's not in process of conquering other countries, it degenerates. Which is what happened.

The first translation of Mein Kampf was made into Russian on specific order of Stalin (again, this is Suvorov's claim), so this is not very convincing argument.

Well, I'd like to hear about sources of such claims bc nothing I have read indicates this was actually the situation.

The exercises before WWII have demonstrated that Red Army was not in good shape indeed. In addition war in Spain demonstrated problems with Soviet equipment. So how could Stalin not know that? The fact it wasn't in good shape didn't mean Stalin did not try (and eventually he did succeed after all) to make it effective.

I really do not know what facts drive you to such conclusions.

So which was it: did Stalin not believe Hitler could attack him, so he obviously could not feel very threatened by it, or did he believe in it and that's why he felt threatened?

Which was true of basically all armies before WWII. Nothing else could be expected: Germans initially had pathetic tanks (there's a good argument that German army was made superb in quality by accident of Weimar Treaty limiting its early size so only the best candidates were accepted into army), Brits learned how to fight on land only in North Africa, America had about 400 quasi-tanks total and Soviets army was at the moment not the best in the world either. Even Nazies fighting in Spain has demonstrated lots in otherwise excellent Luftwaffe equipment and tactics was wrong (an action was taken and the problems were corrected). Anything any organization ever learns is learning and improvement in process really. No process, no war, no improvement. Even with contemporary analysis and intelligence apparatus this is true: e.g. theoretical studies of F-16 have indicated it would perform best in the role of air-defence fighter (which is different from air-superiority fighter) while practice has demonstrated beyond doubt it performs best in the role of ground attack plane. If this is true today, with all the stats and computers and analysts, how could this be better before WWII, and if you don't have the reliable knowledge, how can you take action to improve the organization? You can't, so you do what you can: you accept imperfect organization and try to make what is possible and practical to improve it.

Really, what you wrote is a strawman argument.

Actually, Suvorov has very good argument for that: this is the typical problem of how to make your mobilization effective while not alerting the enemy to it. It may look nice on paper 'let's declare mobilization and just fight the enemy', bugt it is unrealistically simpleminded approach. The complicated reality makes it a harder problem: getting huge initial advantage in doing mobilization faster than the enemy.

He claims that the answer was to make mobilization as concealed as possible. By the time it is detected by the enemy, attacking side is already well under way in terms of mobilization so the enemy can be caught with their pants down. Funny that it was Hitler who got this part right in practice without theory.

Up to some time only (1938 IIRC). Then they stopped. Why?

Without defenses built continously for almost a decade? Not a very good idea. This would just make a lot of cannon fodder. Not very effective in slowing Germans down. It's not a hard conclusion to come to and the practice has demonstrated that.

They're not. But they are part of preparations in the event it WAS the action to take. It's a necessary condition of conquest but not satisfactory one. But the same argument of yours does not prove that there was no intent of attacking Germany.

Ad hominem.

In the spring of 1941 the Soviets quickly moved more and more divisions towards their western border. If that move took place in anticipation of a German attack or in preparation of a Soviet attack has still to be investigated.

Attacking an enemy whom you expect to attack in the next months or years - isn't it that exactly what is called a preemptive strike?

Regards,

<snip>

Not really.

Its just more of his unsupported conjecture.

And a ridiculously self-contradicting one at that.

The even more complicated reality is that the Germans were the ones with the huge initial advantage in mobilization, having mobilized armed forces with a total strength of over seven million men, and then given them the experience of two victorious mechanized campaigns. Even more, on 18 December 1940, Hitler ordered tthe German Armed Forces to be prepared to attack the USSR by 15 May 1941. 'Suvorov' claims that Stalin planned to attack in early July 1941.

Please tell us all what advantage Stalin would think he would gain by preparing the Red Army for an attack on an enemy two months <after> the date that enemy had been ordered to be prepared to attack the USSR, and about eleven months <after> the Germans had started planning for Operation Barbarossa..

How was the enemy to be 'caught with their pants down' by an attack occuring <two months> after the date by which they had been ordered to be prepared to initiate hostilities themselves?

The claim you are making simply fails, because it postulates that there is some chance of taking the Germans unprepared <two months> after their forces had been ordered to be ready to attack the USSR.

Oh, and Gorodetsky shows that the Soviets were aware of the Barbarossa directive within a week of its being signed. So thell us what possibility might Stalin think there would be of catching the Germans 'with their pants down' in July when they knew the German Armed Forces had been ordered to be ready to attack the USSR by 15 May?

1939. They also transferred weapons from the Stalin Line fortifications on the 1938 border to the new fortifications being built on the 1941 border.

Many of these defenses were retained, and were defended in 1941.

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Stalin spilled 1000 times more Soviet blood than Churchill did. It's quite typical that a politician from the land of X wants to spare his country and to use other lands. So Churchill was a typical politician. Stalin was probably the second criminal in the human history (the first was Mao-Ze-Dong) even if limit our discussion to crimes against Soviet citizens.