Russian Plans for Offensive War? Redux!

[John Kettler]

I've drawn a lot of flak for supporting the highly controversial case presented by GRU defector Viktor Suvorov, true name Vladimir Rezun, that Stalin had his forces structured to, and planned to attack, Germany, but Hitler beat him to the punch. I've previously provided video of a presentation he gave at the Woodrow Wilson Institute, providing just some of the key points in support.

While hunting for that vexed vid of Stalin's coverup of the real Russian losses in the Battle of Berlin, I came across this useful analysis of the pros and cons of the Russian plans to attack Germany case, with evidence ranging from period speeches, internal policy statements, statements by senior commanders involved and direct testimony from high ranking Russian military eyewitnesses who were present when Stalin explicitly stated the Non Aggression Pact with Germany was a smokescreen behind which he was gearing up to attack Germany. They confirm what Swiss intelligence had separately obtained and had gone public with. The article runs the gamut from grand strategy to the highly revealing positioning and strength of Russian forces, down to how many training hours the Russian tank drivers had.

(Not a link)

Stalin's Secret War Plans

Why Hitler Invaded the Soviet Union, by Richard Tedor

The case for the Suvorov scenario is presented, and Icebreaker, as well as a separate Suvorov article, are repeatedly cited and footnoted, but the real meat of the argument lies elsewhere, as shown above. The Russian attack scenario is frankly presented as the revisionist view, and the article goes into detail to show that David Glantz, in his Stumbling Colossus, unearthed considerable new evidence showing the Russians weren't ready to attack. American professor Richard Reese also wades in on the Russian unpreparedness side of the argument. Recent Russian and German historiography is addressed, and some telling points are made about the limits and brief window of availability of the Russian archives, coupled with the call for the U.S., U.K. and Russia to declassify their records from the period. Mr. Tedor refrains from drawing any conclusion. He considers the issue unresolved and seeks more information.

NOTE: After doing some checking, I fully recognize that Mr. Tedor's views, on this and other matters, including his well-reviewed on Amazon new book on Hitler, Hitler's Revolution, are highly controversial and that the publication in which the article first appeared, The Barnes Review, is outright anathema to some. Since I prefer facts, dates, documents, eyewitness testimony and informed scholarly and military commentary over polemics and rushes to judgment, I'd ask that the first five items be the topic of any subsequent discussion, as opposed to diatribes having nothing whatever to do the evidence presented for consideration.

For the record, I've not had the chance to explore the cited German sources, have read several books by Glantz but not the one cited, haven't read professor Richard Reese's book, have read a few articles by Suvorov, seen the aforementioned vid and read what he said on Stalin's attack plans in snippets in his other books. I've not read Icebreaker, which, last I looked, was only in Russian.

I believe we now have a range of broadly sourced new to most material from which we may obtain new perspectives and, perhaps, reach some reasonable conclusions as to what Stalin did or didn't plan re attacking Germany, what was or wasn't done to implement it, and whether it was or wasn't militarily feasible.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Michael Emrys]

Personally, I have no doubt that Stalin intended to go to war with Germany at the first opportune moment. But I think that he fully realized that the first opportune moment was not due to arrive in 1941. First of all, the Red Army was in the midst of restructuring and modernizing. The war with Finland had been militarily very disappointing and revealed many weaknesses in the existing service. Secondly, an examination of relations between the two countries reveals that Stalin bent over backwards to avoid arousing German anxieties and hostility, including letting Germany slide on payments for the considerable supply of oil and other strategic materials the USSR was providing. Thirdly, when Zhukov and other generals urged a pre-emptive attack, Stalin turned thumbs down. I think Stalin meant to go to war, sure, but was in no hurry to do so.

Michael

[John Kettler]

Michael Emrys,

Thank you for addressing the issues raised. I appreciate this.

Your characterization of the disastrous, internationally humiliating war with tiny Finland as "militarily very disappointing," in my view, utterly eclipses Beatty's famous British grade understatement after losing two battlecruisers in rapid succession: "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today."

Well phrased, sir!

In Clark's Battle of the Tanks: Kursk 1943, he flat out says that all the material, minerals, oil, cotton and food Stalin shipped to Hitler right up until the war began were absolutely vital to Germany's ability to wage war. All those goodies carried the German war effort to some point beyond the summer of 1941.

Speaking of the Clark book...While an excellent read which is giving me quite the education on loads of stuff on the Eastern Front, I'm slowly being driven mad. Why? I find myself riveted over accounts of Barbarossa and other ops leading to Kursk--in a book interlarded with Kursk maps only! The person responsible for this should undergo a flying tribunal.

Also, there are some boner typos: Ratenberg, not Rastenburg; Wehrwolf, not Werwolf. The picture section is incompetently executed, with every single page of that section marred by pics and captions obscured because they extend too close to the spine, but by far the worst, so far, is the Katyusha pic--of a BM-21! Frankly, I was too shocked to scream, but I had to tell somebody.

Further, I noticed there was no mention whatsoever of Stalin's de facto paralysis in the face of Barbarossa, no mention that Stalin was en route to his personal train and nearly fled Moscow (per his telegrapher who was on the train waiting for him) and no mention of several Russian attempts to negotiate with Hitler all the way to 1942. In the context of a book covering grand strategy and operational matters, these seem like major lacunae. Worse, Clark seems to be parroting the Russian official line about Stalin's resoluteness when informed Germany had invaded Russia. After watching the testimony of Stalin's personal telegrapher, as well as seeing some of the diplomatic documents on Russian efforts to stop Germany through direct and indirect negotiations with same, I'm not buying the party/Party line. Wish I could remember the name of that show.

Regards,

John Kettler

[LukeFF]

Oh, this should be fun...

[Michael Emrys]

Speaking of the Clark book...While an excellent read which is giving me quite the education on loads of stuff on the Eastern Front, I'm slowly being driven mad. Why? I find myself riveted over accounts of Barbarossa and other ops leading to Kursk--in a book interlarded with Kursk maps only! The person responsible for this should undergo a flying tribunal.

My personal pet peeve and nomination to be flayed alive is the kind of graphic artist who makes maps so simplistic and crude that you can't find the locations mentioned in the text, distances between locations that actually make it into the map are inaccurately drawn, and key terrain is not rendered. In other words, more or less useless.

Further, I noticed there was no mention whatsoever of Stalin's de facto paralysis in the face of Barbarossa, no mention that Stalin was en route to his personal train and nearly fled Moscow (per his telegrapher who was on the train waiting for him) and no mention of several Russian attempts to negotiate with Hitler all the way to 1942. In the context of a book covering grand strategy and operational matters, these seem like major lacunae. Worse, Clark seems to be parroting the Russian official line about Stalin's resoluteness when informed Germany had invaded Russia. After watching the testimony of Stalin's personal telegrapher, as well as seeing some of the diplomatic documents on Russian efforts to stop Germany through direct and indirect negotiations with same, I'm not buying the party/Party line. Wish I could remember the name of that show.

I wish I could remember where I read it, but a few years ago I came across an account citing members of the Soviet government at the time who recalled that after the onset of the attack, Stalin went into seclusion and took something like ten days to two weeks to pull himself together enough to resume leading the country. In the meantime, most people were sitting around waiting for orders. Not a good thing in a highly fluid situation.

Michael

[John Kettler]

Michael Emrys,

Absolutely with you on the pet peeves/should be shot list, to which I'd gleefully add the high crime of maps with no distance scale!

Returning to the real topic, I found something while blundering about failing to find that BoB coverup doc. Turns out to be keyed directly to something Suvorov said, but I didn't realize it at the time. Behold the once deeply black Stalin command bunker in Samara! From what I can tell, it goes way deeper than did the Fuehrerbunker and is obviously designed to survive a direct hit on the entrance shaft. I suspect this bunker must have a secret exit, but none is shown.

So, how does this relate to Suvorov? Turns out that Samara is right across the river from Kuybyshev, where Suvorov directly states (Inside the Soviet Army, a blockbuster of a book for military and intel types) that the mighty Zhiguli, at the confluence of the Volga and (I forget the other he said) houses a deep command bunker which was secretly blasted into one massive rock formation and was built for Stalin if Moscow had to be evacuated, and it was then (when he penned his book) still ready for use if nuclear war appeared imminent. At the time Suvorov wrote that book, this information was not merely unknown but classified off the charts in Russia. Bearing that in mind, here's Samara.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samara,_Russia

Here's the Zhiguli (Mountains)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhiguli_Mountains

Geology and Topography

"The central, highest part of the Zhiguli is an almost flat plateau, which also forms the highest point in the entire central zone of European Russia.

The Zhiguli are considered the only tectonically active mountains in European Russia, first having formed around 7 million years ago. The summits and other exposed areas of the Zhiguli are composed of limestone and dolomite sediments laid down 230-350 million years ago in the Permian and Carboniferous periods."

Before I read that Suvorov book, I knew nothing of Kubyshev in connection with a strategic command post, let alone any Zhiguli. Since then, and before coming across the Samara bunker vid, my own contacts confirmed what Suvorov had said. And now, we've got proof that he didn't make up some story. Further details can be had via using this Google term: "google earth stalin's bunker samara" The item just below the vid when you run that search is this one, World War II best held Secret “Revealed” in Samara, Russia | Life in... which is replete with pics and details of the bunker which, I now know, was vastly better protected than the Hitler, Churchill or Roosevelt bunkers. Oh, this wasn't intended merely as a hidey hole for Stalin. Rather, it was a hidey hole for all the key parts of the Russian government and the Communist Party!

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Michael Emrys,

Came across this while trying to find Stalin's preWar views regarding the U.S. It would appear, judging from this 1996 article, that more and more evidence has emerged from Russian archives supporting Suvorov's views and that those resisting such views (in part, for some, because it greatly diminishes the monstrous evil of Hitler and followers) have gone to great extremes to minimize and even suppress their exposure to the nonRussian public. I had no idea that Suvorov had sold over a million copies of but one edition of Icebreaker in Russia. Another major motivator of the Standard Model camp is to protect Stalin's image as the heroic national leader of wartime Russia. It's both more comfortable and politically palatable to do so. A most informative article going well beyond what I already knew in this important area of historiography.

Raack, R.C., "Stalin's Role in the Coming of World War II: The International Debate Goes On," World Affairs, vol. 159, no. 2, Fall 1996

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/raack2.htm

Regards,

John Kettler

[Stalins Organ]

I don't know what the supposed controversy is - I have no doubt that the USSR had a pan for an offensive war with Germany........just like the USA had a plan for initiating a war with the UK in the 1920's - it's just basic military planning.

So freakin' what??

Suvorov's only contribution was suggesting that the USSR was actively planning to do so in a time frame that was only shortly after Barbarossa - 6 July 1941 to be precise!

Most serious analysis places the prospect as being 1943 or later.

[LukeFF]

Suvorov's views

Well, there's your problem.

[ASL Veteran]

My opinion is when Stalin signed the non aggression pact I seriously doubt that he had an expectation that France would be overrun in a month or two. We all know how much Stalin was pining for a second front, so I think it's reasonable to expect that with the non aggression pact in hand, Stalin probably would have sat tight until it was obvious that the western allies were going to win the war. At that point he probably would have jumped in and grabbed eastern europe as the spoils of war. He performed a similar action in the east after Germany's surrender.

I can't imagine a scenario whereby Stalin declares war on Germany with the UK as Germany's only opponent and Hitler in total control of most of continental Europe and his troops sunning themselves on the beaches of France with nothing to do. That's just not Stalin's MO.