Did Stalin plan to invade Europe?

Below is a document that I found recently detailing the likelihood of the USSR invading Western Europe.

Many people have been disputing this with me personally so I thought I'd start this to hopefully proove to you that this is true.

Please do not post any replies until I have finished posting the entire document of about 50 pages.

Cheers.

The Instigation of World War II


Introduction

In the book Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy depicts a massive, surprise, well thought out Soviet invasion into Germany, with the intension of taking over Europe. In 1941 this situation came close to reality, although the context was different. Stalin helped to make Hitler dictator of Germany because he was using Hitler to provoke the second World War. Stalin wanted Hitler to wage war over Europe so that it would be weakened by hatred and destruction. Then he would invade as a “liberator from the Nazis” and take control of all of it, including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Stalin’s plot was a masterpiece; even today most people still aren’t aware about it. However, he failed in his secret attempt because Hitler found out about his plans and launched a last-resort preventive strike at the USSR in 1941. He destroyed most of the Soviet Union’s offensive capacity, removing the immediate threat to Europe. Had this action not been taken, the Soviet flag would have flown in London by the end of 1941.

“We are doing something which, if it succeeds, will overturn the whole world and liberate the entire working class.” – Stalin (Sochineniya, Vol. 13, p.41).



The Soviet Military Machine

The proof for my presumably ludicrous statements can be encountered in the pages ahead. All that is offered are facts, sometimes made by the communist criminals themselves. The book Icebreaker by Viktor Suvorov contains so much well-written information on the subject that it is quoted frequently. Words in this font are quotes from that book. In addition, any factual information I state is also from Icebreaker, unless otherwise stated. Suvorov spent much of his life researching this subject, so he should receive credit for his investigations. “Viktor Suvorov was trained as a Soviet army officer in Kalinin and Kiev. Later, after staff level service and completing studies at the Diplomatic Military Academy in 1974, he served as a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) officer, working for four years in Geneva under diplomatic cover. He defected in 1978…” (Michaels, Daniel W. “Historian Details Stalin’s Two-Year ‘Mobilization’ Plan for European Conquest.” STV.ee. 20 Dec. 2000. <http://www.stv.ee/~flylow/review.htm>). He also wrote M-Day, Spetsnaz, and many other books.

Starting in 1939, the largest mobilization of troops in history began in the Soviet Union, bringing two strategic echelons with 26 massive armies to the western frontier. The Soviet army consisted of five million men. Six more million would be drafted in the summer of 1941. “Between July 1939 and June 1941, Stalin increased the number of Soviet tank divisions from zero to 61, with dozens more in preparation. By June 1941, the “neutral” Soviet Union had assembled more tank divisions than all the other countries of the world put together…. In June 1941 Hitler threw ten mechanized corps into battle, of which each, on average, had more than 340 light and medium tanks. By contrast, Stalin had 29 mechanized corps, each with 1,031 light, medium, and heavy tanks…. In mid-1941, the Red Army was the only military force in the world with amphibious tanks. Stalin had 4,000 of these weapons of offensive war; Germany had none. By June 1941, the Soviets had increased the number of their paratroop corps from zero to five, and the number of their field artillery regiments from 144 to 341, in each case more than all the other armies of the world put together…. By June 1941, the Soviet navy had more than 218 submarines in service, with another 91 under construction…. Stalin ordered construction of more than 100,000 Su-2 [bomber aircrafts], as well as the training of 150,000 pilots. Weighing four tons, the Su-2 had a top speed of 486 km/h, a range of 1200 km, and a bomb load capacity of 400-600 kg.” “Germany did not begin in earnest to put its economy on war footing until early 1942, two years after the Soviet Union. But whereas Soviet military and arms production reached a crescendo in the summer of 1941, Germany’s did not peak until 1944 – three years too late.” In 1939, the percent of the Germany economy focused on war was 9%. In the Soviet Union it was 25%. By 1941, Germany’s percent rose to 19, while it was 43% in the USSR. In addition to Red Army and NKVD troops, the Soviet Union also employed hundreds of thousands of prisoners from its concentration camps in the east and north. These were the Black Divisions, called like so because of the black uniforms of the zeks.
In 1933, the German colonel (later general) Heinz Guderian visited a Soviet locomotive engineering works at Kharkov. Guderian saw that, in addition to locomotives, the yard was producing tanks as a side product. The tanks were being produced at the rate of 22 a day. When assessing the output of side products at one Soviet plant in peacetime, it must be remembered that in 1933 Germany was producing no tanks at all. In 1939, Hitler came into the Second World War with 3,195 tanks, that is, less than the Kharkov locomotive engineering works, working on a peacetime footing, produced in six months. Even after the war began, the United States only had 400 tanks, 19 days worth at the Kharkov yard.
Armies were formed in the western regions at the time when the Soviet Union was invading Poland, Finland, Bessarabia , and the Baltic States . After the acquisitions however, these armies, extremely expensive to maintain, were not disbanded. This was unprecedented in the whole of Soviet history. Until this point, armies had only been formed during wartime, and only to fight in war. In fact, the quantity and strength of the armies was significantly increased. In June 1940 the 16th and 17th armies were formed. This event was noteworthy because it was the first time in Soviet history.

that a number higher than 16 was used to designate an army. Yet these armies were far superior to any used before in the Soviet Union. In July 1940, the 26th army appeared on the German frontier. This was not a mistake in numbering sequence. In fact, the Soviet Union had secretly created not one more army, but eleven more: the 18th, 19th, 20th, and so forth until 28th. In May 1941 the 23rd and 27th appeared on the border. In June 1941 the rest emerged there as well except for a few which were assigned to the Japanese front. In addition, three NKVD armies were stationed behind the two echelons of the Red Army. Sometimes, these three NKVD armies are referred to as the Third Strategic Echelon. This whole mobilization plan was decided by Stalin at a Politburo meeting on August 19, 1939, four days before the Nazi-German pact was signed.
Hitler’s military contained 4 blitzkrieg mechanized tank groups. Three were used in the invasion of France, and four were used in Operation Barbarossa. Each one usually had between 600 and 1,000 tanks, and on occasions as many as 1,250 tanks, along with a considerable number of infantry and artillery… The Soviet equivalent of a blitzkrieg tank group was a shock army. Shock armies had about 1,000 tanks, sometimes much more. The only other difference is that Hitler had 4 tank groups while Stalin had sixteen shock armies. Yes, fully 16 of the armies located in west Russia were of shock army status. Every one of these armies, except for the 23rd which was near Finland, was situated directly on the frontier with Germany and its ally Romania.
Three shock armies exceeded the norm: the 6th, 9th, and 10th. The 6th and 9th had 2,350 tanks, 700 armoured vehicles, over 4,000 guns and mortars and more than 250,000 soldiers and officers. In addition to their basic complements, these armies were given ten to twelve heavy artillery regiments, NKVD units and much else besides. At the peak of the 9th army’s power, it contained 20 divisions. Its seven corps had 3,341 tanks. This was roughly the same number as the Wehrmacht had; in quality, they were superior. Containing more power than the entire German land force, the 9th army was the most powerful in the world and in history. This massive army was positioned on the border with Romania. Although the 9th army was very strong, it only had 20 divisions. The First Strategic Echelon had in all 170 divisions … The Second Echelon had 77. (There were so many new divisions, corps, and armies that Stalin had to free most of his generals in prison). They all began to move westward on June 13, 1941. June 13 marks the beginning of the greatest displacement of troops in the history of civilization.

Why was there such an enormous buildup of military? According to Western beliefs (which greatly underestimate the scale of the movement) and communist propaganda, this was a necessary action taken by Stalin to protect his country against the aggressive Hitler. Not quite. The purpose of the troops was purely to attack and invade and here’s why:

The tanks that were being produced at the Kharkov locomotive engineering plant, described earlier, had the name Mark BT, initials for the Russian words “high-speed tank.” The Mark BTs had a speed of one mile per minute and a radius of action without refueling of 440 miles. These tanks were also the first ever to have a diesel engine and they carried a weapons system that was very powerful at the time. Having said so many good things about these tanks, let us note one disadvantage: it was impossible to use them on Soviet territory.
The tanks substituted heavy armor for speed and the ability to produce enormous quantities of them. This is similar to a medieval knight being substituted by a light mobile cavalry warrior. Genghis Khan used hordes of fast-moving troops, capable of covering vast distances and delivering lightning strikes deep in enemy territory. This is just what the Mark BT tanks were like. They were only useful as an invasive tank. By the end of 1939, more of them had been produced than any other tank by any other country in the world. They had a pair of detachable caterpillar tracks that let them travel anywhere, but slowly. To go fast, they must be on a good road and discard the tracks to continue traveling on wheels. The caterpillar tracks were only there so that the tank could reach a highway. Fighting a war with the tracks was extremely hard and wasteful. Therefore, since there were no good roads in the Soviet Union, the tanks were made to fight in a country that did not lack highways. What were the Soviet Union’s neighbors? Then, there were no good roads in China, Mongolia, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. To the question of where the potential of these tanks could be employed, there is only one possible answer: Western Europe. The caterpillar tracks would be used in crossing Russian and Polish territory until the BT tanks reached the German autobahns. Then they would throw away the tracks and shoot ahead like a racing car. Even in 1985 the Soviet Union did not have one kilometer of highway which could have been even remotely described as a motorway. Fifty years ago, and for long after that, there were no motorways in Soviet territory. Nor were there motorways in any of the countries which bordered the Soviet Union in 1938. One year later, however, Stalin partitioned Poland under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and thereby established a common frontier with a country which did have motorways. That country was Germany. It is said that Stalin’s tanks were not ready for war. That was not so. They were not ready for a defense war on their own territory. When Hitler began Operation Barbarossa, practically all the Mark BT tanks were cast aside. They were not designed to fight off roads, even with caterpillar tracks. They were, however, designed to wage war on others. To prove this, I will now refer to the trains carrying BT tanks to war before the German invasion. When news reached the generals in these trains that the Germans have begun the war, the BT corps were disbanded because they were now useless. If Hitler had not begun the war first, these corps would not be disbanded, but used on the German autobahns.

The Soviet Union in the 1930s assembled the Dnieper River Naval Flotilla. By the beginning of the Second World War, the Flotilla consisted of 120 naval vessels and launches, including eight powerful monitors, each with a displacement of 2000 tons, armour in excess of 100mm, and 152mm cannons. The Dnieper Flotilla also had its

own air arm, as well as shore and anti-aircraft batteries. In addition, every bridge over the Dnieper, the largest river in the western Soviet Union, was mined. Any force coming from the west would have been stopped at the river, or at least delayed for several months from attacking the Ukrainian bases and factories. But as soon as Hitler turned his back on him, Stalin ordered that the mines be cleared from the Dnieper bridges, and that the Flotilla be disbanded….
Instead of one defensive flotilla, Stalin then created two new ones, the Danube Flotilla and the Pinsk Flotilla. … In the course of Zhukov’s “liberation campaign” in the Romanian frontier regions, Stalin took Bukovina and Bessarabia from Romania. Right at the mouth of the Danube, a sector of the eastern bank of the river, some dozens of kilometers long, passed into the possession of the Soviet Union. The Danube Flotilla, which had been set up in expectation of this event, was moved there immediately….
In the event of a defensive war, the entire Danube Flotilla would have fallen into a trap the moment hostilities began. The enemy could simply rake the Soviet vessels with machine-gun fire, preventing them from raising anchor and casting off. Romanian troops were sometimes only 300 metres away. In a defensive war, moreover, the Danube Naval Flotilla would have had no useful function. Given its location, there were simply no defensive tasks for it to fulfill. The Danube Delta consists of hundreds of lakes, impassible swamps, and hundreds of square kilometers of reed marshes. It is the last place through which an enemy would choose to attack the Soviet Union. There was only one way to explain the sitting of the Danube Flotilla; its purpose was to carry out combat operations upstream while Red Army troops were making a general advance. If you gather 70 river vessels in the delta of a great river, they have nowhere to go except upstream. This meant that they would have to operate on the territory of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany….
In an offensive war, the Danube Flotilla would be a mortal danger to Germany. It only had to move 130 kilometers upstream for the strategic bridge at Chernavada to come under fire from its guns. That in its turn would mean the flow of oil from Ploesti to the port of Constanza would be cut off. Another 200 kilometers upstream and the entire German war machine would come to a halt simply because German tanks, aircraft, and submarines would have been left without fuel.

Airborne assault troops are intended for attack. Countries concerned only with their defense do not need them. Before World War II, there were two exceptions. Hitler was getting ready for aggressive wars, and in 1939 he created his airborne assault troops. By the time World War II began, the parachutists among these troops numbered 4,000. Stalin was the other exception. He established his airborne assault troops in 1930. By the beginning of the war, the Soviet Union had more than 1,000,000 trained paratroopers – 200 times more than all other countries in the world put together, including Germany. The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to create airborne assault troops. When Hitler came to power, Stalin already had several airborne assault brigades. …
Parachutists are not needed in a defensive war. To use a parachutist as ordinary infantry or as a partisan in defensive warfare would be a ridiculous waste of resources. There is no point in throwing them into the rear of the enemy in such a conflict; it is much simpler to leave partisan detachments behind in the forests as you withdraw. Therefore, the Soviet Union intended to use them in an enormous invasion operation. In order to appreciate Stalin’s intentions, it must not be forgotten that the immense parachute training reigned in the Soviet Union at the same time as did the terrible famine. The cost of training one million Soviet parachutists was dear (5 million tons of grain plus gold and other metals), and Stalin paid for the training of these parachutists and for their parachutes with the lives of Soviet children in great numbers. For what purpose were these parachutists trained? Certainly not to protect these children who were dying of hunger. People in our village in the Ukraine still remember the young woman who killed her daughter and devoured her body. Everyone remembers it because she killed her own daughter. They do not remember those who killed the daughters of others. In my village people ate belts and boots. They ate acorns in the bedraggled wood nearby. The reason for all this was that Comrade Stalin was preparing for war. He was preparing as no one had ever before prepared. True, all these preparations turned out to be unnecessary when the defensive war came.
Besides throwing a million parachutists into western Europe, the Soviet command also wanted a new way to send thousands of tanks. Oleg Antonov suggested that an ordinary tank should be fitted with wings and a tail that could be discarded after the flight. This system was called the KT, which stands for the Russian words “winged tank.” Of course, the risk involved in flying a tank was very high, but communists do not value human life. It is absolutely ridiculous to use a flying tank for defensive purposes so it was clear that this system was only meant to be used to quickly throw a vastly large quantity of tanks to the west.
The immense creation of parachutists, gliders, and winged tanks signified the USSR’s interest in invasion. Another thing that illustrated this is the fact that their combat airplanes were mostly bombers, not fighters . The air force was given many strategic locations to be bombed. The IL-2 was an airfield bomber. When he created this aggressive aircraft, Sergei Ilyushin added a defensive detail: he made a seat for the pilot who attacked the targets and a seat for a guy who protected the aircraft with a machine gun. Stalin personally telephoned Ilyushin and ordered him to discard the rear gunner and his machine gun, and to produce the IL-2 as a one-seater aircraft. Stalin, it seemed, needed the IL-2 for a situation in which not one enemy fighter would succeed in taking off.
The Soviet generals understood very well that a massive drop of paratroopers and accompanying gliders, transport aircraft, and winged tanks could only be achieved after the Soviet Union had supremacy in the sky over Germany. Stalin created so many airborne troops that they could only be used in one situation: after a surprise attack by the Soviet Air Force on the airfields of its enemy. Germany made the exact same plans before its own invasion on June 22, 1941.

The growth in Soviet military might was in no way dictated by an external threat for it began before Hitler came to power. The annihilation of millions of children for the sake of obtaining armaments was going on whilst Stalin was making strenuous efforts to suppress western pacifists and at the same time raising up the Nazis. It may be objected that while Stalin sacrificed millions of people, he nevertheless created arms to defend the survivors. This is not valid. We have already seen that the arms created were in no way suitable for the defense of his territory nor the protection of his people; indeed, he would be compelled either to use them in a way for which they were not intended, or to discard them altogether. For precisely what, then, were these vast arsenals of arms intended, if not for the defense of the Soviet territory or populace?

All Soviet armies on the border were called shock armies. The term “shock army” was a substitute for the old term “invasion army.” Soviet sources, however, stress that these are one and the same thing.

Lenin on World War I: “We have ended one phase of wars and must prepare ourselves for the next.” (Speech to the VIII Congress of the Soviets, 1920).

When the Soviet Union captured a country, it was necessary for special Party units to follow the army and “Sovietize” the new territories. These officials served as administrators, jurors, presidents, deputies, eliminators of “hostile elements”, and spreaders of propaganda. In short, the Nomenklatura, or Soviet ruling class. The German SS performed similar functions when it wasn’t busy. “Where larger countries are concerned, Sovietization of very large areas must be managed in three to four weeks. … All executive officials and even some of the technical personnel will have to be brought in along with the Army.” (Kharakter Operatsii Sovremennykh Armii, V. K. Triandafillov, Moscow, 1929, p. 177-178). Sovietization was in effect during the Soviet conquests in the beginning of WWII. Then, after a pause in preparation, it began to get ready again in 1941. From May 1940 until February 1941, 99,000 political workers in the reserve, who included 63,000 senior workers of Party committees were regraded, that is they had to sit examinations and appear before boards. The retraining of the Party establishment went ahead at an intensified pace. And retraining was not all. On June 17, 1941 another decree was issued. Yet another 3,700 of the Party’s nomenklatura received orders to place themselves at the Army’s disposal. Were preparations under way for a new Sovietization? Why did the Soviet army, supposedly assembled for defense, need all these communist officials? This question can be easily answered since among the mobilized nomenklatura were new presidents for every European country: from Portugal to Norway. (Stalin even appointed a future queen of Spain).

The communist punitive [correctional] machine had two principle mechanisms, the organ and the troops. What is understood here is not, of course, Red Army troops, but special formations of the VChK (Vserossiiskaya Chrezvychainaya Komissiya), OGPU (Ob’edinennoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie), and the NKVD. While the Red Army fought on external fronts, these special divisions waged war on internal fronts. At the time when the communist dictatorship was being established, the punitive troops played an incomparably more important role than the punitive organs. Equipped with armoured cars, armoured trains, three-inch cannons, and machine guns, they waged a real war against their own people. Once the communist power was firmly established via the deaths of tens of millions, the punitive troops no longer needed their armored cars and machine guns. …the organs came to occupy an increasingly important place in relation to that held by the punitive troops. … Their role became largely a secondary one. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, however, things began to change. …1939 marked the start of a breathtaking increase in the punitive troops’ power. Once again their arnament included armoured trains, the latest BA-10 armoured cars, howitzers, and finally tanks and aircraft. Punitive troops of all types and functions began to grow rapidly in numbers. The NKVD troops became so numerous that a special post had to be created to control them, and Lieutenant-General I. I. Maslennikov was appointed Deputy People’s Commissar for Troops. The strange thing, however, was that punitive troops were no longer needed on Soviet territory. There were clearly no plans for another purge in the Soviet Union in 1939. Nor were these troops intended to be used in the newly acquired Baltic states. As proof that Stalin did not aim to use the punitive troops in the USSR, consider that when Hitler invaded, 29 divisions were transferred from the NKVD to the Red Army. (Major-General V. Nekrasov, VIZH, 1985, No. 9). In the defensive war that had been forced upon him, Stalin needed ordinary infantry, not punitive troops. {p.66}. If these large numbers of regulation-enforcement NKVD, VChK, and OGPU troops were not going to be used against the Soviet people, then against which people would they be used?

“Hitler will attack the west, with his main forces, while Moscow will wish to take full advantage of its position.” – Trotsky (Bulletin of the Opposition, Numbers 79-80, June 21, 1939)

Special NKVD frontier troop divisions were dispersed throughout the Soviet western border. Interestingly; at the time of the German attack these elite and highly trained NKVD troops, stationed on bridges at the frontier, had made no preparations either to repel an attack or defend the bridges. They yielded them to the enemy without a fight. When they had to capture the western part of a frontier bridge, however, these frontier troops revealed excellent training, and displayed both courage and bravery. On June 26, 1941, NKVD divisions skillfully executed an offensive movement near Kiliya on the Romanian border. When they had to defend the eastern part of the bridge, these same soldiers showed a total lack of preparedness. It was simply that no one had ever put them

through any defensive exercises. These are not the actions of an army that wishes to defend its territory.

Hitler’s coming to power, the economic, political, and military crisis in Europe, the direct clash between Soviet communists and fascists in Spain, the German Anschluss in Austria and its seizure of Czechoslovakia; none of these events caused Soviet armies to be set up in the western parts of the country.
At the start of World War II there were few armies on the Soviet border. …while Hitler was the enemy, there were no armies; while Poland was being partitioned, while Soviet and German troops were facing each other, it was sufficient for Stalin to have seven to twelve armies in the west of the Soviet Union. Then Hitler turned away from Stalin, and threw the Wehrmacht into Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and France, with the clear intention of landing in Britain. Hardly any German troops were left on the Soviet frontiers. It was precisely at this moment that the Soviet Union began to set up an enormous number of armies, among them the 26th.

The 12th and 18th Armies of the First Strategic Echelon were special mountain armies. They were placed at a point which was flat and/or hilly. To the west were the German and Romanian Carpathian Mountains. Its only conceivable function could be to operate in these mountains. Zhukov commanded that the 12th Army have an excellent knowledge of the Carpathian passes. Do I need to say more?

After rereading a chapter in Suvorov’s book, it turned out that I do need to say more. Suvorov fills more than a page explaining why, militarily, the Carpathians are adverse for an attack from west to east, but they are favorable for an attack from east to west. For example, The eastern Carpathians form a blunt salient which juts far out into the west, thereby cutting the enemy grouping in two. This is a natural springboard which, if heavy forces are built up in it even in peacetime, places them as though they were in the enemy’s rear. … The two armies [12th and 18th] could not stay on the spot; there was no room for them. They were not needed for defense, nor were they adapted to it. There was only one way of using these armies in war, and that was to move them forward. Two mountain ridges spread from the eastern Carpathians. One goes westwards to Czechoslovakia, the other southward to Romania. Two directions, two armies; it is entirely logical. Each direction was equally important, for each led to the main oil pipelines. If only one of the armies succeeded, it would still be fatal for Germany. … Apart from the two strikes over the mountains at the arteries, there was also the 9th (heavy shock) Army, which was ready to deliver a blow to the heart of the oilfields. Its operations were covered by two main mountain ranges. In order to defend Romania from the Soviet 9th Army, German troops would have to take these ranges, with an entire Soviet army on each one. Besides the mountain armies, there were also plenty of mountain divisions in other armies. For example, the 30th Irkutsk mountain division was located near the flat shores of the Black Sea. What defensive purpose could it fulfill there? Also, the 48th mountain Rifle Corps was on the extreme right flank of the 9th Army. This was of no significance [use] on Soviet territory. But if the 9th Army was moved into Romania, it would be wholly on the plain, and its right flank would be rubbing against the mountain range. It was therefore reasonable to have one mountain rifle division on the extreme right flank.
For all these reasons and more, the 12th and 18th Mountain Armies, and the numerous mountain divisions could not possible play a defensive role in the war. They were trained to operate in the mountains; mountains that were located outside the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union had 16 military districts: 8 that shared a border with a foreign country, and 8 internal ones. The fact is that an officer commanding a military district is not simply a very high-ranking military chief; he is in his way the military governor of great territories where millions and indeed tens of millions of people live. He is not only responsible for the troops and their military training, but also for preparing the population, industry, transport, and agriculture to fight a war. He is responsible for protecting the communist regime in the territories entrusted to him and, should the need arise, to resort to armed force to defend that regime. … It was in the internal districts that vast industrial potential, transport arteries, and great human resources were concentrated. On May 13, 1941, the officers commanding seven of these internal military districts (the exception was the Moscow District) were given a directive of “special importance.” This directive was an order to take all the armies and divisions in their district and regroup them in the western USSR. As a result, seven of the eight internal districts such as the Volga, Arkhangelsk, Orel, and Ural Districts lost their command staff and armies. The Ural District contained the world’s largest steel, tank, and shell production complexes. If a major revolt would occur in one of these districts, or if invading troops landed from the sea or air, the district would be helpless because its generals and troops were sent to the German border. It is beyond dispute that nothing like this had ever happened in Soviet history either before or since. It is also indisputable that these movements were connected with a war which [the Soviet command deemed] unavoidable. If there had been the slightest doubt that war might possibly be avoided, at least some commanders here and there would have remained at their posts.
Nor were these actions in any way preparations for a defensive war. In a lengthy defensive war, not all the commanders are sent off to the enemy frontier. Somebody stays behind in those territories where the enemy might suddenly appear. However, in a quick surprise strike, these commanders are needed on the front, not in the internal districts. The Soviet command sent them to the frontier because that is precisely what it intended.

Three times Hero of the Soviet Union, Marshal of the Air Force A. I. Pokryshkin (then a senior lieutenant and deputy commander of a fighter squadron belonging to the 9th Army) sheds an interesting light on the 9th Army’s mood. Here is his conversation with a “filthy bourgeois”, whose shop had been confiscated by his “liberators”. This scene takes place in the spring of 1941, in “liberated” Bessarabia:
“Ah, Bucharest! You should see what a fine city it is.”
“I’ll certainty see it sometime,” I answered with conviction. The shop-owner opened his eyes wide, waiting for me to go on. I had to change the subject.

Bucharest is the capital of Romania, Germany’s only source of oil. …even the Soviet lieutenants knew that they would shortly be in Romania. A Soviet officer is not entitled to wander across frontiers as a tourist. In what capacity could Pokryshkin get there except as a “liberator”?

On June 6, 1941, German intelligence received information that the Soviets intended to transfer their seat of government to Sverdlovsk [, a city east of the Urals]. Only Hitler and those closest to him were informed about it. Dr Geobbels noted in his diary that he had received such a report. During the war, however, it turned out that it was not Sverdlovsk which was to be the emergency capital, but Kuibyshev [, a city on the Volga]. In fact, Sverdlovsk was never to be an emergency capital and no command post was built there. German intelligence only had information about the transfer of the Soviet government to a command post in Sverdlovsk. But a government cannot move to a command post which does not exist. Who was spreading these reports about the transfer to a fictional command post? This could only have been done by the person who invented the bogus command post in the first place, that is the Soviet government, or more exactly, the head of that government, Stalin. That bogus command post was created so the enemy should find out about it one day. That day came, and German intelligence acquired the secret which had been specially manufactured for it.
If German intelligence obtained a false report about Soviet government intentions, it meant that the Soviet government itself must have been trying to conceal something at the time. It is not difficult to guess what. If Soviet leaders were spreading false information about their intention to go eastward, it meant without any doubt that they were going to do the opposite.
On June 13, 1941 (the same day that all the Soviet armies began moving towards the frontier), Stalin proclaimed on the Moscow Radio that both Germany and the Soviet Union are abiding by the non-aggression pact and that rumors about a German invasion are false propaganda intended to injure the good relations between the two countries. This report was extremely strange in that it proclaimed how safe the USSR was. Phrases like “the enemy is on the watch” and “we are surrounded by enemies” are not just ideology; they are the sharpest weapon the Party has. This weapon destroyed all forms of opposition. Yet once, and only once in the history of all communist regimes, the head of the most powerful of them all told the whole world that the threat of aggression did not exist. {p. 198}. The only explanation could be that this broadcast was specially intended to comfort not the Russian people, but Hitler.

On the topic of Soviet deception, there is an even more interesting point. It is well known that the massive creation of Soviet armies and their nighttime transfer to the western border was kept secret by the Soviet Union. In fact, the secrecy of the project was remarkable, unusual even by Soviet standards. Let’s take the 16th army as an example. Its commanding officers all knew that the 16th Army was being transferred westward, but they did not know exactly where. All the other generals in the 16th Army were “secretly” informed that the army’s destination was the Iranian frontier. [It was actually going to the Ukraine]. The less senior officers on the command staff were told that the purpose of the displacement was training exercises, while the wives of the officers were told that the army was off to camp.
In a defensive war, there is no need to deceive the generals in this way. In the Germany Army, the same thing was being done at the same time, when disinformation was being spread about Operation Sea Lion. It is a sure sign that a surprise attack is in preparation when the troops are deliberately deceived about where operations are going to take place. In order to dissemble from the enemy, one must also dissemble from one’s own troops. Aggressors have always done this… If the Soviet army was being moved to the west for the purpose of a glorious and gallant defensive operation against the Nazis, then why did they have to hide the process under a degree of secrecy never before attained? When one undergoes great efforts to conceal the deployment of his weapons, that means that he plans to use them in a surprise attack.

Colonel D. I. Kochetkov recalls that the commander of the Soviet tank division in Brest-Litovsk, Major-General Puganov, selected both the site for his divisional headquarters, and the position of his office in it, so that he could “sit in the divisional commander’s office with Colonel Commissar A. A. Illarionov and look out of the window through binoculars at the German soldiers on the opposite bank of the Western Buug.” In other words, a commander positioned his headquarters within rifle shooting distance of the enemy. Idiocy? No, because for a surprise invasion, that is the ideal place for a control center. But in a defensive war, positioning a command center there is beyond idiocy. The German generals were positioning center of operations on the border because they were preparing an invasion. Since the communists were preparing an invasion also, they took equivalent measures.

“In the event of a general conflict, only one country can win. That country is the Soviet Union.” – Hitler (To Lord Halifax at Obersalzburg, November 19, 1937)

A country which is preparing its defense deploys its army deep inside its own territory, and not on its very frontier. The object is to prevent the enemy from destroying the main defending forces with one surprise attack. A defending side will normally build a security zone in the frontier areas in plenty of time; a zone where the terrain has been saturated with traps, engineered defenses, obstacles, and minefields. The defending side will deliberately avoid constructing anything related to industry or transport in this zone; nor will it keep any heavy military formations or large quantities of supplies there. On the contrary, timely preparations will have been made to blow up all bridges, tunnels, and roads in this zone.
Once inside the security zone, the aggressor loses speed of movement, and his troops sustain losses before they even encounter the main forces of the defender. Only small but highly mobile [partisan] detachments of the defending side operate in the security zone. These detachments spring ambushes, launch surprise attacks, and then quickly withdraw to previously prepared positions. Light detachments create the

impression that they are the main force, compelling the aggressor to stop, deploy his forces and waste his shells on areas where there is nothing to hit. The light detachments, meanwhile, secretly withdraw to prepare new ambushes….
The deeper the security zone, the better. As he breaks into a deep security zone, an aggressor involuntarily reveals the main direction of his thrust, and loses the advantage of surprise. Since he does not know how deep the security zone is, he cannot predict when he will encounter the defender’s main forces; thus the [strategic] initiative has passed to the defending forces.
Throughout the centuries, and indeed the millennia, Slavonic tribes have created powerful security zones of enormous length and vast depth. Among the many defense obstacles they employed, the most important and effective was the forest barrier…. On the routes along which the enemy would probably approach, the depth of the forest barrier could amount to forty to sixty kilometers of impassible obstacles reinforced by palisades, stakes, concealed pits, terrible traps capable of breaking the legs of a horse, and snares of the most ingenious construction….
Fortresses and citadels were built behind these lines, which were carefully protected by light mobile detachments. As the enemy tried to penetrate the barrier, these detachments would launch surprise attacks before withdrawing along secret passages. Every attempt to pursue them ended badly for the enemy. False passages were made through the barriers, and these led the enemy into a zone of traps and ambushes….
Security zones still retain their importance in the 20th century. The Red Army understood full well what a security zone was, having had unpleasant experiences in operating in them. During the unsuccessful 1920 campaign to take over Poland and Germany, the Red Army found itself in a security zone prepared by the Polish Army…. After such an experience, the Red Army itself created strong security zones on its own frontiers… Teams of bridge-protection guards, trained in demolition work, were made ready to blow up all the bridges in the western regions. {p.67-70}. Heavy pipelines, depots, water pumps, water towers, railway junctions, main rail lines, main roads, communications equipment, high embankments, and deep cuttings were all prepared to be blown up. By the end of 1929, 60 teams of demolition sappers , totaling 1,400 men, had been trained in the Kiev Military District alone.
In 1939, the Red Army had spectacular verification of the usefulness of security zones to the defending side because they invaded Finland in that year. The failures of the Red Army in this invasion were due to the fact that the Finnish Army was prepared for defense with a security zone in front of their fortification line. This zone, 40-60 kilometers deep, was saturated with minefields, defense obstacles, snipers, sappers, and light mobile detachments. (Sovetskaya Voennaya Entsiklopediya, Vol. 6, p.504). The Soviet army could only move an average of less than one third of a mile per day through the security zone. They emerged from it facing the main line of defense having suffered great loses, with low morale and without ammunition, fuel or supplies. Here is a classic situation of the Red Army’s misadventures in Finland: A Soviet column of tanks, motorized infantry, and artillery is moving along a road through the forest. No one can step off the road, either to the right or to the left, because there are mines there. There is a bridge ahead. The sappers have checked it has not been mined. The leading tanks roll on to the bridge, and the tanks, along with the bridge, go up into the air. Explosive charges had been placed inside the supports of the bridge when it was built. It is not so easy to detect that this had been, and even if the charges were detected, any attempt to remove them would result in an explosion. Thus the Soviet column, winding like a huge snake across many kilometers, comes to a halt on the road. Now comes the turn of the Finnish snipers. They are in no hurry – crack, crack. Silence descends on the forest. Then crack, crack again. The snipers are firing from somewhere in the distance. They hit only Soviet commanders. Crack, crack. And commissars as well. It is impossible to comb the woods. We have not forgotten that on either side of the road are impassible minefields. Any attempt by Soviet sappers to approach the blown-up bridge or to defuse the mines on both sides of the road will be ended by a single shot from a Finnish sniper…. The Soviet 44th Rifle Division, which was bottled up on three parallel roads by three blown-up bridges, lost its entire command staff in one day of fighting. At night the Soviet column is raked by rifle mortar fire from somewhere in the depths of the forest. Sometimes long bursts of machine-gun fire hit the helpless column from somewhere behind the undergrowth. Then all falls silent again.
It is said that the Red Army did not show itself at it best in Finland. But what would any other army have done in its place? Pull the column back? But the heavy artillery tractors with their great howitzers on tow would not have been able to push their trailers backward, as these weigh many tons. The snipers now hit the tractor drivers – crack, crack. Finding itself in trouble, half the column goes into reverse and moves backwards. But behind it meanwhile, another bridge has been blown up. The column is now trapped. All the approaches to this bridge have been mined as well, and here too the snipers can take their time…. Ahead lies the almost inaccessible line of Finnish reinforced-concrete fortifications, the Mannerheim Line. It is impossible to break through it without artillery and without thousands of tons of ammunition. When the Soviet troops came up against the Finnish fortifications, their heavy artillery was far behind, lying immobilized on roads through the forests, between minefields and blown-up bridges, under sniper fire.
All the Soviet commanders who fought there expressed their admiration of the Finnish security zone. Foremost among them was K. Meretskov, who commanded the 7th Army. (Na Sluzhbe Narodu, Moscow IPL 1968, p. 184). After he had finally overcome the Finnish security zone and had assessed its worth, Meretskov was appointed Chief of the General Staff. So how did he make use of his experience in order to reinforce the Soviet Union’s western frontiers?
Meretskov [whose actions were undeniably known by Stalin] ordered that:
1. The security zone which had previously been constructed along the Soviet Union’s western frontiers should be dismantled, the teams of demolition sappers disbanded, the explosive charges removed, the mines rendered harmless, and the defense obstacles razed to the ground.
2. No security zone should be set up in the new lands [that were annexed by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939].
3. The main forces of the Red Army should be moved right up to the frontiers, without a security zone to protect them.

4. The strategic resources of the Red Army should be brought from the heart of the country and concentrated directly on the frontier [without a security zone to protect them].
5. A vast works program should begin at once to build a network of roads [, rails,] and airfields in western Byelorussia and in the western Ukraine: single-lane roads were to be made into dual-lane roads, the capacity of the roads was to be increased; and new roads leading directly to the German border were to be built.
6. The bridges across the Buug River leading directly into Germany are to be left intact.

Concerning these frontier bridges, for obvious reasons the Germans never proposed destroying them, even though they were never used. The moment Operation Barbarossa began, all these bridges were captured, allowing a great number of Germans to cross and destroy the unsuspecting Soviet 4th and 10th armies. The German Command hoped to use the bridges in an aggressive war, so it was clearly not in their interests to destroy them. But what was the Soviet Command hoping for?
The construction of railways was accompanied by the building of motor highways running directly to the frontier towns of Peremyshl’, Brest-Litovsk, and Yavarov. When preparations are being made for a defensive war, “belt” roads are built running parallel to the front, so that troops may be moved from passive sectors to those under threat. These belt roads are built deep in the rear; the frontier regions themselves are left as far as possible without roads or bridges. But the Red Army built both railways and motor highways running from east to west, directly to the front. The construction of these lines suggests that the Soviet leadership was looking upon the frontier zone not as a battle zone but as its rear area to which, in the event of a rapid advance into the west, it would be essential to send millions of new reservists, millions of tons of ammunition, fuel, and other items of supply. The official History of the Kiev Military District states that “at the beginning of 1941 the Nazis set about building bridges, railway branch lines, and field aerodromes.” These were clear signs that an invasion was being prepared. Yet this is what the Soviet railway troops were doing at exactly the same time.
Besides roads and rails, Number 5 on Meretskov’s List also orders the construction of airfields right next to the border. Under Lieutenant-General Rychagov, this indeed happened in June 1941. If Stalin had been anxious about defense, he should have pulled back the Soviet Air Force from the frontiers and re-based it in the depths of the country. The air force would have been quite capable of covering the frontier areas from the interior of the country, while the few hundred kilometers which lay between the airfields and the frontiers would have deprived the enemy of an ability to make a surprise attack on Soviet airfields. … In terms of defense, concentrating an air force on the frontiers is tantamount to suicide. But when an offensive is being prepared, it is absolutely essential to concentrate aircraft near the frontiers, so that they can be used over enemy territory to the full extent of their operating radius. It must also be kept in mind that it would have been impossible to use Soviet aircraft for defense, no matter where they were located, as they were bombers, not fighters. Consider this: In December 1940, a meeting was held of the Red Army’s senior command staff to discuss the subject of war against Germany. … Zhukov’s proposal was to put the German Air Force out of action by delivering surprise attacks on German airfields, and then immediately launching powerful attacks by the land troops. Pavel Rychagov warmly supported Zhukov’s proposal. Even before Zhukov, he had recast the training of Soviet airmen in such a way that it almost totally excluded the training of pilots to fight air battles. Instead, they were trained to make sudden concentrated air strikes at enemy airfields. Soon after Rychagov’s speech, he was made the youngest deputy People’s Commissar for Defense ever.
In June 1941, the VChK was ordered by Lieutenant-General I. Bogdanov, the head of the NKVD troops in Byelorussia, to cut all barbed wire on the frontier with Germany. Bogdanov’s actions were undoubtedly observed by secret police chief Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, the head of the People’s Commission of Internal Affairs (NKVD). Beria, in turn, could not have done this without Zhukov and Stalin finding out. We are assured that the Red Army suffered its first defeats because it was unprepared for war. This is nonsense. If it had not prepared for war, then the barbed wire would have been left intact [and the great number of supplies would not be stacked on the border for the Germans to take.]… The Chekists had certainly not removed the barbed wire on the frontier in order to allow the German Army to take advantage of the gaps they had opened up. The barbed wire was taken away for other purposes. Indeed, if the Soviet Union was not prepared for war, it would have been much more successful in expelling the Nazis.
Numbers 3 and 4 on Meretskov’s list are very interesting. Indeed, when Germany invaded it found a concentration of armies and resources on the frontier. In consequence, the 4th, 10th, 5th, 6th, 26th, 12th, 18th, and 9th Armies were immediately destroyed by the First German Tank Group. The rest of the First Echelon was destroyed soon afterward. What does this show? Evidence, without any possible uncertainty, that the Soviet planners were not preparing for defense at all. Otherwise, why would they stockpile supplies, fuel, boots, and ammunition directly on the border? There were piles with a total quantity of 8 million pairs of boots stacked on the border. Who were these fine boots for, the Nazis? …in 1941 the Western Front alone lost 4,216 [train] wagons carrying ammunition. Why would a defensive army need mobile ammunition? All it had to do was secure ammunition in predetermined locations that would be used should retreat be necessary. Only if the army was offensive would it need to have its ammunition follow it in the course of the invasion. Yet the “defensive” Soviet army needed thousands of trains with ammo. “At the small railway station of Kalinovka alone, the South-West Front had 1,500 wagons laden with ammunition.” In addition to ammunition, fuel was gathered in huge quantities on the border. Suvorov estimates that there were 527 thousand tons of fuel on train cisterns, which could easily be moved westward. Most of this fuel was destroyed in the first few hours of the German strike.
In the early 1930s, construction in the USSR began on a enormous defensive project: the Stalin Line. At vast expense and effort, the work continued through the years, costing about 120 billion rubles but producing an impregnable reinforced concrete fortification line. (Major General P. G. Grigorenko, V Podpol’e Mozhno

Then, as soon as Hitler began warring in Central Europe, the 1,200 kilometer long line was completely and inexplicably destroyed by explosions or taken apart for agricultural purposes on Stalin’s personal orders. Immediately, work began on another fortification: the Molotov Line. It differed from the Stalin line in that it was much weaker, cheaper, shorter, and was placed on the border for the Germans to see it. The point of this was to make the enemy conclude that you are preparing for defense only. Let Zhukov speak on the issue, “By these measures, we strove to give the enemy the impression that there was a total absence of measures of an offensive nature on our side, and to show that we were carrying out extensive works, the purpose of which was to organize defense, and only defense.” The Japanese were deceived by this strategy. They thought that Zhukov was building defense and were defeated by his surprise attack. The Germans used this strategy too. In mid-1941 the German general Guderian was building a line on the west shores of the Buug. This did not mean that he was thinking at all about defense. And if Zhukov was building exactly the same kind of fake line on the east bank of the same river, what could that mean?
The Germans themselves destroyed the Siegfried Line when it was blocking their movement of troops into France. Hitler never though that he would have to defend himself from France. One may, of course call outstanding Soviet and German generals idiots, but there was no idiocy here. They were simply aggressors. Both thought in terms of attack, and when their fortifications hindered the speed of the attack, they were either demolished to make way for the advancing troops or, if the opportunity arose, their combat casements were handed over to farmers for storing potatoes.
Stalin put millions of zeks to work digging canals from Soviet to Polish rivers. Countless thousands were killed. If Stalin was concerned about defense, he would instead force the zeks to construct anti-tank ditches and trench systems from the Black Sea to the Baltic reinforced by another fortification line even stronger than the Stalin Line. But Stalin was not concerned about defense in the least.
The Soviet Union had many partisan detachments in the large security zone. “Arms and explosives which had been safely hidden in the ground were waiting for their time to come. But before that hour struck, the concealed partisan bases were laid waste, unconditionally, knowingly and, for certain, on Stalin’s direct orders.” The partisan troops were then sent to the frontier NKVD divisions. KBG Colonel S. Vaupshas explains why the partisan formations were abolished, “In those menacing pre-war years, the doctrine of war on foreign territory was in the ascendancy. It was of a clearly pronounced offensive nature.” One may disagree with what he said, but no one else has yet offered any other reason why the partisan bases and formations were eliminated.

It was not, of course, for Hitler’s benefit that Meretskov, Zhukov, and Beria built roads, [railways and bridges, piled rails, supplies, airplanes, and ammunition on the border, destroyed the immense security zone, disbanded the partisan detachments, and removed the impassible Stalin line.] It was to let the Soviet “liberation” army loose on Europe, with speed and with nothing in its path, and to keep it supplied in the course of its surprise offensive. It would have been impossible for the millions of troops and tons of supplies to move so quickly from east to west without these adjustments. The Chekists cut the wire in the same way before the “liberation” of Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Bessarabia. Now Germany’s turn had come.

“Mines are a powerful thing, but this is a resource for the weak, for those who are defending themselves. We do not need mines as much as we need the means of clearing them.” – Marshal of the Soviet Union Grigory Ivanovich Kulik, beginning of June 1941.

On 18 and 19 June 1941, the Black Sea Fleet carried out large-scale exercises on an offensive theme. In the course of these exercises, one of the divisions belonging to the 9th Special Rifle Corps was put abroad warships and carried out an assault landing on the “enemy” coast. This kind of assault landing has never been practiced by the Red Army before. Moscow attached particular importance to the fleet and the 9th Special Rifle Corps having joint exercises. These exercises took place under the observation of high-ranking commanders who had come specially from Moscow to attend them. One of these officers was Vice-Admiral Ilya Ilyich Azarov. He later recalled how all those taking part felt that the exercises were held for an ulterior motive, and that they would soon have to put their newly-acquired skills into practice in a real war, which would not, of course, be fought on their own territory.
By a strange coincidence, the 3rd Airborne Assault Corps was also in the Crimea at the time. They were carrying out large-scale exercises, in which the corps headquarters and staff were airdropped along with brigade staffs. Soviet historians never link these events together – the exercises of the 14th Rifle Corps in making assault landings from ships of the Danube Flotilla; the 3rd Airborne Assault Corps making assault landings from aircraft and gliders; and the 9th Special Rifle Corps making assault landings from the warships of the Black Sea Fleet. But these events are all connected in place, time, and purpose. They were preparations for aggression on a massive scale; preparations in their final stages.

The German general F. Halder writes in his diary about Operation Barbarossa: “The enemy has been taken unawares by our attack. His forces were not tactically in position for defense. In the frontier zone his troops were widely dispersed and his frontier defense was weak overall. Because of our tactical surprise, enemy resistance on the frontier has been weak and disorganized. We have been able to seize bridges over the border rivers…” This is from page 452 of the fourth volume of the Illustrated World War II Encyclopedia written by Lieutenant Colonel Eddy Bauer, edited chiefly by Brigadier Peter Young, and published by H. S. Stuttman Inc. The Soviet Union, assembling the greatest army ever seen in history, did not have its forces “tactically in position for defense.” The only explanation for this is that Stalin intended to use his army for a purpose opposite to that of defending his territory.

…nobody, including the group leaders then sitting in the Kremlin, even suspected that a German invasion was then in preparation. Even more surprisingly, when reports that an invasion was under way came flooding in that evening, the top Soviet leaders refused to believe them. Then directives and shouts down the telephone poured out to the frontier from the Kremlin, from the People’s Commissariat of Defense, and from the General Staff: “Don’t give in to provocation!” The day before Operation Barbarossa, a deserter from the Wehrmacht crossed the border and warned the Soviets of the impending attack. Stalin had the soldier shot for spreading “lies”.
Shortly after the first German troops began to invade the Soviet Union, General I. V. Tyulenev was having a conversation in the Kremlin with Zhukov. “I reported it to Stalin,” Zhukov said, “but at first he didn’t believe it, and thought it was a provocation by some German generals.” This creates a serious contradiction for communist historians who argue that Stalin carried out the largest regrouping of troops in history because he sensed that a German attack was imminent.
There is no doubt that not only Stalin but Molotov, Zhdanov, and Beria all refused to believe that a German invasion was possible. Their unwillingness to believe this is confirmed by everything the Red Army did: anti-aircraft guns did not fire on German aircraft; Soviet fighters were forbidden to shoot down German planes; troops in the First Echelon had their ammunition taken from them; and draconian orders not to give in to provocation flowed from the General Staff.
If the Soviet leaders did not believe that a German invasion was possible, for what were they preparing themselves? There can only be one answer. They were preparing themselves for a war which would begin without the German invasion. While nobody thought that the German invasion would happen, the top ranking Soviet officials secretly moved towards the border. It had been planned that leading figures in the People’s Commissariat of Defense, the NKVD, the People’s Commissariat for State Control, and other important Soviet governing bodies, should move into the western areas that same night [Late June 1941], traveling along the same Moscow-Minsk railway line. The purpose of that journey was war. Among the leaders of the Stalinist empire who were getting ready that night to make the secret journey to the western borders were the People’s Commissar for the Interior, candidate member of the Politburo, and Commissar General for State Security [Lavrenty Pavlovich] Beria; member of the Central Committee, People’s Commissar for State Control, Grade I Army Commissar L. Z. Mekhlis; and candidate member of the Central Committee, People’s Commissar for Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union S. K. Timoshenko. It cannot be excluded the even Stalin was also preparing himself to make that secret journey westward…. The groups who were to accompany the leaders spent many weary hours waiting before being told at 6 o’clock in the morning of June 22 that their trains to the western frontier had been cancelled, since Hitler had started the war. If it had been the intention of the Soviet leaders to travel to the western borders to man the secret command posts in order to contain a German invasion, they would have hurried westwards as soon as they had received a signal that such an invasion had begun. Instead, they cancelled their trains which were to have taken them to war. They were ready to turn up on the frontier and direct a war, but one which began as part of a Soviet scenario, and not a German one. Hitler deprived them of this satisfaction.

“[On June 15, 1941], the Soviet generals in the frontier military districts received an order … to be ready at any moment to seize positions on foreign territory.” (Suvorov, p. 187).

Ever since July 1940, the communists have been carrying out massive reconnaissance operations on the German border. Generals and marshals put on soldiers’ uniforms and drove or walked as close as they could to Germany, studying it with binoculars. What did they see? Enemy frontier guards and German terrain. What defensive purpose could there possibly be in observing German land and a few soldiers? They could not hope to see evidence of potential enemy aggression; yet they continued to reconnaissance for weeks.
General Sevast’yanov’s account [of his reconnaissance] shows that he observed the German frontier guards on more than one occasion. In fact it happened regularly. So here is a question: Comrade General, what precisely were you doing so close to the frontier? If you were disturbed at the thought that the Germans might invade, then you should have ordered five or six fences of barbed wire to be stretched out along the frontier, so that nobody could slip through. ... Then you should have laid a minefield about three kilometers deep behind the barbed-wire entanglements, then dug anti-tank ditches behind the minefields and covered them with static flame-throwers, and behind these, another 20-30 stretches of barbed-wire entanglements, this time on metal stakes, or better still, steel rails set in concrete. Further back still, another minefield – a false one, with the real minefield behind it. Then dig another anti-tank ditch. Then behind all this, construct forest traps, and so on indefinitely. Comrade General, another question: Why were your demolition experts studying enemy minefields instead of laying their own>>?
If the general had really been preparing for defense, there would have been no need for him to stare at the German frontier guards. He would have had to study not foreign territory but his own, and the more deeply he did it, the better.
When Germany wanted to invade the Soviet Union it started reconnaissance in early 1941. When the USSR was invading Japanese China, Poland, and Scandinavia, it did its reconnaissance. When the Finns were defending their territory, they did not study enemy terrain. I think that by now it is obvious, but I will state it anyway: One only studies enemy territory when one plans to go there.

The Soviet armies mobilized in the western USSR did not have maps of the region they were in. Maps of one’s own territory are indispensable in a defensive war. When Hitler invaded, the Red Army had to operate without knowledge of its topographical surroundings and nearby roads. Was there a map shortage? No, because the Red Army had millions of maps in its possession on the eve of war. However, these were maps of Berlin, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania; not Belarus and Ukraine.

What's the source for this document?

I asked for you to wait unitl I had finished.

Answer then.

“Without Stalin there would have been no Hitler, there would have been no Gestapo!” – Leon Trotsky (Bulletin of the Opposition, No. 52-53, October 1936).

“Stalin finally untied Hitler’s hands, as well as those of his enemies, and thereby pushed Europe towards war.” – Trotsky, November 1938. We can trust the accuracy of Trotsky’s remarks. He was, along with Lenin, a leader of the Soviet Union and the communist coup d’etat.

On May 5, 1941, a secret directive was sent to the Soviet staff on the western front. Had there been one word about defense in that directive, the marshals and the communist historians would not have failed to quote it [on numerous occasions]. However, only one sentence from this directive ever escaped the text’s censorship in the 60 years since its issue. This means that the directive was not a defensive one, but one that commands the invasion of Germany. Why would the communists so readily censor this text if it contained orders dealing with the gallant defense of their country?
The one sentence that leaked out of the directive is “to be ready, on the orders of the High Command, to deliver swift blows utterly to destroy the enemy, to carry out combat operations over his territory and seize important positions.” Take notice of the phrase, “on the orders of the High Command.” [This phrase] was enough to reveal fully the sense of this carefully concealed document. In a defensive war, a soldier does not wait for orders. For hundreds of years the Russian soldier has gone into battle with aggressors without waiting for orders from above. When the enemy crosses the river marking the frontier, that means to the ordinary soldier that the war has begun. When a defensive war starts, the first to know about it are the soldiers standing on the frontier. The detachment commander is informed. Then, the platoon commander comes on the scene. He coordinates the fire of his detachments. Then other commanders of more senior rank turn up. The fighting becomes more organized. A report flies off to regimental headquarters, and from there to the divisional headquarters.
This is how a defensive war begins. Yet the top-secret directive of May 5, 1941 provided for millions of Red Army soldiers to enter the war in response to a single order which was to be received from the Soviet High Command. A half-asleep soldier on the frontier can see the enemy making an attack, but how can the comrades in the Kremlin know that a war has started? Unless, perhaps, they themselves fixed the date on which it was to begin.

We do not know, and apparently we shall never find out, what the top-secret directive of May 5, 1941 contained. It is clear, however, that it was a directive about a war with Germany, but a war which was not to be started by a German invasion, but by some other means. If the directive had had several alternate versions, and one of those had covered the contingency of Germany starting the war, then all the Soviet leaders in the Kremlin need then have done on June 22, 1941 was to telephone the officers commanding the frontier military districts and tell them, “Open your safes, take out the directive dated May 5 and carry out what it says.”
If the May 5 directive had contained several alternate sets of orders, and one of them had been defensive, then the officer commanding the frontier military district could have been told, “Put a line through the first nine versions, but carry out the tenth, the final one.” But there were no defensive versions in the directive.

On May 6, 1941, Stalin (General Secretary of the Party since 1922) became head of the Soviet government. This move, however, did not increase his power; it diminished it. Before, Stalin controlled everything, but officially was responsible for nothing. As early as 1931, Leon Trotsky described the mechanism to be used in preparing the communist coup in Germany:
Should the new policy succeed, then all the Manuilskys and all the Remmeles would be given full credit, but the initiative would still have been Stalin’s. But in the event of failure, however, Stalin kept the way completely clear for himself to find someone to blame. This was the quintessence of his strategy. Stalin was strong in this field.
The coup did not take place and Stalin did indeed find people to blame, and gave them exemplary punishment. Why did Stalin suddenly decide to take full official responsibility for his actions in May of 1941? Communists explain that Stalin foresaw the German attack coming and wanted to be at the head of his country when it routed the German invasion. However, as soon as the Nazis invaded, Stalin refused to take any responsibility for defending the USSR. On June 22, the head of the government was obliged to address the nation and break the terrible news. But Stalin avoided meeting his direct obligations, which were fulfilled by Molotov, his deputy. Why was it necessary for him to sit in Molotov’s chair in May, but hide behind his broad back in June?
On the evening of June 22, the Soviet High Command issued a directive to the troops. It is Marshal G. K. Zhukov who speaks:
General N. F. Vatutin said that J. V. Stalin had approved draft directive No. 3 and ordered that my signature be placed on it…
We learn from official history that this directive emerged bearing the signatures of Marshal S. K. Timoshenko, People’s Commissar for Defense, G. M. Malenkov, member of the council of the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and General Zhukov, Chief of the General Staff. Stalin thus compelled others to sign the order, while avoiding any personal responsibility for it himself. So why did he take on the responsibility in May? The directive went out to the armed forces to rout the invading enemy. It is a document of utmost importance. Yet Stalin did not officially take part in it. It took the members of the Politburo one month to compel Stalin to take over the post of People’s Commissar for Defense, and, on August 8, the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Had it really been worth Stalin’s while to assume responsibility when the defensive war had been foreseen, in order to do everything he could to avoid responsibility as soon as that war began?

The Communist Party had conditioned the Soviet people and army that the order to launch a war of “liberation” in Europe would be given by Stalin himself. … The

Soviet people knew that the was would begin on Stalin’s orders, and not as a result of an attack by some enemy or other:
And when Marshal of the Revolution Comrade Stalin gives the signal, hundreds of thousands of pilots, navigators, and parachutists will rain down upon the heads of the enemy with the full force of our arms, the arms of socialist justice. The Soviet armies of the air will bring happiness to humanity! (Pravda, August 18, 1940).
In his post as Secretary-General of the Party, Stalin could give any order, and that order would be instantly and exactly obeyed. But any order given by Stalin was unofficial, and therein lay Stalin’s invulnerability and infallibility. But now the situation no longer satisfied him; he had to give an order, the most important of his life, in such a way that it would be officially his. This is why Stalin assumed his new post.
According to the evidence of Marshal of the Soviet Union K. K. Rokossovski, each Soviet commander held a “special secret operations envelope” in his safe. This “letter M red envelope,” as it was known, could only be opened on the orders of the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (until May 5, 1941 this was Vyacheslav Molotov), or of the People’s Commissar for Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union, S. K. Timoshenko. But according to Marshal Zhukov, Timoshenko “could not take any policy decisions without Stalin.” So Stalin took Molotov’s post so that the Prime Order should come from Stalin, and not from Molotov. A red envelope lay in the safe of every commander, but on June 22, 1941 Stalin issued no order that they be opened. Thankfully, the early German attack prevented Stalin from giving the order that he had waited to officially give for so long.

The red envelopes could stand as evidence by themselves. If the envelopes contained plans for defense, the Soviet leaders could have simply told the commanders to open them. Instead, they sent new improvised directives.

“It will be necessary to crush the enemy forces with a surprise attack, after which our liberation campaign will move forward at full speed.” – Stalin, October 21, 1939.

“Strategic defense was an involuntary form of combat operations, it had not been planed beforehand.” That is what the Soviet Military textbooks say. We do not need the textbooks, though, to tell us that in the summer of 1941, the Red Army’s defensive operations were pure improvisation. …
In the first hours following the beginning of the German invasion, the Red Army kept on trying to go over to the offensive. Modern textbooks call what the Red Army was doing counter-strikes and counter-offensives. But it was pure improvisation. “The subject of counter-offensive… had never been raised before the Great Motherland War.”
Before the war, therefore, Soviet military staffs did not work out any plans for defense, nor did they work out any for a counter-offensive either. Yet they were working very hard on war plans. According to Marshal of the Soviet Union A. M. Vasilevsky, in the year preceding the war, the officers and generals of the General Staff, the headquarters of the Military Districts, and the naval fleets were working fifteen to seventeen hours a day, with no holidays or days off. Marshals Bagramyan and Sokolovsky, Generals Shtemenko, Kurasov, Malandin, and many others say the same thing. General Anisov reportedly worked a 20-hour day, and the same was said of General Smorodinov.
General Zhukov became chief of the General Staff in February 1941. The General Staff in effect went on to a war footing from that moment. Zhukov himself worked assiduously and did not allow anyone else to slacken…. The slightest carelessness on the part of any subordinate meant immediate death…. At that time the General Staff, and all other staffs, were working under inhuman pressure.
So how could it have happened that the Red Army went into the war without plans? There is something else which cannot be understood. If the Red Army went to war without plans, then why did Stalin not shoot Zhukov, and all those who should have been helping to make the plans, as soon as he learnt about it? That did not happen. On the contrary, those involved in making the Soviet plans, such as Vasilevsky, Sokolovsky, Vatutin, Malandin, Bagramyan, Shtemenko, and Kurasov, who had begun the war as major-generals or even colonels, ended it, if not as marshals, then at least four-star generals. They all showed themselves to be brilliant strategists in the course of the war. They were all conscientious and even pedantic staff officers, who could not conceive of life without a plan. So how could it come about that the Red Army was compelled to improvise in the first months of the war? And why did Stalin not even reproach Zhukov and his planners, let alone shoot them?
When asked the straight question as to whether the Soviet command had any war plans, Zhukov replied categorically that it did have such plans. Then another question arises: if there were plans, why did the Red Army operate in an uncontrolled mass, without any plans at all? Zhukov has never answered this question. But here the answer suggests itself. If Soviet staffs were working very hard to make war plans, and these were neither defensive plans or plans for counter-offensive, then what kind of plans were they? Purely offensive plans.
Stalin did not shoot Zhukov and the other war-planners for one very simple reason. They had never been given the job of working out plans for a defensive war…. Stalin gave the task of making plans of some other kind to Zhukov, Vasilevsky, Sokolovsky, and other outstanding strategists. These were very good plans, but the moment the defensive war began they became unnecessary, just like the motorway tanks and the airborne assault corps.

In 1941, a change of considerable importance took place [in the Red Army]. Soviet troops ceased to concern themselves about how they would spend the following winter. All the troops of the First Strategic Echelon left their dug-outs and partially built barracks and moved directly onto the frontier. The troops in the Second Strategic Echelon who were being moved from the interior of the country did not use the uncompleted barracks and small military centers which the First Echelon had left behind. The arriving troops did not mean to spend the winter in these places, and were in no way preparing themselves for winter. They no longer made dug-outs, they did not build training grounds or firing ranges; they did not even dig trenches. There are many official documents and memoirs by generals

and marshals to show that the troops were now quartered only under canvas. … So where did they intend to spend the winter, if not in central and southern Europe?
…let us for a moment envisage a situation in which Hitler did not attack the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, but decided to postpone Operation Barbarossa and capture Gibraltar, for example, instead. What would Stalin have done in that situation? He could not have turned back his massive armies. … It would have taken many months to move the troops back, paralyzed the railways and brought on an economic catastrophe. What would have been the sense of spending six months concentrating troops in secret, and then spending another six months dispersing them? But even if a total dispersal had immediately followed the total concentration, it would have been quite impossible to complete the process before winter set in. Nor could Stalin have left his vast armies to winter in the forests of the frontier area.
There are several more aspects here. We know that Stalin created a great lot of gliders. This burst of glider production has interesting implications. The gliders produced in the spring of 1941 would have to have been used in the summer of that year, or by early autumn at the latest, since it would have been impossible to keep them safe until 1942. All the hangers had long been crammed full of the gliders which had already been produced. It would have been out of the question to keep fields of gliders in the open air for any length of time, exposed to the rains and winds of autumn and to frosts and heavy snowfalls weighing many tons. The mass production of airborne assault transport gliders in 1941 meant that they were intended to be used in mid-1941. If Stalin had intended to throw hundreds of thousands of his paratroopers into Western Europe in 1942, then the mass production of gliders would have been planned for 1942. In addition, “In April 1941 the Red Army ordered a massive deployment of artillery pieces and ammunition production to the frontier, and their storage there on the ground in the open. …this weaponry and ammunition had to be used before the fall, when the annual rains would begin.”
The final aspect was food. The existence of five voracious fronts, and the secret mobilization of peasants and technicians before the harvest had been gathered, would have led inevitably to a famine in 1942, even without any intervention by the Germans. Once the all-consuming fronts had been deployed, there was no option but to send them into action the same year. If they stayed where they were, they would quite simply have nothing left to eat. A surprise attack by the Red Army in 1941, on the other hand, held the promise of new rich territories with abundant reserves of food.…
The only Soviet marshal whom Stalin trusted completely was B. M. Shaposhnikov. As early as 1929, Shaposhnikov had expressed the categoric opinion that it was impossible to mobilize hundreds of thousands and millions of people and keep them in prolonged inactivity in the frontier area. … When he set up the fronts, Stalin destroyed the already unstable balance between his huge armies and the country’s exhausted, ruined agriculture. It was all or nothing, and Stalin could no longer wait until 1942 to launch an offensive.
…if the Red Army could not go back, but could not stay long in the border area either, what was left for it to do?…
In every grandiose scheme, there comes a critical point after which events become irreversible. For the Soviet Union that point [of no return] was the date of June 13, 1941. After that day, war for Stalin not only became inevitable: it became inevitable in the summer of 1941, no matter how Hitler might act.

On June 5, 1941, books with common German phrases were distributed among the troops. The guides contained phrases such as “Where is drinkable water?”, “What is this village?”, “What river is that?”, and “Where are the Party members hiding?”, all translated into German. Why would a defensive army need to have a German handbook? Was the plan to approach Russian villagers and ask them in German where the Nazi Party leaders are hiding? No, these books were distributed because the Red Army planned to use them on German territory.

“Divide our enemies, meet the demands of each of them temporarily and then destroy them, giving them no opportunity to unite.” (Pravda, March 4, 1941).

Soviet reports, communist speeches, and books written by Stalin, Zhukov, and others are not the only evidence available. Although they are obscure, it is possible to obtain any of these sources if one searches in the libraries of Washington, London, and Moscow. If one doesn’t want to use them, one can always learn about the Soviet Union’s attempted invasion from many overt communist newsjournals like Pravda and Red Star. This is how a Soviet air general described the upcoming Soviet liberation campaign in Pravda: “What joy and happiness will shine in the faces of those who will receive here in the Great Kremlin Palace the last republic into the brotherhood of nations of the whole world! I envisage clearly the bomber planes destroying the enemy’s factories, railway junctions, bridges, depots, and positions; low-flying assault aircraft attacking columns of troops and artillery positions with a hail of gunfire; and assault landing ships putting their divisions ashore in the heart of the enemy’s dispositions. The powerful and formidable air force of the Land of the Soviets, along with the infantry and tank and artillery troops will do their sacred duty and will help the enslaved peoples to escape from their executioners.” (Pravda, Georgi Baidukov, August 18, 1940). Not once did he call the war defensive, and he made no references to fighter aircraft. Enough statements like this were published to fill many volumes.
The base [Liepaja Naval Base] was less than 100 kilometers from the German border. It has no land defenses and had not been prepared for defense. But according to the testimony of Soviet admirals and of German captured documents, Soviet submarines were crammed into Liepaja “like herring in a barrel”. The official history of the Soviet Naval Fleet published by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR openly admits that Liepaja had been prepared as a forward base for the Soviet Fleet to fight an offensive war at sea.
Colonel-Commissar Vasilevskaya proclaimed in the pages of Pravda (November 9, 1940) that not for long would the butchers go on drinking blood, not for long need the slaves go on rattling their chains – we’ll liberate them all! … In the

course of 1940 alone, … five new “republics” were annexed into the Soviet Union. After this, it was openly declared that the “liberation” campaigns would continue, and enormous forces were created for the purpose. The next victim of “liberation” could only have been Germany, or Romania; for Germany this would have meant immediate defeat.
In May 1941 the Soviet press suddenly began to talk about how the peoples of Europe wanted peace and were looking with hope to the Red Army. There were the same words and tone which were invariably used before every communist “liberation.”
Much more quotes from Pravda are scattered throughout this essay.

In the course of writing this essay, I uncovered so much evidence in books of Suvorov supporting my line of reasoning that I could not possibly list all of them. After reading dozens of quotes of generals and marshals, military offensive orders, faultless logical proofs, and other substantiations, I began skipping most of them and only picking out the most interesting and succinct. Also, Icebreaker was only one of Suvorov’s many books. He wrote several more afterward displaying a lot of other evidence that he later uncovered. Remember that if you remove the almost impenetrable shroud of years of communist misinformation and look at what really went on, the evidence in favor of a Soviet world domination plot in 1941 will bombard you.

Zhukov and Stalin’s Discussion

If the USSR was indeed not trying to invade Europe, then it would have been impossible for the following conversation not to take place between Zhukov and Stalin. Zhukov begins, “Hmm, Soviet military intelligence has determined that there is no way our friend Hitler will invade us.” S: “Nevertheless, we must defend ourselves from a surprise attack. Put the armies and their supplies as close to Germany as possible.”
Z: “Agreed. But we accidentally did not equip our tanks to be useful on Soviet territory.”
S: “Don’t worry, everyone makes mistakes.”
Z: “To make up for it, I have created 200 times as much parachutists than the rest of the world combined. But we’ll have to use them fast, since without much fighters in our air force we won’t maintain air superiority in the event of an invasion.” S: “Did you know that Meretskov completely destroyed our entire expensive system of defense?”
Z: “I suggest that we promote Meretskov. Since we can’t understand what he is doing, he must be doing something exceedingly clever. Besides, we have so much men standing on the border that it will be hard for any force to pass. However, it is extraordinarilly expensive to maintain the armies. If nobody invades in the summer of 1941, we will have to spend six months demobilizing them.”
S: “It was certainly a mistake to mobilize so many troops at a time when we are at peace with Germany and nobody could possibly invade.”
Z: “If the United States, England, Italy, or Spain were to invade in the brief time when the army is standing on the border, we would defeat them soundly. I am employing a clever trick. I put thousands of tons of fuel directly on the border. If a country would begin to bomb us, the fuel would catch fire and cover the enemy’s vision with a cloud of black smoke.”
S: “Truly, an excellent scheme. By the way, I understand you spent a lot of time working with war planners. What have you been doing all these months?”
Z: “Oh, nothing much. We played cards most of the time, sometimes chess. Marshal Bagramyan won 3 of our monthly chess tournaments. We gave the army commanders an empty red envelope and told them to wait for the order to open them. The joke’s on them! The order will never come.”
S: “Why did you pile ammunition on the very border? If an enemy attacks, they will capture it!”
Z: “Hey, man, give me a break. Remember: I am a skilled military commander. I have organized many brilliant strategies. For example, giving our troops maps of Berlin, France, Germany and Romania was my genius idea. If the enemy captures our maps, they will not be able to use them! Some more tactics that prove my ability is not destroying the bridges across the border and removing barbed wire and mines from the frontier.” S: “Certainly, I must be a very poor military planner if I can’t see the supreme intelligence of your brilliant strategy.”
Those of us who know how quickly Stalin and Zhukov kill their subordinates at the smallest joke should realize the impossibility of this dialogue.
In one of Suvorov’s books, he writes a similar dialogue between Zhukov and the general in charge of maps. I have never seen a funnier satire than that. Translating it into English would render it less comical so I will refrain from doing that. Near the center of the conversation, Zhukov asks the general why he gave the troops maps of Germany and Romania. The general replies very humorously and the dialogue continues.

Stalin’s Nazis

“The German Commission of the Comintern, consisting of Zinoviev, Bukharin, Stalin, Trotsky, Radek, and a number of German comrades, took a series of specific decisions that direct assistance be given to the German comrades to enable them to seize power.” – Boris Bazhanov (Speech to the Plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of the VKP, August 1, 1927).
“The Congress stresses in particular that the Central Committee is given full powers at any moment to break all alliances and peace treaties with imperialist and bourgeois states and equally to declare war on them.” (Resolution of the 7th Party Congress).

The communists knew that Europe would only be vulnerable to revolution by way of war. However, they also knew that it would be imprudent to engage in that war from the start. A wiser option would be to secretly provoke that war, while staying neutral, and when the fighting parties have exhausted themselves, to throw the Red Army into the mix, easily destroying both sides. “We shall move, but we shall be the last to move, in order to throw our weight on to the scales and tip the balance.” For Stalin, German Nazism was an instrument which would break a path for the revolution through the solid ice – an icebreaker. Germany would weaken

Europe by way of the war, thereby allowing the Red Army to invade successfully. Stalin stated in 1927 that the second imperialist war was quite unavoidable. Just as unavoidable, in fact, as the entry of the Soviet Union into that war. However, he did not want to take part in it himself from the first day. In 1927 Stalin already foresaw that the Nazis would come to power and he considered that this would be a positive event [for him]. I must rewrite Trotsky’s 1936 quote: “Without Stalin there would have been no Hitler, there would have been no Gestapo!”
In Europe Stalin needed war, destruction, and hunger. Hitler could achieve all this for him. The more crimes Hitler committed in Europe, the better it would be for Stalin and the more justification he would have to send the Red Army into Europe as its liberator – while changing the concentration camps from brown to red. Pravda openly proclaimed on May 6th that the Soviet Union would liberate Europe: “The people [of Europe] do not want war. Their gazes are fixed on the countries of socialism which are reaping the fruits of peaceful labor. They see with every justification a solid bastion for peace in the armed forces of our Motherland, in the Red Army and Navy. In the present complex international situation it is necessary to be ready for surprises of all kinds…”
Even before the Nazis came to power, the Soviet leaders had given Hitler the unofficial name of “Icebreaker for the Revolution.” This name is both apt and fitting. The communists understood that Europe would be vulnerable only in the event of war and that the Icebreaker could make it vulnerable. Unaware of this, Adolf Hitler cleared the way for world communism by his actions. With his blitzkrieg wars, Hitler crushed the Western democracies, scattering and dispersing his forces from Norway to Libya. This suited Stalin admirably. When he moved his icebreaker – German Nazism – against democratic Europe, Stalin had already passed the death sentence on it. Stalin had been planning to liquidate the Nazis for five years before they took over in Germany. “Smash fascism, overthrow capitalism, establish Soviet power, and free the colonies from slavery.”
From 1927 onwards, Stalin made ever effort to support the Nazis who were then striving for power, although he did not, of course do so publicly. After 1933, Stalin would do everything possible to push the Nazis towards war. The post-WWI Treaty of Versailles deprived Germany of a strong army. German commanders were unable to use German territory to train for the waging of offensive wars. So they began to make their preparations in the Soviet Union. Everything possible was done, on Stalin’s orders, to enable German commanders to carry out military training on Soviet territory. They were given training classes, artillery and shooting ranges, as well as tanks, heavy artillery, and military aircraft which, under the terms of the Treaty, they had no right to receive. Similarly, German commanders were given access to Soviet tank-manufacturing plants, the most powerful in the world. From the 1920s on, sparing neither resources nor effort, nor indeed time, Stalin revived the strike power of German militarism. Certainly not against himself. For what purpose? There is only one answer – so that war would be declared on the rest of Europe. Stalin understood that a powerful, aggressive army does not start a war by itself. A mad, fanatical leader is also needed. Stalin did a great deal to see that just such a leader should appear at the head of the German nation. Once the fascists had come to power, Stalin persistently and doggedly pushed towards war. The high point of these efforts was the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. In this pact, Stalin guaranteed Hitler freedom of action in Europe and, in effect, opened the floodgates of the Second World War.
The way Stalin helped the Nazis win against their rival parties was by making the German communist party side with them. This resulted in an elimination of the German communist party once the Nazis succeeded, but Stalin got what he wanted. “The German Communist Party had been ordered, against its will, to direct its main force against not the Nazis, but the Socialist-bourgeois coalition Governments, to the degree of the Prussian referendum of 1931 and the transport strike of 1932, in which Nazis and Communists actively cooperated against the moderates. When such tactics resulted in the victory of Hitler, the crushing of the German Communist party was represented as a victory [in the USSR].” (Robert Conquest, The Great Terror, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p.195). Those historians who have read scores of books on the topic consider the fact that the Nazis would not have seized power without communist help as 100% certain.

When

When did this Second World War, so cleverly originated, begin? The formal date for the beginning is September 3rd, 1939, when England and France declared war on Germany. The accepted logical start was September 1st, when Germany invaded Poland, thereby forcing France to declare war. For the Soviet Union, the asserted beginning of the war was June 22, 1941, the day Operation Barbarossa began. I have even heard it said that the USSR was bent on a “peaceful” life when it was set upon. If the inventions of Soviet propaganda are to be believed, then the USSR did not enter World War II by its own volition, but was forcibly dragged into it. Communists call the 2 years before June 22nd as the neutral “pre-war period.” It is interesting to note that during this “pre-war period” of 1939-1940, Germany has more grounds than the Soviet Union for considering itself neutral.
During this period all the European neighbors of the USSR fell victim to Soviet aggression. Moreover, the Red Army certainly had no intention of restricting or stopping its “liberation campaigns” into the West at that point (Order No. 400, dated February 7, 1940, of the People’s Commissar for the Defense of the Soviet Union) although by then only Germany lay to the west of the Soviet Union. In September 1939, the Soviet Union declared itself neutral and seized territories with populations totaling 23 million people – not bad going for a neutral state. The Red Army and the NKVD perpetrated fearful crimes in these captured territories, cramming Soviet concentration camps with prisoners. Officer prisoners … were shot in the thousands. This is not an action of a neutral state….
Germany attacked Poland, which means that Germany was the instigator of, and participant in the war. The Soviet Union did the same thing in the same month, but it does not judge itself to be an instigator nor a participant in the war…. Germany seized Denmark and this was an act of war, even though no great battles were fought. The Soviet Union also seized three Baltic states similar to Denmark in geographical position, size of population, culture, and traditions. But the actions of the Soviet Union

are not judged to be acts of war. Germany seized Norway. This was a further act of aggression. But before this happened, the Soviet Union had carved up neighboring Finland. The list of crimes committed by Germany in the war begins on September 1, 1939, while the list of the Red Army’s crimes begins for some reason only on June 22, 1941. Why?
During the “pre-war period,” the Red Army lost hundreds of thousands of its soldiers in bitter battles. German Army losses were considerably less. If one judges from losses and killings alone, Germany is the one that should be neutral instead of the USSR.
The official explanation used to give a name to these actions of the Soviet Army in the “pre-war period” is “strengthening of western frontier security.” This is not true. The frontiers were secure, at a time when the neighbors of the Soviet Union were the neutral states of Europe, while there were no common frontiers with Germany, and when Hitler in consequence was totally unable to launch a general attack, and certainly not a surprise attack, on the Soviet Union. Stalin, however, systematically destroyed several neutral states of Europe, thereby establishing a common frontier with Germany. This was not a way of enhancing the security of the Soviet frontiers. On the contrary, the security was now diminished. This again proves that the Soviet Union was interested in attack. A country who seeks a common frontier with a heavily armed nation is not hoping for security but for a clear invasion route. Stalin wrote, “History states that when one country wants to go to war with another, even one which is not a neighbor, then it begins to seek frontiers across which it would be able to reach the frontiers of the countries it wishes to attack.” In the entire history of the world, whenever a country sought to protect itself from another nearby country, it established independent “buffer” states (if possible) to prevent the attacker from launching an attack. In protecting British India from French Indochina, England preserved the independence of Siam. In defending India from Russia, England maintained the independence of Afghanistan. In protecting Western Europe from Russia in 1918, the European council established the independent states of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, and Poland as a buffer zone. History textbooks use a double standard when they say that the USSR improved its security by removing the obstacles between Germany and itself.
If we use the explanation “strengthening of western frontier security” to describe aggression against six neutral European states – Poland, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Romania – why do we not use the same explanation in relation to Hitler? Did he not enhance the security of his frontiers by occupying neighboring countries? It may be objected that in the “pre-war period” the Soviet Union did not wage one continuous war, but a series of wars and invasions separated by intervals. But Hitler also waged a series of wars separated by intervals. Why do we use other criteria when judging him? …
An attempt to establish the exact date on which the Second World War began, and the time when the Soviet Union came into it, inescapably leads us, in fact, to the date of August 19, 1939.
Previously, Stalin had often spoken at secret meetings about his plan to liberate Europe. This was first to involve Europe in war, while he himself remained neutral. Then, when the adversaries has exhausted each other, he would throw the whole power of the Red Army into the balance. The final decision to carry this plan into effect was taken at a session of the Politburo held on August 19, 1939. Russian historian T.S. Bushuyeva and German writer Wolfgang Strauss published Stalin’s August 19 speech. Here is a portion of it, a brief refutation of the entire accepted view of WWII, taken from Daniel Michaels’s web site (p.7): “The question of war or peace has entered a critical phase for us. If we conclude a mutual assistance pact with France and Great Britain, Germany will back off from Poland and seek a modus vivendi with the Western powers…. If we accept Germany’s proposal and conclude a nonaggression pact with her, she will of course invade Poland, and the intervention of France and England in that war would be unavoidable. Western Europe would be subjected to serious upheavals and disorder. Under those conditions, we would have a great opportunity to stay out of the conflict, and we could plan the opportune time for us to enter the war.
“The experience of the last 20 years has shown that in peacetime the Communist movement is never strong enough to seize power. The dictatorship of such a party will only become possible as the result of a major war. Our choice is clear. We must accept the German proposal…”

Now that the actual start of World War II is established, there is one more secret crucial date which is more difficult to obtain: M-Day, or the initiation of the Soviet Union’s western invasion. Earlier, I proved that the Red Army had to go into action in 1941 before the winter and fall. The reasons were no winter preparations by the troops, insufficient food, and not enough roofs to protect gliders and ammunition.
M-Day would have to take place from July to October 1941. However, the most likely date in that time period would be July 6th. There are quite a few indications that the date for the beginning of the Soviet Operation Groza (“Thunderstorm”) was fixed for July 6, 1941. Memoirs of Soviet marshals, generals, and admirals, archival documents, the mathematical analysis of information or the movements of thousands of Soviet military railway trains all point to July 10 as the date on which the full concentration of the Second Strategic Echelon of the Red Army would be achieved on the Soviet western borders. Soviet military theory, however, lays down that the move over to a decisive offensive should not follow but precede the full concentration of troops. In that event, a number of those military trains belonging to the Second Strategic Echelon could have been offloaded directly on enemy territory, for its troops to go directly into battle.
Zhukov and Stalin liked to deliver their surprise strikes on Sunday mornings, and July 6, 1941 was the last Sunday before the concentration of Soviet troops was complete. General Ivanov’s statement directly points to this date: “The German troops succeeded in forestalling us literally by two weeks.”

Operation Barbarossa

If Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa was delayed for a mere two weeks, Europe, Asia, and Africa would be under Soviet communism. The existence of America would be in question. This is a scary thought. Consider yourself privileged because, in reading this essay, you now know something crucial that less than 0.0001% of the world knows.
Note: In reading this chapter, it must be kept in mind that without Romanian oil, the Germany army would not be able to operate at all for long.
In July 1940 Hitler first expressed the thought that the Soviet Union could be dangerous… In June 1940, while the German Army was fighting in France, Zhukov, acting on Stalin’s orders and without prior consultations with their German allies, occupied Bessarabia, which was then a part of Romania, and introduced river vessels into the Danube Delta. Were Hitler to take one more step westwards towards Britain, where was the guarantee that Zhukov, again acting on Stalin’s orders, would not make another move, of just 100 kilometers, to deal a fatal blow to the Romanian oilfields?
Hitler asked the head of the Soviet government to remove the Soviet threat to what, in terms of oil, was in effect the heart of Germany. Stalin and Molotov did not remove the threat, thus provoking Hitler to take reciprocal action. In July 1940, Hitler had detailed consultations with his generals, and reached the depressing conclusion that it would be no simple matter to defend Romania. If Germany attempted to do so, the supply-lines would be over-stretched and would have to pass through mountainous areas. If a large number of troops were to be thrown into the defense of Romania, then western Poland and eastern Germany, along with Berlin itself, would be open to a Soviet attack. Nor would it help to concentrate a great number of troops in Romania and support her at any price; the oilfields could be destroyed by the fires which would break out if Romania became an arena for fighting.
Germany had to try something else. B. H. Liddel-Hart, the British military historian who had made a detailed study of this subject, has established that the German plan in June 1940 was very simple. In order to defend Romania from Soviet aggression, a German attack had to be delivered in some other place, in order to draw the Red Army’s attention away from the oilfields. … Hitler’s calculation was justified. By striking elsewhere, Hitler compelled the Soviet troops to be withdrawn all along the front….
Stalin made few mistakes in his career. One of the few, but his most important one, was to seize Bessarabia in 1940. He should either have seized Bessarabia and then moved immediately on Ploesti; or else he should have waited until Hitler had landed in Britain, and then seized Bessarabia and the whole of Romania. Either course of action would have marked the end of the “thousand-year Reich.” Stalin had already taken one step in the direction of the oil, and had captured a springboard for a future offensive. He then stopped to bide his time. By doing this, he revealed his interests in Romanian oil and scared Hitler, who until that moment had been waging war in the west, south, and north, without turning any of his attention to the “neutral” Stalin. The Soviet seizure of Bessarabia and the concentration there of powerful aggressive forces, including an airborne assault corps and the Danube Flotilla [not to mention the 9th Army], compelled Hitler to look at the strategic situation from an altogether different viewpoint and to take the appropriate preventive measures. But it was already too late. Even the Wehrmacht’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union could no longer save Hitler and his empire.
Stalin’s greatest mistake was made in 1940. In 1939, he achieved his greatest success: the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Hitler knew that he could defeat Western Europe. The Pact gave him the freedom to do that, without worrying about the eastern front. It was only after Hitler got tied up with the West when he realized that a tremendous danger lay in the quiet eastern front. “I have deceived him. I have deceived Hitler,” cried Stalin joyfully after the [Molotov-Ribbentrop] Pact had been signed. Once he had agreed to the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler was faced with an inevitable war against the West, while the “neutral” Stalin stood behind him. From that moment onwards, Hitler had two fronts. His decision to set up Operation Barbarossa in the east without waiting for victory in the west was not a fatal error, but only an attempt to put right the fatal error he had already made. But by then it was too late. The war already had two fronts, and it was already impossible to win it. Even the capture of Moscow would not have solved Hitler’s problem; beyond Moscow there still lay another 10,000 kilometers of boundless territory, vast centers of industrial power, inexhaustible natural and human resources…. Stalin knew that war on two fronts would be suicide for Hitler. Stalin calculated that Hitler would not commit suicide, and that he would not begin a war in the east without first having ended the war in the west. Stalin was patiently waiting for the German tank corps to land in Britain… At the same time Stalin did everything possible to convince Hitler of his peaceableness. That was why Soviet anti-aircraft guns were not firing on German [reconnaissance] aircraft, while Soviet newspapers and TASS proclaimed that there would be no war between the Soviet Union and Germany.
Had Stalin succeeded in convincing Hitler that the Soviet Union was a neutral country, then the German tank corps without any doubt would have landed on the British Isles. And then a truly unprecedented situation would have arisen. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, France, Greece, and Albania no longer had armies, governments, parliaments, or political parties. Millions of people had been driven into Nazi concentration camps and the whole of Europe was awaiting its liberation. All that remained on the European continent was the regiment of Hitler’s personal guards, the guards of the Nazi concentration camps, German rear units, military schools and … five Soviet airborne assault corps, tens of thousands of fast tanks built specially for moving along motorways; tens of thousands of aircraft; pilots who had not been trained for fighting in the air, but who had been taught how to make air strikes on ground targets; divisions and whole armies of the NKVD; armies made up of prisoners from the Soviet labor camps; extra-high-power formations of the Glider Air Force to make rapid landings on enemy territory; mountain divisions trained to make swift thrusts into the mountain passes over which flowed oil, the life-blood of war.
Has anyone in history ever been in such a favorable position to “liberate” Europe? And this situation did not come about by itself. Stalin, working long, persistently and in sustained fashion, had made a subtle mosaic from the smallest of fragments. It was Stalin who helped bring Hitler to power, and made Hitler, in Stalin’s phrase, a real icebreaker for the revolution. It was Stalin who encouraged the icebreaker to move into Europe. It was Stalin who demanded of the French and other communists that they should not prevent the icebreaker from breaking up Europe. It was Stalin who