Roberto wrote:
By the way, Hoffmann doesn't provide evidence that Hitler even thought in terms of prevention when planning and launching the attack on the Soviet Union, does he ?
No, he does not, for the reason that he does not claim that the Germans knew of an impending Soviet attack, and launched their own invasion solely for the purpose of pre-empting it.
Hoffmann's thesis is that both Germany and the Soviet Union were, independently of each other, preparing to attack each other, and that Germany managed to achieve a tactical advantage by striking first. (If that was the case, then Germany was simply observing the age-old strategic principle, "Twice armed is he that hath his quarrel just, but thrice armed he that gets his blow in fust").
What Hoffmann is attacking is not the thesis that Germany planned its own invasion of the Soviet Union, but the propagandistic image of a peace-loving Soviet Union that was taken totally by surprise by an unprovoked German attack.
It is only dishonest propagandists who claim that Hoffmann is justifying the German invasion as a purely defensive measure. Hoffmann is saying that the German invasion, planned for its own reasons, happened to pre-empt an impending Soviet attack, by accident as it were.
Here is what Hoffmann writes in his conclusion (pp 330-331):
The German-Soviet war was inevitable. The only open question was which of the two competing powers would strike first to preempt its adversary. The rapidly increasing superiority and strength of Soviet armaments, especially in tanks, aircraft, and artillery, over the troops of the Wehrmacht, dispersed over all parts of Europe, led the Germans to view June 1941 as the last possible opportunity for German initiation of preventive war. Further delay would have eroded the only factor favouring the Germans, which was their level of training. The most recent discoveries in Soviet archives illustrate the extent to which Soviet military preparation and deployment had in fact already been completed. To all apppearances, Stalin moved the attack date forward from 1942 to the months of July-September 1941. This would offer a plausible explanation of Stalin's desire to postpone the initiation of hostilities "even if only for....a month, a week, or a few days", to complete his own military preparations - without the slightest fear of German attack. Soviet research has also arrived at the conclusion that the "military struggle against Germany might have begun in July 1941". [Source: M.I. Mel'tiukhov, 'Spory vokrug 1941 goda: opyt kriticheskogo osmyshleniia odnoi diskussii' {=Controversies concerning the year 1941: an attempt at a critical analysis of a discussion}, in: Gotovil li Stalin nastupatel'nuiu voinu {= Did Stalin prepare an offensive war?}, p. 104 ff].
.................................................This does not, of course, constitute a justification of the politically and morally detrimental methods employed by Hitler in Russia (and Poland). Hitler planned a war of conquest, too. The National Socialist war on the Soviet Union was conducted in the spirit of a statement once made by Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconsfield: "The racial question is the key to world history". It should be boren in mind, in this regard, that, by the very nature of things, no conflict between the National Socialist German Reich and the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, could possibly resemble an "ordinary" war; the war was inevitably fated to acquire extraordinary features from the very outset. Militarily speaking, the great initial successes of the troops of the Wehrmacht and their rapid penetration of Soviet territory resulted in an underestimation of Soviet strength and powers of resistance which ultimately proved fatal.
The quote from Harrison Salisbury is not conclusive in itself. It shows that the Soviet Government planned to have shifted to full war production by the end of 1942, and had only approved that plan in June 1941.
When did Germany originally plan to be fully prepared for war? It was about 1943, as I remember. And when did it shift to full war production? It was at the beginning of 1943, after the Stalingrad disaster, and after the appointment of Speer.
Would Roberto argue from those facts that, since Hitler originally planned to be ready for war in about 1942 or 1943, the outbreak of war in 1939 cannot have had anything to do with Hitler's actions?
When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, in the full knowledge that thereby it risked war with Britain and France, it was nowhere near fully prepared for war, in fact well behind Britain and France. Nevertheless, it went to war against Poland and risked the outbreak of a general European war because of the situation in which it found itself, with the strategic situation beginning to move against it (a movement that was temporarily offset by the sudden agreement with the Soviet Union).
So it is entirely possible that the Soviet Union was planning for war with Germany by 1942, but brought its planning forward in response to strategic developments, perhaps its awareness of German preparations. That seems to be the nub of Hoffmann's thesis.
Roberto wrote:
Mills' speculation that the late summer of 1941 may have been the chosen date ..........
That in fact is Hoffmann's speculation. I am saying that Hoffmann's speculation may possibly be correct, but it is not certain.
Hoffmann also quotes a number of Russian sources in support of his position, mainly interrogations of captured Soviet officers (pp. 83-85).
Captain Krasko, Adjutant of the 661st Infantry Regiment of the 200th Infantry Division, declared on 26 July 1941: "In May 1941, among the officers, the opinion was already expressed that the war would begin right after 1 July".
Major Koskov, Commander of the 24th Infantry regiment of the 44th Infantry Division, testified:
"In the view of the Regimental Commander, the justification - namely the evacuation of the Western Ukraine, 'because the Soviets were allegedly attacked without preparation' was in no way true, because Soviet lilitary preparations had been underway for a long time, and, in accordance with the extent and intensity of these military preparations, the Russians would have attacked Germany of their own accord in two to three weeks at the latest".
Colonel Gaevsky, Regimental Commander of the 29th Armored Division, declared to the Germans on 6 August 1941:
"Among the commanders, there has been a lot of talk about a war between Germany and Russia. There was the opinion that the war would break out on approximately July 15, 1941, upon which date Russia would assume the role of the attacker".
Lieutenant Kharchenko of the 131st Intantry Division stated on 21 August 1941:
"That large-scale preparations for war with Germany were underway since the spring of 1941. The general opinion was that war would have broken out at the end of August or the beginning of Septemebr at the latest, ie after the harvest, if Germany had not premepted us. The intent to conduct the war on foreign soil was obvious. All these leadership plans were upset by the outbreak of the war inside Russia".
Major Solov'ev, Chief of Staff of the 445th Infantry Regiment of the 140th Infantry Division, stated:
"Properly speaking, we expected the conflict with Germany only after the harvest, about the end of August or the beginning of Septemebr 1941. The over-precipitate troop movements in the last weeks before the outbreak of hostilities toward the western border could only be explained by the assumption that the Soviets had shifted the attack date forward"
(The second sentence was in response to a claim by the German interrogators that they had captured documentation clearly showing that the Soviet Union wished to attack Germany in the beginning of July).
Lieutenant Rutenko, Company Chief in the 125th Infantry Regiment of the 6th Infantry Division, stated on 2 July 1941 that hostilities would have been initiated by the Russians on 1 September 1941, and that all preparations were made with reference to that date.
Lieutenant-Colonel Liapin, Chief of the Operations Branch of the 1st Motorised Infantry Division, stated on 15 Septemebr 1941 that a Soviet attack had been expected in the Autumn of 1941.
Lieutenant-General Masanov declared with certainty that Stalin would have begun the war with Germany in the autumn of 1941.
An unnamed Lieutenant-Colonel and commander of an artillery regiment declared on 26 July 1941 that Germany had "unilaterally broken the Non-Aggression Pact and attacked us", but added:
"But I admit that the concentration of the Red Army on your eastern border constituted athreat to Germany: after all, it was being said that the Germans could expect us to attack them in August of this year".
On 11 September 1945, Major-General Malyshkin, at that time Chief of Staff of the 19th Army [presumably the Vlasov army], stated to Filed-Marshal Ritter von Leeb: "that Russia would have attacked Germany in mid-August with approximately 350-360 divisions". Hoffmann remarks that those numbers are accurate.
Hoffmann also refers to the book "Stalin Means War", published in London in 1951, and written by Colonel G.A. Tokaev, former Chief of the Aerodynamics Laboratory of the Aur Force Academy in Moscow. On page 34, Tokaev stated, with reference to the Commissar of War, General Klokov:
"The Politburo expected the Soviet-German war to start in very early August. That was the time that Stalin and Molotov considered most favorable to attack their friends Hitler and Ribbentrop".
The range of dates given by the various Russian sources indicates that as of 22 June 1941 no target date for a Soviet attack had yet been communicated to the field ranks of the Red Army. That may be because the Soviet Government had not yet decided on a date, or that it had decided a date but kept knowledge of it restricted to the highest levels.
Roberto wrote:
Mills obviously expects the audience to rely blindly on his somewhat less than honest assertions instead of looking up the previous thread, where it becomes clear that I was referring to Soviet preparations for an all-out attack on Germany in 1941.
Roberto is being less than honest here. In his post to which I originally responded, he did not nominate the date 1941 at all. Nor did I mention 1941 at all. The issue was whether, as Roberto claimed, the Germans failed to find "a single element of evidence hinting at a Soviet attack in the making" (Roberto's own words). Roberto was clearly trying to give the impression that absolutely NO evidence of Soviet preparations for an attack was found. My original response, and the material I have subsequently quoted, shows that, contrary to Roberto's rash assertion, Hoffmann was able to demonstrate that such evidence was indeed found.
Roberto wrote:
Last but not least, as it seems that Mills has in the meantime looked up Mr. Hoffmann's tendentious screed, maybe he can confirm that the following statements quoted by Hoffmann's professional colleague Wigbert Benz, already referred to in my post of Thu Oct 24, 2002 10:27 am on the above mentioned thread, are indeed to be found in Stalins Vernichtungskrieg:
On what basis does Roberto call Hoffmann's work a "tendentious screed", since it is obvious that he has not even read it. Of course, lack of knowledge has never prevented Roberto from opening his mouth to pour forth filth: that is why I have dubbed him the Borborygmite from Bogota.
Here are the only portions of text that I have been able to find that resemble the snippets quoted by Roberto:
First, from the translation of the preface to the 1995 edition:
As can be proven, with certainty, that the German-Soviet war - considered by Hitler to be inevitable following the fateful Molotov mission in November 1940 - just barely preempted a war of conquest that was planned and prepared under high-pressure by Stalin, even more historical facts can be demonstrated today. This is confirmed by ever historical evidence today. Thus, it was not just Hitler, as a certain school of contemporary historigraphy would continue to have us believe, but Stalin, who, from the very outset, in his political and military leadership of the Red Army, employed methods of outrageous brutality that vastly surpassed anything that had ever previously occurred. A myth was widely disseminated in Germany of the alleged possibility of waging "humane" warfare, and that this possibility only vanished due to Hitler's alleged refusal to consider humane methods of waging war. This myth is refuted by the fact that practically in the first days of the war, the members of the Red Army were systematically goaded toward violence and were, furthermore, incited to feelings of infernal hatred against all soldiers of the invading enemy armies. The collision between two dictatorially led socialist military powers obviously left little room, from the very beginning of the war, for considerations of humanity. Nor was there even respect for the laws and provisions of the International Conventions - which were, moreover, recognized by the German Reich, while the Soviet Union had strictly refused ratification.
The second is on page 87:
With such an attitude, neither Stalin nor the Politburo itself, on June 22, 1941, doubted even for a moment that they would be successful in dealing Hitler the defeat that he deserved. General Sudaplatov, Chief of the Reconnaissance Service, even spoke of the "Big Lie of a panic in the Kremlin [Source: Pavel A. Sudoplatov, "Erinnerungen und Nachdenken des Chefs des russischen Aufklaerungsdienstes", a document in Hoffmann's own archives, "21: Beginn des Krieges"]. Stalin was not surprised on June 22, 1941, but, on the contrary, as Colonel General Volkogonov stresses, the shock set in only several days later, ie when the illusions evaporated and catastrophe was looming on the front line, a catastrophe in which it finally became clear that the Germans were, nevertheless, superior in combat [Source: Dimitriy Volkogonov, "Triumf i tragediia. Politicheskii portret J.V. Stalina", Moscow 1989, pp. 50, 154].
Unless the English translation deviates markedly from the German original, the snippets torm out of context by Wigbert Benz do not appear to have been reproduced with total accuracy, although they are not complete distortions. Benz' offence is to have taken the words out of their context, in which I have replaced them.
Roberto wrote:
In view of statements like the above, it is not surprising that Hoffmann's book is held in high esteem by one of Mills' more radical brothers in spirit:
Dear oh dear! Another attempt to smear me (and Hoffmann) through guilt by association. Does Roberto not have any better arguments? Can he not address the data underpinning Hoffmann's theses?