A review about the preventive war

[Caldric]

I do not relish in the idea of killing the Japanese either, military or otherwise. But if burning him out of the hole means I do not have to crawl into the hole, and gives me a major up on survival then hell yes, burn. I am really only an animal that wishes to live, the very basis of why man will wage war is underlined by his desire to live. Crazy? Maybe but it is my little theory and I am sticking to it.

[tonyh]

Its funny how some people get their knickers in a twist when the topic of a German "pre-emptive" strike comes up. It never ceases to to amuse. There are arguments for and against and certainly nobody here has the hand on the whole truth.

I personally don't have a solid conclusion on a Soviet attack plan. I certainly won't rule it out, but as far as I'm concerned Hitler was damn sure that it was coming at some stage in the future. The Soviet invasion of Finland and the anexation of the Eastern European states, not to mention Stalin's eagerness to swallow his part of Poland and the vast Soviet military build up only served to further convince Hitler of Soviet expansion/aggression Westwards.

Tony

[Bill Medland]

Well said Tony, I agree with your comments,Bill.

[Qvist]

haha, Suvorov is a "serious historian", while Gorodetsky is "much ballyhooed". That's nice.

cheers

[Roberto]

Roberto wrote:

Could Mr. Michaels or any of his fans tell us, for instance, why the German troops, although they captured the staffs of whole Soviet armies and army groups during the great encirclement battles in 1941, did not come upon a single element of evidence hinting at a Soviet attack in the making?

In the book "Zwei Wege nach Moskau" there is a whole chapter on Soviet military planning before the German attack. It contains a number of examples from material collected by German investigators after the attack, including captured documents and the results of the interrogation of captured Soviet personnel. The conclusion of the chapter was that the material collected supported the view that there was some Soviet planning for a westward attack.

If I get time, I will look up the book at the library again, and give more details of the chapter referred to.

Of course, I would not place absolute reliance on the statements made by captured Soviet personnel under German interrogation. They may well have told their interrogators what they wanted to hear, in the same way as captured German personnel told their Allied interrogators what the latter wanted to hear. However, the testimony cannot be dismissed absolutely.

I presume the book that Michael Mills is referring to is this one:

Zwei Wege nach Moskau. Vom Hitler- Stalin- Pakt zum 'Unternehmen Barbarossa'.

The Amazon.de site where this book can be ordered used features the following commentary by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel:

Der Spiegel (23.12.91 Nr. 52)
Blutige Experimente

Dank Perestroika und Glasnost" könne nun "ein wahrheitsgemäßes Bild" von jener "widerspruchsvollen Zeit" gezeichnet werden, schreibt Generalmajor Anatolij Chorkow, stellvertretender Leiter des Instituts für Militärgeschichte des sowjetischen Verteidigungsministeriums, in dem Buch "Zwei Wege nach Moskau"; er meint die Vorgeschichte und Geschichte des deutsch-sowjetischen Krieges.
Chorkows einstiger Chef, Generaloberst Dmitrij Wolkogonow, schoß dabei wohl übers Ziel hinaus. Jedenfalls wurde er im Juni aus dem Moskauer Institut gefeuert (was im Autorenverzeichnis noch nicht vermerkt ist). Als er sich geweigert hatte, "gezuckerten Patriotismus" zu verbreiten, wurde ihm "schreiender Antikommunismus" vorgeworfen.
In dem von Bernd Wegner, einem Mitarbeiter des Freiburger Militärgeschichtlichen Forschungsamtes, herausgegebenen Band untersuchen 35 Autoren, darunter drei sowjetische, die deutschsowjetische "Partnerschaft" und den deutschen Überfall auf die Sowjetunion.
Wolkogonow, auch Autor einer Stalin-Biographie ("Triumph und Tragödie"), befaßt sich mit den Fähigkeiten und der Rolle Stalins als Oberstem Befehlshaber. Sein Fazit: Stalin sei weder der viel gerühmte "geniale Feldherr" noch ein "mittelmäßiger Stümper" gewesen, sondern ein "mit bösem Verstand ausgestatteter Schreibfeldherr", der in die "Kriegskunst um den Preis blutiger Experimente eingestiegen" sei.
Chorkow und Generalmajor Jurij Kirschin, ebenfalls Vize-Chef des Moskauer Instituts, erörtern die Katastrophe der Sowjetunion beim deutschen Angriff. Die Gründe dafür sehen sie in dem noch nicht abgeschlossenen Aufmarsch der Roten Armee und in ihrem zum Teil desolaten Zustand.
Mit der für eine Verteidigung völlig verfehlten Bereitstellung der Roten Armee unmittelbar an der sowjetischen Westgrenze setzen sie sich nicht auseinander.
Das tut Wegners Freiburger Kollege Joachim Hoffmann. Er wärmt seine - unbewiesene - These vom deutschen Präventivkrieg wieder auf, wonach Hitler "einem Angriff Stalins durch seinen Angriff vom 22. Juni 1941 zuvorgekommen" sei.

http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/tg/sto ... 11-1061336

My translation:

Der Spiegel (23.12.91 Nr. 52)
Bloody Experiments

Thanks to Perestroika and Glasnost it is now possible to draw "a truthful picture" of those "contradictory times", writes General Major Anatolij Chorkov, deputy head of the Institute for Military History of the Soviet Defense Ministry in the book "Zwei Wege nach Moskau"; he is talking about the antecedents and history of the German-Soviet war.
Chorkov’s former boss, Colonel General Dmitrij Volkogonov, seems to have gone further than he was supposed to in this. In any case he was fired from the Moscow Institute in June (which is not mentioned in the list of authors). When he refused to spread “sugared patriotism”, he was accused of “flagrant anti-Communism".
In the volume issued by Bernd Wegner, a staff member of the Freiburg Institute for Military History, 35 authors, three of them Soviet, examine the German-Soviet “partnership” and the German assault on the Soviet Union.
Volkogonov, also the author of a Stalin biography ("Triumph and Tragedy"), concerns himself with the capacities and part of Stalin as Supreme Commander. His conclusion: Stalin was neither the widely praised "genius commander" nor a "bumbling mediocrity” but a “desktop commander endowed with an evil intellect” who had "introduced himself to the art of war at the price of bloody experiments".
Chorkow und General Major Jurij Kirshin, also Vice-Head of the Moscow Institute, examine the Soviet Union’s catastrophe during the German attack. The reasons for this they see in the not yet concluded marching-up of the Red Army and the partially desolate condition it was in.
The complete inadequacy of the Red Army’s order of battle for defense right next to the Soviet western border they don’t address.
This is done by Wegner’s Freiburg colleague Joachim Hoffmann. He again warms up his – unproven – thesis of a German preventive war, according to which Hitler “anticipated an attack by Stalin through his attack on 22 June 1941”.

I presume that Mr. Mills found what he would like to believe in the article mentioned in the last paragraph of the review, by our old friend Joachim Hoffmann.

Am I right?

My own source is an article by German historian Hermann Graml published in Wolfgang Benz et al, Legenden, Lügen, Vorurteile, 12th edition 2002 by dtv Munich, page 194.

Bei genauerem Zusehen stellt sich nämlich heraus, daß “Suworow” keine plausiblen Argumente und erst recht keine dokumentarischen Beweise für seine Thesen vorzulegen vermag. In den Kesselschlachten des Jahres 1941 haben ja die deutschen Truppen, obwohl ihnen die Stäbe von Armeen und Heeresgruppen in die Hände fielen, nicht ein einziges Schriftstück erbeutet, das auf Stalinsche Präventivkriegspläne gedeutet hätte, und dieser Mangel ist bis heute gegeben.

My translation:

A closer look reveals that “Suvorov” cannot provide plausible arguments let alone documentary evidence in support of his theses. This is not surprising given that in the encirclement battles of 1941 the German troops, although the staffs of armies and army groups fell into their hands, did not capture a single document that would indicate plans by Stalin for a preventive war, and such are lacking to this day.

So one of the two colleagues must be wrong.

I'm looking forward to Mr. Mills' demonstration that it's Graml.

[Roberto]

Even Roberto doesn't seriously dispute the approximately two-million Germans killed in the Gruesome Harvest (after the war).

I don’t know what the “even” is supposed to mean, and the above is also inaccurate because, as Smith knows, I have repeatedly posted the following passage I translated from Rüdiger Overmans' Deutsche Militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg:

The deaths during flight and expulsion concerned the Germans in the immediate postwar period as much as the fate of the missing soldiers, and similar efforts were made to clarify the fate of the missing civilians or bring families together. A huge scientific project reconstructed the events historiographically, the Federal Statistics Office (Statistisches Bundesamt), the refugees’ associations and the clerical search service did a lot with the financial support of the Federal Government to quantitatively assess the fate of those expelled as accurately as possible. The result can be summarized in the conclusion that about 2 million Germans had been killed during flight and expulsion - not including those from the respective territories who had died during military service.

These casualty figures, however, which for decades have been an integral part of the respective serious literature, are the result not of a counting of death records or similar concrete data, but of a population balance which concluded that the fate of about 2 million inhabitants of the expulsion territories could not be clarified and that it must therefore be assumed that they had lost their lives in the course of these events. In the last years, however, these statements have been increasingly questioned, as the studies about the sum of reported deaths showed that the number of victims can hardly have been higher than 500,000 persons - which is also an unimaginable number of victims, but nevertheless only a quarter of the previous data. In favor of the hitherto assumed numbers it could always be said, however, that the balance didn’t say that the death of these people had been proven, but only that their fate could not be clarified.

On the thread

“Father, shoot me”
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/phpBB2/v ... 9091a6ac6c

I also posted my translation of an article that appeared in a recent special issue of the German news magazine Der Spiegel on the flight and expulsion of ethnic Germans at the end of World War II, which contains the following passage:

How many people in total fell victim to flight and expulsion has not been clarified. In the 1950s the Federal Statistics Bureau simply estimated the number of Germans who before 1945 had lived east of the Oder and Neiße and therefrom deducted the number of those who after the war were living in the German Federal Republic, Austria or the German Democratic Republic. The difference was more than two million.
That this order of magnitude must be too high became apparent at the time already from lists of missing civilians; only about one-tenth – ca. 200,000 people – were being searched by relatives and friends. So far however only the Danube Svabians [ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia, translators’ note] made the effort to individually document all victims – and halved the estimates of the Federal Statistics Bureau for their region.

So it seems that historians have arrived at the conclusion that the estimate made in the late 1950s by the Federal Statistics Office is somewhat above the mark.

Until a better substantiated assessment is produced, however, this estimate is what we have.

It would be interesting, by the way, to ask the “Revisionists” upholding the two million figure on the death toll of the “Gruesome Harvest” what evidence (other than demographics they would high-handedly dismiss if atrocities of the Nazi regime were at issue) they know this figure to be supported by.

[Landser]

Caldric, I don't know what you are talking about. There have been a lot of different contributors to IHR articles. I even wrote a couple of movie reviews for them just for fun. I did not say they were not biased, of course, but your assessment that it is a neo-Nazi organization is way out of line. Of course, smear-labels do substitute handily for arguments, don't they?

Also, I never endorsed the Suvarov thesis because I don't think Stalin would have been ready until 1942 and he probably did not know yet himself exactly what he was going to do, but it certainly would not have eased German security concerns. My views are more in line with Mr. Mills that Germany acted to remove a growing threat--like Bush wants to do in Iraq--except that in 1941 Germany was at war in a deadlock and could be hurt from the Soviet Union, whereas I doubt that Iraq could even muster some suicide bombers to attack the U.S.

One of the most disturbing things about being the "policeman of the world" is that we cannot own-up or even recognize our mistakes. That is why I say it is jingoism. Yes, intervention in two world wars, a series of bad treaties that left half the world Communist, a long litany of "crimes," for lack of a better word; but no, this was unalloyed Goodness. Even Roberto doesn't seriously dispute the approximately two-million Germans killed in the Gruesome Harvest (after the war). World Peace through ethnic-cleansing...

Yeah, just give a boy a flamethrower and let him root out those dirty Japs in their ratholes!

Got to love that pic.reminds me of a pimpf exept they genarally had better haircuts.

PS I can see this beeing C. getting so anxious,can't get his arm up fast enough and with wet pants. Hehe



SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLUM...
"whosoever desires peace prepares for war..."
xavier

[Caldric]

Its funny how some people get their knickers in a twist when the topic of a German "pre-emptive" strike comes up. It never ceases to to amuse. There are arguments for and against and certainly nobody here has the hand on the whole truth.

I personally don't have a solid conclusion on a Soviet attack plan. I certainly won't rule it out, but as far as I'm concerned Hitler was damn sure that it was coming at some stage in the future. The Soviet invasion of Finland and the anexation of the Eastern European states, not to mention Stalin's eagerness to swallow his part of Poland and the vast Soviet military build up only served to further convince Hitler of Soviet expansion/aggression Westwards.

Tony

Not knickers in the twist, “pre-emptive strike” is nothing but apologia for Nazi aggression. Stalin was no fool, a strike on the West before Hitler went to war with most of the world would have been suicide. Stalin was the smarter of the two, and yes he was a murdering dog, but that has little to do with the fact that Germany invaded the USSR. Any plans Stalin had for invading the West were crushed when Germany defeated France in 6 weeks. It was his plan to invade the West after a WWI stalemate appeared in the West. Plans for invasion are not unusual, nations still have battle readiness plans, have been making them for centuries. During the 20's and 30's Soviet war games always surrounded a German foe, for good reason I might add.

Even if Germany was correct in its invasion, the actions of the German Military and Political arms in the East have no excuse. Perhaps all the murdering and gassing etc. was just "pre-emptive".

[Caldric]

Got to love that pic.reminds me of a pimpf exept they genarally had better haircuts.

PS I can see this beeing C. getting so anxious,can't get his arm up fast enough and with wet pants. Hehe



SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLUM...
"whosoever desires peace prepares for war..."
xavier

I am assuming C. is I? What the United States and Boy Scouts have to do with German aggression is only in the realm of Scott's mind. But it is rare to discuss anything without some nonsense about Iraq or something coming up, as though in some way the makes German aggression more acceptable.


SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLUM...
"whosoever desires peace prepares for war..."
xavier

This is exactly what the USSR was doing in late 30's early 40's. I mean it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out Hitler and Nazi Germany's next victim. Not to mention they had been preaching for years an invasion of Russia.

[Scott Smith]

Even Roberto doesn't seriously dispute the approximately two-million Germans killed in the Gruesome Harvest (after the war).

It would be interesting, by the way, to ask the “Revisionists” upholding the two million figure on the death toll of the “Gruesome Harvest” what evidence (other than demographics they would high-handedly dismiss if atrocities of the Nazi regime were at issue) they know this figure to be supported by.

Ah, nice-round numbers. Well, I can't speak for Revisionists but I see no more problem with the nice, round two-million figure as opposed to the nice, round six-million figure. Personally, I think that Hilberg's figures are more reasoned but I can't say they are right, either. The same goes with the Gruesome Harvest. In either case the numbers are based on demographic data and are going to have many guesstimates in the methodology. But most Holocaustorians it seems are embracing an even higher figure than six-million nowadays. Damage control, perhaps? Anyway, I'll stick with Hilberg on the Holocaust until something better comes along--and the two-million for the Gruesome Harvest, likewise.

[Roberto]

Even Roberto doesn't seriously dispute the approximately two-million Germans killed in the Gruesome Harvest (after the war).

It would be interesting, by the way, to ask the “Revisionists” upholding the two million figure on the death toll of the “Gruesome Harvest” what evidence (other than demographics they would high-handedly dismiss if atrocities of the Nazi regime were at issue) they know this figure to be supported by.

Ah, nice-round numbers. Well, I can't speak for Revisionists but I see no more problem with the nice, round two-million figure as opposed to the nice, round six-million figure. Personally, I think that Hilberg's figures are more reasoned but I can't say they are right, either. The same goes with the Gruesome Harvest. In either case the numbers are based on demographic data and are going to have many guesstimates in the methodology. But most Holocaustorians it seems are embracing an even higher figure than six-million nowadays. Damage control, perhaps? Anyway, I'll stick with Hilberg on the Holocaust until something better comes along--and the two-million for the Gruesome Harvest, likewise.

Well, in the latter case you may not have to wait for long, whereas in the former you are likely to wait until hell freezes over, because the order of magnitude of the Nazi genocide of the Jews accepted by historians is based not only on solid demographics, but also on conclusive documentary evidence.

You might also say, however, that "something better" has already come along - the detailed country-by-country studies prepared by a team of historians under the coordination of Wolfgang Benz and published in the book Dimensionen des Völkermords. The figures resulting from these studies are the following:

German Reich: 160,000 to 165,000

Austria: 65,459

Luxembourg: 1,200

France ("including foreign nationals"): 76,134

Belgium ("including foreign nationals"): 28, 518

Netherlands: 102,000

Denmark: 116

Norway: 758

Italy: 6,513

Albania: 591 ("deportees")

Greece: 59,185

Bulgaria (deported from Bulgarian-occupied areas): 11,393

Yugoslavia: 60,000 to 65,000

Hungary: 550,000

Chechoslovakia ("Reich Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia" plus Slovakia): 143,000

Romania: 211,214

Poland: 2,700,000

Soviet Union: 2,100,000

Total: 6,276,081 to 6,286,081

The estimates of Reitlinger and Hilberg may be found under the following links:

http://holocaust-info.dk/statistics/hil ... ountry.htm

http://holocaust-info.dk/statistics/reit_stats.htm

[Scott Smith]

Its funny how some people get their knickers in a twist when the topic of a German "pre-emptive" strike comes up. It never ceases to to amuse. There are arguments for and against and certainly nobody here has the hand on the whole truth.

I personally don't have a solid conclusion on a Soviet attack plan. I certainly won't rule it out, but as far as I'm concerned Hitler was damn sure that it was coming at some stage in the future. The Soviet invasion of Finland and the anexation of the Eastern European states, not to mention Stalin's eagerness to swallow his part of Poland and the vast Soviet military build up only served to further convince Hitler of Soviet expansion/aggression Westwards.

Not knickers in the twist, “pre-emptive strike” is nothing but apologia for Nazi aggression. Stalin was no fool, a strike on the West before Hitler went to war with most of the world would have been suicide. Stalin was the smarter of the two, and yes he was a murdering dog, but that has little to do with the fact that Germany invaded the USSR. Any plans Stalin had for invading the West were crushed when Germany defeated France in 6 weeks.

Yes, it upset the apple-cart but did Stalin abandon his goals? No, he only redoubled his efforts which served to alarm Hitler (justifiably, especially since the war was still on).

It was his plan to invade the West after a WWI stalemate appeared in the West.

That was already the case but Russia wasn't quite ready, IMHO. Germany had to keep troops on the Eastern flank now and could not commit itself to one-front after the failure of the Battle of Britain and Hitler's peace overtures to end the war with Albion.

Plans for invasion are not unusual, nations still have battle readiness plans, have been making them for centuries. During the 20's and 30's Soviet war games always surrounded a German foe, for good reason I might add.

From a geopolitical viewpoint the opponents of the Red Army would be either Asians or Europeans on the Russian continent, yes. And couple that with Soviet rhetoric about fascism and imperialism and the scenario is definitely Germany after 1933.

But Hitler didn't attack because of Soviet contingency plans kept in Stavka safes. SIOC was a military industrial program aimed against Germany, with or without Hitler; it began about 1928, and purging the officer corps in 1938 was part of the program to put new life in the Soviet command structure in the long term, i.e., for offensive purposes. Most of the Stalinists that owed their jobs to Stalin and the state were still in power until they died-off in droves in the 1980s. Hitler was determined to strike while the iron was hot and Germany still had a chance.

Even if Germany was correct in its invasion, the actions of the German Military and Political arms in the East have no excuse. Perhaps all the murdering and gassing etc. was just "pre-emptive".

The gassing is a complete red-herring to this argument, and as far as the Commisar Order it is hardly different in principle than the campaign to assassinate the Viet Cong cadre in Vietnam, the CIA's Phoenix Project. Both were an attempt to decapitate the Communist leadership at the organizational level. At Katyn (and probably elsewhere also) the Soviets assassinated the entire Polish officer corps for the same reason.

Clearly, the Soviets planned on keeping Poland, but the Allies were only concerned about German aggression. If the Soviets had not signed Ribbentrop-Molotov then the Allies would have been willing to give them whatever they wanted in Eastern Europe, so long as Germany remained in need of "containment." Stalin was shrewd and patient, but was he really smarter than Hitler?

[Scott Smith]

So, Roberto, you do not object to nice, round numbers like two-million and six-million, then, respectively, since the point does not call for demographic precision and did not demand a canonical figure?

[Caldric]

Its funny how some people get their knickers in a twist when the topic of a German "pre-emptive" strike comes up. It never ceases to to amuse. There are arguments for and against and certainly nobody here has the hand on the whole truth.

I personally don't have a solid conclusion on a Soviet attack plan. I certainly won't rule it out, but as far as I'm concerned Hitler was damn sure that it was coming at some stage in the future. The Soviet invasion of Finland and the anexation of the Eastern European states, not to mention Stalin's eagerness to swallow his part of Poland and the vast Soviet military build up only served to further convince Hitler of Soviet expansion/aggression Westwards.

Not knickers in the twist, “pre-emptive strike” is nothing but apologia for Nazi aggression. Stalin was no fool, a strike on the West before Hitler went to war with most of the world would have been suicide. Stalin was the smarter of the two, and yes he was a murdering dog, but that has little to do with the fact that Germany invaded the USSR. Any plans Stalin had for invading the West were crushed when Germany defeated France in 6 weeks.

Yes, it upset the apple-cart but did Stalin abandon his goals? No, he only redoubled his efforts which served to alarm Hitler (justifiably, especially since the war was still on).

Don't know if he did or not,it surely slowed him down if not completely stopped him.
Invading without keeping the Western Power out of it was a sure death to the USSR. Stalin knew this, he would not attack until he was sure it would mean victory.

It was his plan to invade the West after a WWI stalemate appeared in the West.

That was already the case but Russia wasn't quite ready, IMHO. Germany had to keep troops on the Eastern flank now and could not commit itself to one-front after the failure of the Battle of Britain and Hitler's peace overtures to end the war with Albion.[/quote]

Yes after Hitler offered the UK a vassalship, and they told him to stick it he was in a tight spot. The USSR at this time had an open ticket to invade Germany without any chance of Western help. They did not though, so perhaps all of our theories about USSR are incorrect, maybe Stalin (as Overy states) never intended to invade.

But Hitler didn't attack because of Soviet contingency plans kept in Stavka safes. SIOC was a military industrial program aimed against Germany, with or without Hitler; it began about 1928, and purging the officer corps in 1938 was part of the program to put new life in the Soviet command structure in the long term, i.e., for offensive purposes. Most of the Stalinists that owed their jobs to Stalin and the state were still in power until they died-off in droves in the 1980s. Hitler was determined to strike while the iron was hot and Germany still had a chance.

Hitler intended to invade the Soviet Union from the beginning, way back in his first speeches.

Even if Germany was correct in its invasion, the actions of the German Military and Political arms in the East have no excuse. Perhaps all the murdering and gassing etc. was just "pre-emptive".

The gassing is a complete red-herring to this argument, and as far as the Commisar Order it is hardly different in principle than the campaign to assassinate the Viet Cong cadre in Vietnam, the CIA's Phoenix Project. Both were an attempt to decapitate the Communist leadership at the organizational level. At Katyn (and probably elsewhere also) the Soviets assassinated the entire Polish officer corps for the same reason.[/quote]

Not just gassing there was the execution of children, women, elderly, officers, starvation of millions of Red Army soldiers etc. What does starving Red Army privates and lower ranking officers have to do with decapitating the leaders. The assassinations in Vietnam were aimed almost exclusively at High Ranking military officers. They are not exempt form warfare, so that has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

Clearly, the Soviets planned on keeping Poland, but the Allies were only concerned about German aggression. If the Soviets had not signed Ribbentrop-Molotov then the Allies would have been willing to give them whatever they wanted in Eastern Europe, so long as Germany remained in need of "containment." Stalin was shrewd and patient, but was he really smarter than Hitler?

Smarter yes I believe that is true, also less insane, less egocentric and not; "I am popular and everyone loves me syndrome".

[Roberto]

Not knickers in the twist, “pre-emptive strike” is nothing but apologia for Nazi aggression. Stalin was no fool, a strike on the West before Hitler went to war with most of the world would have been suicide. Stalin was the smarter of the two, and yes he was a murdering dog, but that has little to do with the fact that Germany invaded the USSR. Any plans Stalin had for invading the West were crushed when Germany defeated France in 6 weeks.

Yes, it upset the apple-cart but did Stalin abandon his goals? No, he only redoubled his efforts which served to alarm Hitler (justifiably, especially since the war was still on).

Well, what he actually did was to grab the remaining spoils of the Nazi-Soviet Pact before it was too late to do so.

But Hitler didn't attack because of Soviet contingency plans kept in Stavka safes. SIOC was a military industrial program aimed against Germany, with or without Hitler;

Against Germany, Smith?

I have read lots of weird things from your keyboard, but where did you get that idea?

Hitler was determined to strike while the iron was hot and Germany still had a chance.

Any evidence that Hitler thought the Soviet Union might run him over in the future, or is that just your irrelevant personal opinion?

Even if Germany was correct in its invasion, the actions of the German Military and Political arms in the East have no excuse. Perhaps all the murdering and gassing etc. was just "pre-emptive".

The gassing is a complete red-herring to this argument,

Not that it matters, but it's not as if gas vans had not been used against civilians and prisoners of war behind the Eastern Front.

and as far as the Commisar Order it is hardly different in principle than the campaign to assassinate the Viet Cong cadre in Vietnam, the CIA's Phoenix Project. Both were an attempt to decapitate the Communist leadership at the organizational level. At Katyn (and probably elsewhere also) the Soviets assassinated the entire Polish officer corps for the same reason.

Smith should have understood by now that his tu quoque - baloney doesn't make his beloved Führer's murderous orders and policies look any better.

Besides, I don't think Caldric was referring only to the Commissar Order. He may also have been thinking about the Hungerplan ("...umpteen million people will doubtlessly starve to death when we take what is necessary for us out of the land", remember?), the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of unfortunate civilian inhabitants of "partisan-infested" areas, the massacre or starvation of millions of prisoners of war and, last but not least, the murder of maybe more than two million Jews by the Einsatzgruppen and other German formations.