A review about the preventive war

[Xanthro]

I tried reading the linked article despite its obivously biased source, I quit when I got to.

Stalin's purges actually improved the Red Army, by ridding it of the heavy-handed political commissars, most of whom were Trotskyite thugs despised by the people. As is well known, many of Trotsky's followers were his fellow Jews, often foreign born rather than native to Russia.

Since first of all Trotsky was far more liked by the people than Stalin ever was, and second Trotsky's followers were native born Russians, just like everyone else. Stalin is foreign born, the man was from Georgia. He could barely speak Russian.

It's unlikely anyone outside his immediate circle knew Trotsky was born to Jewish parents.

While the Soviet Union may have had plans to attack the Germans in the future, this couldn't have come about before 1942 at the very earliest.

Stalin had a nervous breakdown when news of the invasion came. He refused to believe it.

Xanthro

[Roberto]

I tried reading the linked article despite its obivously biased source, I quit when I got to.

Stalin's purges actually improved the Red Army, by ridding it of the heavy-handed political commissars, most of whom were Trotskyite thugs despised by the people.

In fact the purges achieved exactly the opposite.

[...]The most debilitating effect of the purges was the sharp change they signalled in the balance of power between the military and the politicians. After a decade of attempts by the military to win greater independence from political control, the purges brought back closer political supervision and intervention. It may well be that Stalin was motivated by concern over the growing independence of the armed forces and recollections of the imaginary Bonapartist fears of the early 1920s when he decided to turn the terror on the military. In May 1937, as the axe fell on Tukhachevsky, Voroshilov reintroduced political deputies into all units above divisional strength. In August the Main Political Directorate of the Army was placed under the care of Lev Mekhlis, editor of the Pravda, who was instructed by Stalin to ‘bolshevize’ the army. He was typical of the new political soldiers. Energetic, brutal and vindictive, a military ignoramus who thought that he understood war, he became the major figure responsible for instilling a correct Communist outlook in the armed forces. He kept the terror alive in the armed forces by insisting that the political officers in every unit should play a substantial military role, as they had done during the civil war.
The result was the triumph of military illiteracy over military science, of political conformity over military initiative. It has been estimated that 73 per cent of the political officers had no military training, yet they were placed even in smaller units, down to the level of platoon and company. The stifling of military independence left commanders demoralised and excessively cautious, since anything judged by the political officers to be an infringement of the Party line carried the risk of the Lubyanka, not just for the commander concerned but for his wife and family. Officers were inclined to stick by the rule book. Any talk of ‘deep operations’, or massed tank attack, with its echoes of Tukhachevsky, was by association deemed counter-revolutionary. In this sense the purges left an indelible mark on the Soviet armed forces, which were once again, as they were in the early 1920s, officially regarded by the Party as an instrument of the people’s revolutionary will. Military professionalism was suspect as ‘bourgeois expertise’.[...]

Source of quote: Richard Overy, Russia’s War, pages 32/33.

[michael mills]

Roberto wrote:

In August the Main Political Directorate of the Army was placed under the care of Lev Mekhlis, editor of the Pravda, who was instructed by Stalin to ‘bolshevize’ the army. He was typical of the new political soldiers. Energetic, brutal and vindictive, a military ignoramus who thought that he understood war, he became the major figure responsible for instilling a correct Communist outlook in the armed forces. He kept the terror alive in the armed forces by insisting that the political officers in every unit should play a substantial military role, as they had done during the civil war.

The above is quite a good description of the activities of Mekhlis, to whom I have referred in some of my own posts.

Mekhlis later directed the zagradotriady, the "blocking detachments" which shot down retreating Soviet soldiers in the scores of thousands. Not a particularly likable fellow.

However, Roberto does not refer to the ethnic origin of Mekhlis. Could it be that he wishes to conceal any connection between the activities of Mekhlis and certain of his co-ethnics who held similar positions, and the massive retribution which later fell upon their ethnic group, most members of which were entirely innocent.

It appears that Mekhlis and others like him sowed the wind, and their unfortunate ethnic brethren reaped the whirlwind.

[Scott Smith]

I tried reading the linked article despite its obivously biased source, I quit when I got to.

Stalin's purges actually improved the Red Army...

Purging the Red Army officer corps was initially disruptive, and the German General Staff especially thought so. But it actually proved advantageous in the longrun as in provided upward-mobility for the most-talented junior commanders like Zhukov. It also improved the political reliability of the officer corps and presented an undivided house to the enemy, something that the Germans struggled with from their own class-based general-officer caste. Having an army of only 100 thousand during the Versailles period kept the leadbottoms in power and prevented the rise of newer thinkers like Guderian and Rommel prior to Hitler. Conversely, after WWII, the old Stalinist cadre remained until they all started dying off in the Eighties, and the Soviet Union itself fell apart. Brezhnev was a reversion back to the Old Guard from after the 1938 purges.

Stalin had a nervous breakdown when news of the invasion came. He refused to believe it.

Not from the "news of the invasion" but from the rapidity of the German advance. Stalin remained in Moscow to go down with the ship, but that didn't happen--nor would it have brought down the ship, IMHO.

[witness]

Just recently I saw a pretty good documentary devoted to Victor Suvorov.
He sounds very convincing that the USSR was prepared to attack Germany first.
I read his "Icebreaker " several years ago but this documentary is
somehow more impressive. In it he gives the phone interview to the Russian audience .
He argues that Stalin actually wanted Hitler to come to power in 1924
so that to have his "Icebreaker " ( Hitler military regime) to devastate Europe and then to attack the already weakened by the wars his
facsist friend to bring the victory of the "international Socialist Revolution".
He also points out that the Germans didn't have any opportunities to
get the military cadres trained for the impending war because of the Verssalies and that the Germans military specialists were actually trained in Russia - Lufftaffe pilots in the military Academy in Lipetsk and
Panzer personal in the similar school in Kazan.
The fact of the Germans training in Russia was of course kept in secret.
Was Stalin so sophisticated to plot to use Hitler as his puppet to overthrow
the Western democracies and then to stab Hitler's back ?
I think he was. Besides the very ideology of Marxims-Leninism was
calling for "The victory of the world proletariat".
However it doesn't make the terrible atrocities the Nazies committed on the occupied territories any more justifiable.

[Reigo]

Since first of all Trotsky was far more liked by the people than Stalin ever was and second Trotsky's followers were native born Russians, just like everyone else. Stalin is foreign born, the man was from Georgia. He could barely speak Russian

.

It's unlikely anyone outside his immediate circle knew Trotsky was born to Jewish parents

.

A source for these confident words? Trotsky was actually a well known Jew. The White propaganda during the Civil War made sure that this fact was known. Besides, Trotsky's face isn't very Russian.

Stalin barely spoke Russian? Allow me to laugh! Stalin held speeches in Russian not in Georgian! During the Civil War he wrote articles in newspapers in Russian.

[valadezaj]

Is it just me or does Roberto think Richard Overy is the only historianworth citing?

[Roberto]

Is it just me or does Roberto think Richard Overy is the only historianworth citing?

No, he's just one of many that I refer to, as my friend would know if he read more of my posts.

Of course the historians I refer to don't include folks like "Suvorov". But something tells me I ain't missing anything by skipping that category.

[Roberto]

Stalin had a nervous breakdown when news of the invasion came. He refused to believe it.

Not from the "news of the invasion" but from the rapidity of the German advance. Stalin remained in Moscow to go down with the ship, but that didn't happen--nor would it have brought down the ship, IMHO.

[...]Stalin was shocked but was not, as is often suggested, paralysed by the news. For some time he persisted in his belief that this was a limited act of provocation. When Timoshenko objected that bombing Soviet cities could not be regarded merely as 'provocation', Stalin replied that 'German generals would bomb even their own cities', so unscrupulous were they when it came to provoking a conflict. He muttered that Hitler could know nothing about the attacks and that someone should 'urgently contact Berlin'. As his Politburo companions arrived one by one, Stalin addressed them in a slow, faltering voice. He was pale and tired. Molotov was sent off to find out from the German ambassador what German intentions were. Schulenburg was shown into Molotov's office. He stiffly informed Molotov that a state of war now existed between Germany and the Soviet Union. All Molotov could stutter was 'What have we done to deserve this?'; he hurried back to Stalin's office. The news was received by Stalin with unusual calmness. He 'sank in his chair and was locked in deep thought', wrote Zhukov. After a long pause he spoke. 'The enemy,' he assured everyone present, 'will be beaten all along the line'.[...]

Source of quote:

Richard Overy, Russia's War, pages 73/74.

[...]Stalin's personal battle with reality reached its climax on June 27. News was filtering in that German forces had reached the Belorussian capital of Minsk, some 300 miles into Soviet territory. Following a tense Politburo meeting, Stalin, accompanied by Beria and Molotov, took the unprecedented step of paying a visit to the Defence Commissariat, where Timoshenko and Zhukov were trying to bring some order to the battered Soviet line. Stalin looked at the maps and reports for himself and could see the truth. An angry exchange followed with Zhukov and Timoshenko, who for once dropped the mask of fear always worn in Stalin's presence. Stalin wanted the truth and got it. He looked around at each of them in the room with evident gloom and stalked out. 'Lenin founded our state,' he muttered, 'and we've fucked it up.'
Stalin abruptly stopped ruling. He drove to his dacha at Kuntsevo in the forest of Poklonnaia Gora outside Moscow and stayed there, leaving the Government in abeyance. There are a number of possible explanations for Stalin's behaviour. It may well be that, overcome with nervous exhaustion and despair, he could no longer sustain the charade played out in the first week of war, now that the truth was known. He had refused to face the shock of invasion when it came. A delayed reaction was perhaps inevitable, certainly not surprising. Yet Stalin did little that was not calculated. He avoided any kind of identification with the disaster. Pravda stopped printing his name. The withdrawal may well have been a ploy to see whether his leadership would survive the crisis. The discovery that Stalin was reading a play about Ivan the Terrible at the time has led one biographer to suggest that he was acting out the game once played by his autocratic predecessor, who pretended to be dying to see how his courtiers would react. On the cover of the play Stalin doodled the words, 'We'll hold out.' If this was Stalin's intention it was a risky game. He could not be certain that he would survive the disaster. As it turned out the gambit, if that is what it was, worked to Stalin's advantage.[...]

Source of quote:

As above, page 78.

[Roberto]

However, Roberto does not refer to the ethnic
origin of Mekhlis.

Let me guess: he was a filthy Jew, right?

Could it be that he wishes to conceal any connection between the activities of Mekhlis and certain of his co-ethnics who held similar positions, and the massive retribution which later fell upon their ethnic group, most members of which were entirely innocent.

First thing, Roberto could not care less about Mekhlis' ethnicity, for he does not share Mills' morbid obsession with a certain ethnic group.

Second, he thinks it takes a judeophobic ideologist like Mills to see the Nazi massacre of probably more than two million Soviet Jews as "retribution" for "the activities of Mekhlis and certain of his co-ethnics", rather than as the outgrowth of an ideology of hate that conveniently bunched up its perceived enemies into one entity, coupled with the cold-blooded power politics of a state ruled by such ideology.

[Roberto]

Just recently I saw a pretty good documentary devoted to Victor Suvorov.
He sounds very convincing that the USSR was prepared to attack Germany first.
I read his "Icebreaker " several years ago but this documentary is
somehow more impressive. In it he gives the phone interview to the Russian audience .
He argues that Stalin actually wanted Hitler to come to power in 1924
so that to have his "Icebreaker " ( Hitler military regime) to devastate Europe and then to attack the already weakened by the wars his
facsist friend to bring the victory of the "international Socialist Revolution".
He also points out that the Germans didn't have any opportunities to
get the military cadres trained for the impending war because of the Verssalies and that the Germans military specialists were actually trained in Russia - Lufftaffe pilots in the military Academy in Lipetsk and
Panzer personal in the similar school in Kazan.
The fact of the Germans training in Russia was of course kept in secret.
Was Stalin so sophisticated to plot to use Hitler as his puppet to overthrow
the Western democracies and then to stab Hitler's back ?
I think he was. Besides the very ideology of Marxims-Leninism was
calling for "The victory of the world proletariat".
However it doesn't make the terrible atrocities the Nazies committed on the occupied territories any more justifiable.

witness,

I'm surprised to see you were impressed by the charlatanerie of Mr. Suvorov.

Please consider the following assessment of the fellow's writings by a German historian:

Operation Barbarossa

On 22 June 1941 153 divisions of the Wehrmacht of National Socialist Germany – together with units of the armies of allied states like Finland, Romania and Hungary – crossed the borders of the Soviet Union. Since the Second World War this operation, prepared under the code name “Barbarossa”, was unanimously considered by research on contemporary history as the classic example of a war of aggression. Only a secondary question was controversially discussed: Did the “Führer” of the Third Reich in his decision to attack principally intend to serve the goal contained in his ideology, i.e. the goal, insistently propagated since “Mein Kampf”, to conquer “living space in the East” for the German nation and for a German world empire? Or was the motivation stronger that resulted for him when, after the victorious campaigns in eastern, northern and western Europe, he was faced with the fact that the still unbeaten Great Britain did not think of acknowledging his domination of the European continent, and therefrom derived the conclusion that he must deprive the British government of the hope on its last “continental blessing” by conquering Russia?
Recently, however, the assertion has come up that Hitler’s attack barely anticipated a preventive war by Stalin, and some in the meantime go as far as maintaining that Hitler’s attack was a preventive strike not only objectively but also intended to be one by the “Führer”. The last to come up with this was “Victor Suvorov”. This pseudonym allegedly stands for a Soviet officer – or a group of officers – who until the beginning of the 1980s, until he (they) went over to the West, worked for the military secret service of the USSR. In his book ‘The Icebreaker. Hitler in Stalin’s Calculus’ “Suvorov” even gives the date of Stalin’s assault: 6 July 1941. The fact that reviewers in the German press manifested themselves impressed by the ‘Icebreaker’, however, has to do only with the widespread demand for apologetic literature and not at all with the quality of the writing. For 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. All that “Suvorov” does is to arbitrarily declare the dislocation of the Red Army in the spring of 1941 to have been a marching-up for a preventive strike, and the few citations from memoirs of Soviet military men that he tries to support this act of arbitrariness with are revealed by examination as shameless forgeries of the original texts. The political agenda of such pamphlets, i.e. the warning against a basic aggressiveness of Soviet foreign policy, is obvious.
In fact Hitler and the leading circles of the Third Reich grasped the idea of soon attacking Russia still during the campaign in France, as Chief of General Staff Franz Halder recorded in his diary. As long as they hoped they could count on the British giving in after the conquest of Western Europe, that “Führer” and his National Socialist minions thought of the war for “living space” required by National Socialist ideology, while for instance the military considered the march into the Baltics and the Ukraine to be tempting because their inherited German-national imperialism reawakened when they saw the triumph in the West in sight.
As early as 21 July 1940 Hitler ordered to prepare the attack on the Soviet Union, having the autumn of 1940 in mind as the time. After his military advisers had convinced him that the marching-up would take considerably longer and that additional forces were required, Hitler on 31 July gave the order to direct the planning towards an attack in the spring of 1941. On 18 December 1940 there followed Directive Number 21 with the final setting of “Operation Barbarossa”. The date was 15 May 1941, which then had to be exceeded by several weeks due to the perceived need of conquering Yugoslavia and assisting the Italian ally in Greece. Hitler’s ideological motivation was there as before, though now ever more overlaid by the argument that Great Britain must be deprived of the USSR as a potential ally. Both were independent of recognized or even suspected Soviet behavior. Not for an instant did Hitler believe that the Soviet Union – internally unstable and depending on an army without the power required for an offensive against a modern enemy, for it was equipped with qualitatively insufficient weapons and had lost a high percentage of its officer corps through Stalin’s purges of 1937-1939 – was able to carry out an attack on the German Reich, especially after the latter’s successes in Poland, Norway, Western Europe and most recently in the Balkans.
Stalin was of the same opinion, but until the spring of 1941 he convinced himself that Hitler would not be so foolish as to attack Russia, which after all was strong in the defensive, as long as Great Britain was still unbeaten. Warnings from London about the German intentions of attack he for a long time considered to be attempts to induce him to hostile actions against Germany in order to take the pressure off Great Britain. Only in April and May 1941, when the German marching-up had taken a dimension that could no longer be interpreted as a basis for political pressure maneuvers, there began unsystematic reactions including a transfer of troops from the eastern parts of the Union to the western regions, and only from mid-June onward, after Churchill had been able to provide an exact image of the German marching-up and the German planning on hand of decoded German radio messages, Stalin ordered radical defensive measures, which due to the now inevitable hectic did more harm than good, however, and contributed to the heavy Soviet defeats in the first weeks of the war.

I translated the above from an article by Hermann Graml published in Wolfgang Benz et al, Legenden, Lügen, Vorurteile, 12th edition 2002 by dtv Munich, page 194.

[Roberto]

It also improved the political reliability of the officer corps and presented an undivided house to the enemy, something that the Germans struggled with from their own class-based general-officer caste.

It seems that the Soviet High Command didn’t share or eventually revised this opinion, for minding the lessons of the disasters of 1941 it at least temporarily weakened the institution of political commissars when things were again getting tough in the autumn of 1942.

The reassertion of political influence following the purges, renewed again in the disastrous summer of 1941, was reversed in 1942. Lev Mekhlis, the incompetent and vindictive head of the Main Political Administration of the Armed Forces, was removed from office in June and confined to propaganda activities. On October 9 [1942] political commissars were abolished in all smaller military units, and even at the level of fronts and armies the right of the political representative to interfere in purely military decisions was much reduced. In October their counter-signature on operational orders was no longer required, and in December they became assistants to the commander. During 1943 122,000 former political officials were drafted to the front as junior officers, where they learned the lessons of military command the hard way. The officer corps was encouraged to take initiatives and to assume responsibility. For many this was an unaccustomed opportunity, and they responded to it slowly. Self-reliance and flexibility in command did not spring up overnight. As if to demonstrate that the Supreme Commander was in earnest about the change, the term ‘officer’, rather than the familiar ‘comrade’, was used more widely. Officers once again were permitted to wear the trappings of the old imperial army, the gold braid and shoulder boards that revolutionary crowds had torn off in 1917. Divisions that had distinguished themselves in combat were given the Tsarist designation of ‘Guards’.

Source of quote:

Richard Overy, Russia’s War, pages 187/188.

[member7]

Of course the historians I refer to don't include folks like "Suvorov". But something tells me I ain't missing anything by skipping that category.

It must be so easy for you Roberto. You simply dismiss everyone and everything you don't like. Well you know what? I dismiss you and everything you say. Why? Because something tells me I ain't missing anything by skipping you.

[Roberto]

Of course the historians I refer to don't include folks like "Suvorov". But something tells me I ain't missing anything by skipping that category.

It must be so easy for you Roberto. You simply dismiss everyone and everything you don't like.

No, I dismiss everyone who bases his contentions on speculation rather than evidence.

Well you know what? I dismiss you and everything you say. Why? Because something tells me I ain't missing anything by skipping you.

Feel free to keep you faith safe by not looking at what challenges it, my dear friend.

[michael mills]

Roberto wrote, quoting Overy's "Russia's War":

Molotov was sent off to find out from the German ambassador what German intentions were. Schulenburg was shown into Molotov's office. He stiffly informed Molotov that a state of war now existed between Germany and the Soviet Union. All Molotov could stutter was 'What have we done to deserve this?'; he hurried back to Stalin's office.

A different, less lurid, and surely more accurate version of the Schulenburg-Molotov interview is given in the book "Prelude to the Russian Campaign", published in 1945 but written at the end of 1942 by Grigore Gafencu, former Rumanian Minister for Foreign Affairs and former Rumanian MInister to Moscow, then in exile in Geneva. It is a contemporary account, written by someone on the scene, with access to the highest sources. It is therefore to be preferred to Overy's sensationalised account.

[Has the Lisboa Constrictor read this book? Need we even ask?]

The account by Gafencu is on page 212:

Count Schulenburg had shared with some of his colleagues the agony of the long waiting. After ten days of silence, Stalin, unwilling to wait longer, summoned the Ambassador to the Kremlin. It was six o'clock on a Saturday evening. Molotov received the German Ambassador.

"What is happening?" asked the Vice-President of the Council of People's Commissars.

The Ambassador made a gesture of ignorance. He did not know.

When he returned home, Count Schulenburg was advised by Berlin that he would receive an important message during the night. It was a declaration of war - or, rather, it was war without a declaration. The Ambassador immediately requested a further audience of Molotov. He was received at daybreak, at the Kremlin. The Count read the information that he was instructed to communicate to the Government of the USSR: "In view of the intolerable pressure exercised by Russian troops on the lines of demarcation separating them from the German troops, these latter have received orders to advance into Soviet territory".

Molotov, pale but calm, listened without a frown.

"Is that a declaration of war?" he asked.

The Count appreciated the formal nature of the question. For the second time within the space of a few hours, he made a doleful gesture of ignorance. He could say no more than he knew. He had been instructed to read a communication. Nothing more had been told him.

Molotov replied without losing his calm, but in a more serious tone: "It is war. Your aircraft have just bombarded some ten open villages. Do you believe that we deserved that?"

No more cruel a question could have been put to Count Schullenburg, who had been served with noble loyalty the thankless cause of agreement between the Nazis and the Soviet. The final act of his diplomatic career had ruined a labour in which he had put his faith, and exposed his country to a venture whose consequences he dreaded.

During the course of the night, the German armies passed to the attack along the whole front.

It was the night of June 21st-22nd.

The differences between Gafencu's account, drawn from his personal contacts with the persons involved, and that of Overy are obvious.

Overy makes it appear that Stalin and Molotov were taken completely by surprise by the German attack, and left in state of shock. Molotov is represented as "stuttering" (presumably from shock and amazement) in his interview with Schulenburg.

By contrast, Gafencu shows Stalin and Molotov as waiting for something to happen. Obviously they knew something was about to happen, but they were not sure what. When Schulenburg reads the notification of the German attack, Molotov is not shocked or surprised, but calm and serious.

Gafencu does not give the impression that Stalin and Molotov were taken surprise. A German attack was one of the possibilities they were considering, and were ready for, but they were not sure it would happen until it did.

For the reason I have given above, Gafencu's account is to be preferred to that given in a work of popularised history.

Furthermore, Overy has seriously misrepresented the interview between Molotov and Schulenburg but conflating two separate meetings into one. He has Molotov sent by Stalin to find out from Schulenburg what is going on AFTER the German attack.

In fact, according to Gafencu's first-hand account, Stalin's attempt to find out from Schulenburg what was happening, through an interview with Molotov, occurred at 6:00 pm on Saturday 21 June, ie BEFORE the attack commenced at 3:15 am on Sunday 22 June.

The second interview occurred at daybreak on Sunday 22 June, ie immediately after the commencement of the German attack, and was initiated by Schulenburg, in order to convey the message from Berlin.

Those of you who have read the transcript of the Irving-Lipstadt court action will know that one of the distortions of history of which Irving was accused by Professor Evans was that he had conflated statements that had occurred on two separate days during the Hitler-Horthy interviews in 1943. It was claimed that Irving had thereby seriously misrepresented the meaning of those statements in order to give an impression that was not not true, and thereby committed a falsification of history.

Overy has likewise distorted the Schulenburg-Molotov interviews by rolling two separate interviews into one, and misrepresenting Molotov's reaction, to support a particular version of history, namely that Stalin was taken completely by surprise by the German attack, and left in a state of shock. He could likewise be accused of perpetrating a falsification of history.

One wonders whether Overy's works of popular history will be taken apart by Professor Evans to detect instances of distortion and misrepresentation. Don't hold your breath!

One wonders whether the Bombastic Borborygmite from Bogota will now tell all and sundry about the distortions committed by Overy. Don't hold your breath!

One wonders which version of the Schulenburg-Molotov interviews the Lisboa Constrictor will now accept, Overy's or Gafencu's. No prizes for guessing; it will the one that best fits his ideological bubble.