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But that is not the whole picture, far from the truth at all about that
period of WW2. While Germany annexed the western part of Poland, the
Soviet Union took over the eastern part, totaling 201,015 km and a
population of 13.299 million.
Hardly the action of a peace loving country.
In early 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. The peaceful and
not involved in the raging world war Soviet Union, took over Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania.
What we see here are actions of two allies, two predators, two animals of
the same ilk. But in popular WW2 schoolbook history, we somehow learn
only about how Hitler's Germany was the evil country and the sole source
of WW2. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is explained as a play for time, to
buy time to prepare by the Soviet Union for the inevitable German
invasion.
I hope that the previous list of Soviet (and German) aggressions
persuaded you that that view of WW2 history is bullshit.
If not, I will let Suvorov explain it all again:
In September 1939, the Soviet Union declared itself neutral and, during
the 'pre-war period', seized territories with populations totalling 23 million
people - not bad going for a neutral state.
The Red Army and the NKVD perpetrated fearful crimes in these captured
territories. Soviet concentration camps were crammed with imprisoned
soldiers and officers from a number of European countries. Officer
prisoners, and not only the Poles, were shot in their thousands. This is not
the action of a neutral state.
Here is a strange state of affairs. Germany attacked Poland, which means
that Germany was the instigator of, and participant in, the European and
then the World War. The Soviet Union did the same thing in the same
month, but it does not judge itself to have been an instigator of the war.
Nor does it consider itself even to have then been a participant in the war.
A Polish soldier killed in battle on Polish territory against the Red Army is
considered a participant in World War II, as well as its victim, while the
Soviet soldier who killed him is regarded as 'neutral'. If in the same
battle a Soviet soldier is killed, then it is judged that he has been killed
not in wartime but in peacetime - in the 'pre-war period'.
To further set the stage, I will let Suvorov quote Pravda articles from
these days when Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union were allies:
The foundations of the earth are trembling,' it wrote. 'The ground slips
from under the feet of peoples and nations. Glows are afire in the sky and
the thunder of guns shakes seas and continents. Powers and states are
blown away just like chaff in the wind. How excellent it is, how
extraordinarily wonderful, when
the world is shaken to its very foundations, when powers perish and
greatness falls.' (Pravda, 4 August 1940) 'Every such war brings us closer
to that happy time when murders among the people will no longer
happen. (Pravda, 18 August 1940)
The Soviet newspaper article writers were bursting with unbridled joy and
happiness that the capitalists are killing each other.
The Soviet general Krivoshin, who in 1939 took part in the Nazi-Soviet
victory parade in Brest, Poland, had this to say:
"We have concluded a treaty with the Germans', he said, 'but this means
nothing. Now is the most wonderful time to solve all world problems once
and for all, and in a constructive way.' (Ratnaya ByV, Molodaya Gvardiya,
1962, p. 8)"
"Divide our enemies, meet the demands of each of them temporarily and
then destroy them one at a time, giving them no opportunity to unite.
(Pravda, 4 March 1941)"
This is what the outlook was of the hapless, unprepared for war Soviet
Union, just trembling and cowering before the might of the mighty
Wehrmacht.
I will pause again and let you process this information. Go to the
restroom, grab a drink, make some popcorn, get some cookies... Ready?
Suvorov uses those two most dangerous weapons of all, logic and
common sense.
He calmly states that, if the Soviet Union was interested in protecting its
national territory, it would have kept Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia
as buffer states, and warned Germany not to invade them. After all (using
that dangerous common sense again) it would be very hard for Germany
to invade the Soviet Union if they did not have a common border!
The apologists for the Soviet Union claim that the attack on Finland, the
annexation of the Baltic countries (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia) was all done
to protect the Soviet Union. That is a strange, weird il-logic - I do not
think that if any other country attacked and took over another country,
and then claimed it was for self defense, that that argument would work.
But this is the Soviet Union's history, and that argument is discussed and
agreed upon in serious scholarly books and articles.
Suvorov then continues with his second logic and common sense attack
on the biggest historical lie of WW2 (second only to Pearl Harbor - that
blog post upcoming). Having gotten a common border with Germany,
what should have happened is that the Soviet Army should have built their
own version of the Maginot Line - it should have mined the bridges on the
border, built bunkers, tank traps, machine gun nests, etc etc.
Suvorov explains:
A country which is preparing its defence 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 defences, 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 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.
While the aggressor is waging an exhausting battle with the light
detachments of the covering force, the main defending forces have time
to prepare themselves to confront the aggressor from positions which
favour defence.
So how does that work in practice, Mr. Suvorov?
(...)the Red Army itself created strong security zones on its own frontiers,
particularly its western borders. Special government commissions
inspected the country's western regions and determined which zones an
enemy would find easiest to cross, and which would afford him most
difficulty. Teams of bridge-protection guards, trained in demolition work,
were made ready to blow up all the bridges in the
western regions. The 6o-metre long railway bridge at Olev, for example,
could have been blown up by the duplicated explosion system in two and
a half minutes. (I. Starinov, Miny Zhdut Svoego Chasa, Moscow Voenizdat
1964, p. 24)
Heavy pipe-lines, depots, water pumps, water towers, high embankments
and deep cuttings were all prepared to be blown up. (Ibid, p. 18) By the
end of 1929, 60 teams of demolition sappers, totalling 1,400 men, had
been trained in the Kiev Military District alone. These had at their disposal
'1,640 fully prepared sophisticated charges and tens of thousands of
safety-fuse detonator sets, which were ready literally for instant use.'
(Ibid, p. 22) Similar activity was also going on in other military districts.
In addition to the teams of demolition sappers which had been set up in
the western regions of the country, railway-blocking battalions were
formed. One of their tasks was to destroy the main railway junctions in
the event of a retreat and to create defence obstacles on the main arterial
routes by destroying roads and laying
delayed-action land mines lest the enemy should try to rebuild the roads.
There were four such battalions in the Ukraine in 1932. (Ibid, p. 175)
Railway points crossings, communications equipment, telegraph wires and
in some cases even the rails were got ready to be removed. (M.
Tukhachevsky, Izbrannye Proizvedeniya, Moscow Voenizdat 1964, Vol. i
pp. 65-67)
The Soviet security zone underwent continuous improvements. The
number of targets prepared for demolition steadily grew. New defence
obstacles were created: forest barriers; artificial reservoirs in front of
defensive constructions; preparations were even made to flood some
areas.
The Soviet Union then declared war on Finland and experienced a security
zone on its own attacking troops.
The failures of the Red Army on this occasion were not simply the results
of miscalculations by the Soviet
command. More important was the fact that the Finnish Army was
prepared for defence, and ready to make sacrifices. The Finns had erected
their security zone in front of their main line of defence. This zone - some
40-60 kilometres deep (Sovetskaya Voennaya Entsiklopediya, Vol. 6, p.
504) - was strewn with minefields and
defence obstacles. Snipers, sappers and light mobile detachments were
extremely active.
Suvorov continues the narrative:
All the Soviet commanders who fought there expressed their admiration of
the Finnish security zone. Foremost among them was K. Meretskov, who
commanded the yth 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
security zone which had been set up along the Soviet Union's western
frontiers?
Meretskov 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 defence obstacles razed to the ground;
2. No security zone should be set up in the new lands;
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;
5. A vast works programme should begin at once to build a network of
roads 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.
Come again?
That does not plan like a defensive zone to act as a buffer between
Germany and the Soviet Union. That sounds like a country that is
expecting an invasion of... tourists, not enemy troops. Why was this
enormous programme of public works undertaken, why did the Soviet
troops move towards the border when the defensive obstacles were "razed
to the gound"?
Perhaps Stalin was counting on an already existing fortification, already
built. Perhaps... The so called Stalin Line did indeed exist.
In the 1930s, thirteen fortified regions, or URs, were built along the Soviet
Union's western frontier, in a strip of territory which was unofficially called
the Stalin Line.
The basic element of the fortified regions was the DOT, or permanent fire
position. In its issue of 25 February 1983, the newspaper Red Star gave a
description of DOT No. 112 in the 53rd UR, situated in the Mogilev-Podolsk
region. This was one of the completely standard DOTs in the Stalin Line.
It consisted of complex tunnelled fortification defences, which contained
communication trenches, caponiers, compartments and filtration systems.
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Beginning on 22 June, the air arm of the Black Sea Fleet carried out active
combat operations in support of the Danube Naval Flotilla with the
objective of opening a way upstream for the flotilla. On 2526 June,
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surface warships of the Black Sea Fleet appeared off the Romanian port of
Constanza and began an intensive
artillery bombardment with the obvious intention of making a naval
assault landing. At the same time the Danube Naval Flotilla began to carry
out assault landing operations in the Danube Delta.
On 22 June 1941, the 4ist Rifle Division of the 6th Army's 6th Rifle Corps,
without waiting for orders from above, crossed the state frontier near
Raval-Russkaya. That same morning, and without waiting for orders from
Moscow, Colonel-General F. I. Kuznetsov, officer commanding the NorthWest Front, ordered his troops to launch an attack towards Tilsit in East
Prussia. This decision came as no surprise either to the headquarters staff
of the North-West Front or to the officers commanding the armies and
their staffs, for a version of the attack on Tilsit had been played out in
headquarters exercises held a few days previously, 'and it was very
familiar to the commanders of the formations and their headquarters'.
(Bor'ba za Sovetskuyu Pribaltiku, Eesti Raamat, Tallinn 1980, Vol. i, p. 67)
the commanders at
tactical level were not entitled to know what their tasks would be, but in
the senior headquarters, these tasks had been exactly defined and
formulated, placed under seal in secret envelopes, and kept in the safe in
every headquarters, up to and including the level of battalion. For
instance, the Reconnaissance Battalion of the
27th Rifle Division, concentrated close to the frontier near the town of
Augustow, was preparing to carry out combat reconnaissance in the
direction of Suwalki. (Arkhiv MO SSSR, Archive 181, list 1631, item i, p.
128) The task of the Reconnaissance Battalion was to ensure the swift
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So using our two dangerous weapons - logic and common sense - let us
attack now.
If the Soviet Union had no plans which the Army units could use in the
event of an enemy attack on the country, if the military forces, when the
enemy attacked, immediately went over the offensive themselves, when
they were told by the Chief of Staff to attack, all Fronts, attack! ... What
does that tell us the plans of the Soviet Union were in WW2?
End Game
Constantine Pleshakov, freely available in the USA, and at Amazon.com:
Stalin's decision to put the new defense line right on the border looked
unbelievably foolish to Zhukov. He couldn't say so bluntly, but he was
shockingly audacious in expressing his doubts. (...) The troops had also
been placed too close to the border, where they could be hit by a sudden
German attack. One area of Pavlov's military district, the Belostok salient,
looked especially vulnerable, as the Red Army could easily be trapped by
the attacking Germans.
(...)
It had been a while since a general had dared to doubt the wisdom of
Stalin's decisions. The remarks caused an uproar. Pavlov venomously said
that in Zhukov's military district the fortifications were being built right on
the border as well. Voroshilov angrily advised Zhukov to mind his own
business
Preparing for defensive warfare, a country never put its fortifications right
on the border and never placed its army in narrow strips of territory like
the Belostok salient, where it could be asily strangled by the enemy.
Only a few people in the room knew that Stalin's real plan was to skip
defensive war altogether and strike at Germany first.
Joseph Stalin had many skeletons in his closet, but in January 1941 the
preemptive war plan was his best guarded secret. (...) In strategic terms,
an attack on Hitler looked both feasible and desirable. (...) Stalin was sure
that the Fuhrer was still focusing on Britain, leaving his eastern flank
relatively weak. Only after Germany finnished in the West, Stalin argued,
would Hitler send the bulk of his troops to the Soviet Union's border. He
didn't believe that Hitler would risk a war on two fronts, and common
sense supported that view, since such strategic arrogance had cost
Germany a catastrophic defeat in World War I
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Vasilevsky was told to rewrite the draft. (...) In October, under Stalin's
pressure, Timoshenko and Meretskov cancelled the attack in the north
altogether (into Prussia and Poland - AG) and agreed that the Red Army
should strike in the south (Romania - AG). Now the Army was expected
"to cut Germany off from the Balkans in order to deprive it of paramount
economic resources(...)" (i.e. Romanian oil from Ploesti)
The generals knew that the vozhd (leader, or fuhrer, in Russian - AG),
favored the south as the major strategic theatre(...). The document
suggested striking from the Ukraine and defeating the Germans' main
force in southern Poland. The Kiev military district, transformed into a
group called the Southwestern Front, was to lead the attack, its troops
striking at Krakow (in German occupied Poland -AG) In accordance with
Zhukov's megalomaniacal tendencies, the southwestern Front was to send
about 1 million men and 8,000 tanks into battle. Romania would also be
invaded.
The air force needed more planes along the frontier as well. The plan also
noted that it was time to start working on the rear, establishing new
hospitals and depots.
No date was given for the attack, but the document suggested finalizing
preparations in 1942.
And then Rudolf Hess flew a Me-110 to Britain. Hess was a deputy fuhrer.
What that meant, is that he was officially second in command to
Hitler.
I will let you think on that for a minute. The number 2 person in Nazi
Germany secretly flies himself to the UK, which is at war with Germany...
Back for more? OK!
Stalin, the ever suspicious, believed that Hitler and Churchill were secretly
negotiating a separate peace. In 1940 this was a very attractive
proposition to the British government, if you remember your official
schoolbook version of history. According to Pleshakov, Stalin "simply
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couldn't believe that the second in command in the Nazi Party had just
flown a plane to Britain to negotiate an alliance with London because he
was insane." (pg 80). I am having my doubts too about that whole
mysterious episode. But what happened officially was that Hitler declared
Hess insane, the British imprisoned him, denied him any opportunity to
give interviews, drugged him up to make him insane, then finally he was
killed in Spandau prison long after the war.
Needless to say, Hess' (and possibly Hitler's) desperate plan to make
peace with the United Kingdom failed.
Regardless, Pleshakov states that: "Hess' defection was a pivotal moment
that spring. After it happened, Stalin decided to accelerate war
preparations. Whatever precipitated Hess' flight, he was now no longer
sure he had until the summer of 1942. The Red Army had to be able to
move sooner than that." (pg 81).
The relocation of seven armies to the west wouldn't solve the problem of
manpower. however, at least two more were needed. Also, many existing
units were heavily understaffed. In May and June, 800,000 reservists were
quietly drafted. All military schools were ordered to finish early that year
so the young lieutenants could be sent to the west.
The accelerated buildup suggested that the army would be ready to strike
by midsummer (1941 -AG). The seven armies were expected to be in
place by July 10(...).
In total, almost 3 million soldiers were deployed between the Baltic and
the Black Sea. That figure included eleven police regiments charged
with imposing order on the territories that were to be occupied.
(...) Soon the districts were to be renamed "Fronts", as the tentative war
plan was envisioned. The existence of a Front unambiguously implied war.
The Russian language had no word for a front line mega unit during peace
time; only a fighting army could have such a thing.
By June 20, the Red Army Propaganda Directorate prepared a secret
document. Pleshakov: "It was quite explicit, saying that it was useless to
build defenses against the German juggernaut, as the example of a
number of European countries had proved, and that the Soviet Union
would therefore 'apply an offensive strategy' against Germany" (pg 84).
Mikhail Kalinin, president of USSR (a ceremonial function), addressed the
graduates of the Lenin Military Academy on June 5, 1941: "War os the
time when you can expand communism!"
AmericanGoy disclaimer:
The biggest obstacle to the truth about this portion of WW2 history are
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two arguments:
1) The apologists for the Soviet Union, who for various reasons want to
see that country as a liberator of people oppressed under Nazi tyranny,
just like the Western Allies were, do not want this to come to light.
2) The historians, who throughout their lives unerringly wrote one version
of history, until it became so ingrained that it was considered heresy in
professional historical circles to question the narrative.
There is also the third argument, that by arguing that Hitler's attack on
the Soviet Union was in effect a pre-emptive war, that that somehow
whitewashes Hitler and Nazi Germany's crimes, and so they are anti
semitic in nature.
Which argument is simply bullshit.
Any amateur or serious student of history has to realize, that both Nazi
Germany and Stalin's (and his successors) Soviet Union were tyrannical
dictatorships, which used secret police to keep disent down, which both
tortured their political opponents and random victims, which both
imprisoned millions of people. Both killed millions of people.
It is true that this historical information is used by modern neo-nazis to
somehow whitewash Hitler's actions. Well, it does not make it so to this
amateur historian...
To me, rooting for one side or the other in the Soviet-Nazi war is akin to a
situation when two gangs in your home city are fighting a turf war over
drug territory. Which gang would you root for - the Bloods or the Crips?
Or perhaps you would realize that both of them are one and the same...
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continuing his investigation. No, he said this week, he does not fear
that shifting responsibility for the war from Hitler to Stalin
"acquits" Hitler; he is responsible for other crimes.