Soviet offensive plans controversy

Updated on Oct 24, 2023

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The Soviet offensive plans controversy refers to the debate among historians on the question of whether Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was planning to attack Axis forces in Eastern Europe prior to Operation Barbarossa.

While most agree that Stalin made extensive preparations for an eventual war and exploited the military conflict in Europe to his advantage, the assertions that he planned to attack Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941, and that Barbarossa was a preemptive strike by Adolf Hitler, are generally discounted according to David M. Glantz. However most historians agree that war between the Soviet Union and the Axis was inevitable due to their vast ideological differences.

Background

Immediately after the Axis invasion of the USSR during World War II, Adolf Hitler asserted that the Soviet Red Army had made extensive preparations for an offensive war in Europe, thus justifying the German invasion as a preemptive strike. After the Second World War, this view was supported by some Wehrmacht leaders, like Wilhelm Keitel.

Suvorov, Icebreaker, and the 1980s

In the 1980s Vladimir Rezun, a former officer of the Soviet military intelligence and a defector to the UK, reiterated and explored this claim in his 1987 book Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War (written using the pseudonym Viktor Suvorov), and in several subsequent books. He argued that Soviet ground-forces were extremely well organized, and were mobilizing en masse along the German-Soviet frontier for a Soviet invasion of Europe slated for Sunday, July 6, 1941, but they were totally unprepared for defensive operations on their own territory.

One of Suvorov's pieces of evidence favoring the theory of an impending Soviet attack was his claim regarding the maps and phrasebooks issued to Soviet troops. Military topographic maps, unlike other military supplies, are strictly local and cannot be used elsewhere than in the intended operational area. Suvorov claims Soviet units were issued with maps of Germany and German-occupied territory, and phrasebooks including questions about SA offices — SA offices were found only in German territory proper. In contrast, maps of Soviet territory were scarce. Notably, after the German attack, the officer responsible for maps, Lieutenant General M.K. Kudryavtsev, was not punished by Stalin, who was known for extreme punishments after failures to obey his orders. According to Suvorov, this demonstrates that Kudryavtsev was obeying the orders of Stalin, who simply did not expect a German attack.

Suvorov offers as another piece of evidence the extensive effort Stalin took to conceal general mobilization by manipulating the laws setting the conscription age. That allowed Stalin to provide the expansive build-up of the Red Army. Since there was no universal military draft in the Soviet Union until 1939, by enacting the universal military draft on 1 September 1939, and by changing the minimum age for joining the Red Army from 21 to 18, Stalin triggered a mechanism which achieved a dramatic increase in the military strength of the Red Army.

This specific law on mobilization allowed the Red Army to increase its army of 1,871,600 men in 1939 to 5,081,000 in the spring of 1941 under secrecy to avoid alarming the rest of the world. Eighteen million reservists were also drafted. The duration of service was 2 years. Thus, according to supporters of the Soviet Union Offensive Plans Theory, the Red Army had to enter a war by 1 September 1941 or the drafted soldiers would have to be released from service.

Points

Suvorov's main points include the following:

The Soviet Union was intrinsically unstable. It had to expand to survive. According to Suvorov's interpretation of the permanent revolution theory, the communist system had to expand and occupy the entire world to survive. Otherwise, the system would fail in a peaceful and/or military struggle with surrounding "capitalist" countries. Stalin and other Soviet leaders had always understood this. Stalin publicly declared that "the ultimate victory of socialism... can only be achieved on an international scale". Under this theory, Soviet leaders therefore started preparations for a large-scale war of aggression. To mislead the West, however, they officially declared an adherence to a more peaceful theory of "Socialism in One Country", according to which Socialism can win in a single country, without being immediately overthrown by hostile capitalist neighbors. This leading country would then help revolutionary movements in other countries. Either way, the Soviet pre-war doctrine was based on the Marxism-Leninism theory that capitalism will be overthrown through Communist revolution.

The Soviet Union made extensive preparations for a future war of aggression during the 1920s and 1930s. Suvorov provides an extensive analysis of Stalin's preparations for war. According to Suvorov, there were supposed to be three Five Year Plan phases that would prepare the Soviet Union for war. The first one was to be focused on collectivisation, the second focused on industrialisation, and the third phase would emphasize the militarisation of the country.

Stalin escalated tensions in Europe by providing a combination of economic and military support to Weimar Germany, and later to Nazi Germany (see Germany–Soviet Union relations before 1941). After World War I, the Entente attempted to impose severe restrictions on Weimar Germany to prevent it from rearming and again becoming a significant military threat. During "the early 1920s until 1933, the Soviet Union was engaged in secret collaboration with the German military to enable it to circumvent the provisions of the Versailles Treaty", which limited Germany's military production. Moscow allowed the Germans to produce and test their weapons on Soviet territory, while some Red Army officers attended general-staff courses in Germany. The basis for this collaboration was the Treaty of Rapallo, signed between the two nations in 1922, and subsequent diplomatic interactions. This collaboration ended when the anti-communist Nazis took power in 1933. But, according to Suvorov, in the years 1932-1933, "Stalin helped Hitler come to power by forbidding German Communists to make common cause with the Social Democrats against the Nazis in parliamentary elections". Suvorov claims that Stalin's plan and vision was that Hitler's predictability and his violent reactionary ideas made him a candidate for the role of "icebreaker" for the Communist revolution. By starting wars with European countries, Hitler would validate the USSR's entry into World War II by attacking Nazi Germany and "liberating" and Sovietising all of Europe. When concluding the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, Stalin "clearly counted on the repetition of the 1914–1918 war of attrition, which would leave the "capitalist" countries so exhausted that the USSR could sweep into Europe virtually unopposed" (see also Stalin's speech on August 19, 1939).

According to Suvorov and others, Stalin always planned to exploit military conflict between the capitalist countries to his advantage. He said as early as 1925 that "Struggles, conflicts and wars among our enemies are...our great ally...and the greatest supporter of our government and our revolution" and "If a war does break out, we will not sit with folded arms – we will have to take the field, but we will be last to do so. And we shall do so in order to throw the decisive load on the scale"

World War II was initiated by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which became cobelligerents after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The essence of this pact was in the secret protocols which divided Europe into spheres of influence, and removed the Polish buffer between Germany and the USSR. Some countries that fell into the Soviet sphere of influence – Estonia and Latvia – were occupied. The difference between these smaller nations, occupied and annexed by the USSR, and Poland (which was initially attacked by Germany) was that Poland had military assistance guarantees from Great Britain and France.

Stalin planned to attack Nazi Germany from the rear in July 1941, only a few weeks after the date on which the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union took place. According to Suvorov, the Red Army had already redeployed from a defensive to an offensive stance. Suvorov also states that Stalin had made no major defensive preparations.

Hitler's intelligence identified the USSR's preparations to attack Germany. Therefore, the Wehrmacht had drafted a preemptive war plan based on Hitler's orders as early as mid-1940, soon after the Soviet annexations of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. On June 22, 1941, the Axis began an assault on the USSR.

Reactions and critiques

While most agree that Stalin made extensive preparations for an eventual war and that he exploited the military conflict in Europe to his advantage, the assertions that Stalin planned to attack Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941, and that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike by Hitler, are generally discounted.

In some countries, particularly in Russia, Germany, and Israel, Suvorov's thesis has jumped the bonds of academic discourse and captured the imagination of the public. Among the noted critics of Suvorov's work are Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, American military historian David Glantz, and Russian military historians Makhmut Gareev, Lev Bezymensky, and perhaps his most vehement Russian critic, Alexei Isayev, the author of Anti-Suvorov. Many other western scholars, such as Teddy J. Uldricks, Derek Watson, Hugh Ragsdale, Roger Reese, Stephen Blank, Robin Edmonds, agree that the major part of Suvorov's writings rest on circumstantial evidence, or even on "virtually no evidentiary base". According to Jonathan Haslam, Suvorov's claim that "Germany frustrated Stalin's war" "would be comical were it not taken so seriously". Soviet-emigre historian Alexandr Nekrich (extremely critical of Stalin in other contexts) also rejected Suvorov's ideas as unsubstantiated and contrary to Stalin's broader policy. Some of Suvorov's claims have been shown to simply be inaccurate, such as his claim regarding Soviet conscription only starting in 1939, when in fact, conscription existed in the RKKA since 1925

Studies by some historians, such as Russian military historian Mikhail Meltyukhov (Stalin's Missed Chance), nevertheless gave partial support to the claim that Soviet forces were concentrating to attack Germany. Other historians who support this thesis are Vladimir Nevezhin, Boris Sokolov, Valeri Danilov, Joachim Hoffmann and Mark Solonin. Offensive interpretations of Stalin's prewar planning are also supported by Sovietologist Robert C. Tucker and Pavel N. Bobylev. Hoffmann argues that the actual Soviet troop concentrations were near the German-Soviet border in the former Poland, as were fuel depots and airfields. All of this is claimed to be unsuitable for defensive operations.

Source: Mikhail Meltyukhov Stalin's Missed Chance table 43,45,46,47,

Supporters of the 'Soviet offensive plans' theory also refer to various facts, such as the publication of Georgy Zhukov's proposal of May 15, 1941, which called for a Soviet strike against Germany, to support their position. This document suggested secret mobilization and deployment of Red Army troops next to the western border, under the cover of training. However, Robin Edmonds argued that the Red Army's planning staff would not have been doing its job well if it had not considered the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against the Wehrmacht, whereas Teddy J. Uldricks pointed out that there is no documentary evidence that Zhukov's proposal was ever accepted by Stalin. Another piece of evidence is Stalin's speech of 5 May 1941, when he spoke to graduating military cadets. He proclaimed: "A good defense signifies the need to attack. Attack is the best form of defense.... We must now conduct a peaceful, defensive policy with attack. Yes, defense with attack. We must now re-teach our army and commanders. Educate them in the spirit of attack". However, according to Michael Jabara Carley, this speech could be equally interpreted as a deliberate attempt to discourage the Germans from launching an invasion.

Other Russian historians, Iu. Gor'kov, A.S. Orlov, Iu. A. Polyakov, and Dmitri Volkogonov, analyzed newly available evidence to demonstrate that Soviet forces were certainly not ready for the attack.

Colonel Dr. Pavel N. Bobylev was one of the military historians from the Soviet (later Russian) Ministry of Defense who in 1993 published the materials of the January 1941 games-on-maps. More than 60 top Soviet officers for about ten days in January rehearsed the possible scenarios of the beginning of the war with Germany and its allies. These materials show that no battles were played out on the Soviet soil. The action started only when the Soviets ("Easterners") attacked westward from their border, and in the second game("South variant")- even from the positions deep inside the enemy's land.

Criticism

Among the noted critics of Suvorov's work are Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, American military historian David Glantz, and Russian military historians Makhmut Gareev, Lev Bezymensky, and Dmitri Volkogonov. Many other western scholars, such as Teddy J. Uldricks, Derek Watson, Hugh Ragsdale, Roger Reese, Stephen Blank, and Robin Edmonds, agree that the Suvorov's major weakness is "that the author does not reveal his sources" (Ingmar Oldberg). Historian Cynthia A. Roberts is even more categorical, claiming that Suvorov's writings are based on "virtually no evidentiary base".

Suvorov's most controversial thesis is that the Red Army made extensive preparations for an offensive war in Europe, but it was totally unprepared for defensive operations on its own territory. Thereby Suvorov essentially reiterates the argument put forward by Adolf Hitler in 1941. According to Jonathan Haslam, Suvorov's claim that "Germany frustrated Stalin's war" "would be comical were it not taken so seriously".

Suvorov reluctantly revealed his sources, and that much of his thesis is based on circumstantial evidence. Thus, one of Suvorov arguments is that certain types of weapons were mostly suited for offensive warfare and that the Red Army had large numbers of such weapons. For example, he pointed out that the Soviet Union was outfitting large numbers of paratroopers — preparing to field entire parachute armies, in fact — and states that paratroopers are only suitable for offensive action, which the Soviet military doctrine of the time recognized. Suvorov's critics say that paratroopers were used in defensive actions and that Soviet paratroopers were poorly trained and armed. In like fashion, Suvorov cites the development of the KT/Antonov A-40 "flying tank" as evidence of Stalin's aggressive plans, while his critics say that development of this tank was started only in December 1941.

David M. Glantz disputes the argument that the Red Army was deployed in an offensive stance in 1941. According to Glantz, the Red Army was only in a state of partial mobilization in July 1941, from which neither effective defensive or offensive actions could be offered without considerable delay.

Antony Beevor writes that "the Red Army was simply not in a state to launch a major offensive in the summer of 1941, and in any case Hitler's decision to invade had been made considerably earlier." However, he also notes that "it cannot be excluded that Stalin... may have been considering a preventive attack in the winter of 1941 or more probably in 1942..."

Paweł Wieczorkiewicz, the author of a detailed description of the purge in the Red Army (Łańcuch śmierci: czystka w Armii Czerwonej 1937-1939, 1335 pages) believed that the Red Army wasn't prepared to fight in 1941 (because of the purge and modernization projects).

Middle positions

In a 1987 article in the Historische Zeitschrift journal, the German historian Klaus Hildebrand argued that both Hitler and Stalin separately were planning to attack each other in 1941. In Hildebrand’s opinion, the news of Red Army concentrations near the border led to Hitler engaging in a Flucht nach vorn ("flight forward"-i.e. responding to a danger by charging on rather than retreating). Hildebrand wrote "Independently, the National Socialist program of conquest met the equally far-reaching war-aims program which Stalin had drawn up in 1940 at the latest".

Support

While Western researchers (two exceptions being Albert L. Weeks and R. C. Raack) criticised Suvorov's thesis, he has gathered some support among Russian historians, starting in the 1990s. Support in Russia for Suvorov's claim that Stalin had been preparing a strike against Hitler in 1941 began to emerge as some archive materials were declassified. Authors supporting the Stalin 1941 assault thesis are Valeri Danilov, V.A. Nevezhin, Constantine Pleshakov, Mark Solonin and Boris Sokolov. Although the USSR attacked Finland, no documents have been found to date which would indicate 26 November 1939 as the assumed date for the beginning of provocations or 30 November as the date of the planned Soviet assault.

One view was expressed by Mikhail Meltyukhov in his study Stalin's Missed Chance. The author states that the idea for striking Germany arose long before May 1941, and was the very basis of Soviet military planning from 1940 to 1941. Providing additional support for this thesis is that no significant defense plans have been found. In his argument, Meltyukhov covers five different versions of the assault plan ("Considerations on the Strategical Deployment of Soviet Troops in Case of War with Germany and its Allies" (Russian original)), the first version of which was developed soon after the outbreak of World War II. The last version was to be completed by May 1, 1941. Even the deployment of troops was chosen in the South, which would have been more beneficial in case of a Soviet assault.

Mark Solonin notes that several variants of a war plan against Germany had existed at least since August 1940. He argues that in the Russian archives there are five versions of the general plan for the strategic deployment of the Red Army and ten documents reflecting the development of plans for operational deployment of western military districts. The differences between them were slight, all documents (including operational maps signed by the Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Red Army) are the plans for the invasion with depth offensive 300 km. Solonin also states that no other plans for Red Army deployment in 1941 have been found so far, and that the concentration of Red Army units in Western parts of USSR was done in direct accordance with the May "Considerations on plan for strategic deployment":

Planned and actual Red Army deployment on the Soviet Western Border

Notes: - first digit – total number of divisions, second digit – tank divisions, third – motorized divisions

- on June 21, armies expanded in the Southern Theatre of Military Operations, and were divided into two Fronts: South-Western and Southern. The table contains the total number of divisions in the two Fronts and in the Crimea.

- according to the Plan of Cover, after the commencement of combat actions, two divisions of the Northwest front, expanded in Estonia, were transferred to the Northern Front, but the table doesn't indicate this.

Source: Mark Solonin (2010) (in Polish). 23 czerwca Dzień M (1 ed.). Poznań, Poland: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis. pp. 204. ISBN 978-83-7510-257-4. The table is available online on Mark Solonin's website

In 2006, a collection of articles (entitled The Truth of Viktor Suvorov) by various historians who share some views with Suvorov was published. This was followed by a number of sequels, six as of September 2010. In a 2009 essay entitled "Don’t Blame Hitler Alone For World War II", journalist Eric Margolis endorsed Suvorov's assertion that Operation Barbarossa was a "preventive war" forced on Nazi Germany by an alleged impending Soviet attack, and that it is wrong to give Hitler "total blame" for World War II.

In another sequel to the collection, entitled the New Truth of Viktor Suvorov, Uri Milstein also defended Suvorov's positions.

Several politicians have also made claims similar to Suvorov's. On August 20, 2004, historian and former Prime Minister of Estonia Mart Laar published an article in The Wall Street Journal titled When Will Russia Say 'Sorry'?. In this article, he said: "The new evidence shows that by encouraging Hitler to start World War II, Stalin hoped to simultaneously ignite a world-wide revolution and conquer all of Europe". Another former statesman to share his views of a purported Soviet aggressive plan is former president of Finland Mauno Koivisto, who wrote: "It seems to be clear the Soviet Union was not ready for defense in the summer of 1941, but it was rather preparing for an assault.... The forces mobilized in the Soviet Union were not positioned for defensive, but for offensive aims." Koivisto concludes: "Hitler's invasion forces didn't outnumber [the Soviets], but were rather outnumbered themselves. The Soviets were unable to organize defenses. The troops were provided with maps that covered territories outside the Soviet Union."

References

Soviet offensive plans controversy Wikipedia

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