Vignettes from ‘Stalin’s War of Extermination,’ part 2

Edited and abridged by Wolf Stoner
National Vanguard Russian correspondent

Stalin’s War of Extermination
by Joachim Hoffmann
Chapter 2. June 22, 1941:
Hitler Preempts Stalin’s Attack

ON May 5, 1941, Stalin officially demanded the intellectual and propagandistic conversion of the Red Army to the concept of attack, praising the great superiority of the Red Army. He did not, however, touch upon the actual question of operational preparations for an offensive war against Germany, which was, of course, hardly possible before the audience in the Kremlin. The military preparations had, nevertheless, long been underway. Thus, the Red Army, even in 1940 — i.e.., long before the German invasion — had already begun offensive deployment in the exposed salients near Bialystok and Lemberg, as the future Chief of the General Staff and Marshal of the Soviet Union Zhukov was compelled to admit. A conference of the highest commanders of the Red Army under the Chairmanship of the People’s Commissar of Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union Timoshenko, made the decision in December 1940 to conduct any future war as a war of attack. In January 1941, two large-scale staff war-game planning maneuvers of the top leadership cadres of the Red Army (also under the direction of the People’s Commissar of Defense and to some extent in the presence of Stalin and a few members of the Politburo) produced the first study for the execution of an offensive war against Germany. A strategic map maneuver that was played through included an offensive with the objective of conquering East Prussia and Konigsberg by superior Soviet forces from the Baltic region. This offensive was to combine with overwhelmingly superior forces from the region around Brest in an offensive over the Carpathians in a southwestern thrust with the objective of conquering southern Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary. These strategic map maneuvers, which took place on January 2-6, 1941, and January 8-11, 1941, are, typically, either not mentioned at all or only marginally in Soviet war historiography and historical memoirs. This is an indication that the desired results that stood in the foreground of the performance of these exercises were not defensive measures but, rather, offensive operations.

On May 15, 1941, ten days after the utterance of Stalin’s military threats, the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, General of the Army Zhukov, transmitted to “the President of the Council of the People’s Commissars of the USSR, Comrade Stalin,” in the presence of the People’s Commissar for Defense, Marshal Timoshenko, the plan, signed by all of them, for an offensive war against Germany under the harmless title “Considerations on the Strategic Mobilization Plan of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union in the Event of War with Germany and German Allies.” …Due to strict secrecy, this document was only available in a single clean handwritten copy….

This plan for an offensive war on Germany is the quintessence of other projects worked out by the Soviet General Staff in the spring of 1941 for an offensive against Germany. This has been published and commented on in detail by the Candidate for the Historical Sciences, Colonel Valeri Danilov, with the cooperation of university lecturer Dr. Heinz Magenheimer of the National Defense Academy in Vienna, in the renowned Osterreichischischen Militarischen Zeitschrift. These projects included the following:

1. The strategic deployment plan of March 2, 1941, of the Armed Forces of the USSR in the event of a war with Germany;

2. The projected operational plan in the event of war with Germany, referred to in the document of May 15, 1941;

3. The Specific Deployment Plans of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union toward the West and East of March 11, 1941, that, according to Colonel General Volkogonov, was also prepared with the participation of Major General Vasilevsky and presented to Stalin by Marshal Timoshenko and General of the Army Zhukov.

…The merit of Colonel Danilov’s work is that he published the entire Soviet plan of attack, with thorough comments, thereby disseminating conclusive details of Soviet military preparations. The General Staff Plan of May 15, 1941, incorporated the principles contained in Stalin’s speech before the graduates of the Military Academies and, as a practical matter, converted the remarks of May 5, 1941, combined with the resources of the General Staff, into a primer for operational action. The composition of this plan of attack and its presentation on May 15, 1941, to the originator of the demand, that it was now necessary to make the transition to a “military policy of offensive operations,” was equivalent to a highly official step of the General Staff, which, in view of the conditions of the Stalin regime, could only be undertaken upon the instructions of Stalin himself. Danilov is fully justified when he stresses that “operational documents of such importance” could only be drawn up “exclusively upon the basis of military-strategic concepts issued by Stalin.” Any individual initiative in matters of such importance was out of the question, because it could be interpreted as a concerted protest against the “party line,” i.e., against Stalin, with all the dire consequences arising therefrom. This, of course, applied first of all to the People’s Commissar of Defense Timoshenko and the Chief of the General Staff Zhukov. In particular, it was clear to Zhukov, who was still mindful of the Great Purge, what it would have meant to oppose the Stalinist line and to work out one’s own plans.

Stalin, however, took great care not to sign documents of fatefully grave content. Colonel General Volkogonov has, however, left no doubt as to Stalin’s knowledge of the General Staff Plan of May 15, 1941, and on July 29, 1990, in the Military History Research Office in Freiburg stated that Stalin “signed with his monograph” (i.e., initialed) the plan. Alexandr Nekrich says: “Stalin favored execution of the plan, but wanted to keep his own hands clean.” Stalin always acted this way in decisive matters. An extraordinary document has also been found in the “Presidential Archives” (in the former archive of the Politburo of the Central Committee) in Moscow. This is the text of an interview prepared on August 20, 1965 by Marshal Vasilevsky, with a concurring comment by Zhukov, stating that “Stalin fully approves the principal theses of the ‘considerations.’ Timoshenko and Zhukov must have received Stalin’s approval, since they immediately commenced execution of the plan; in which, according to Valeri Danilov as well, they drew up “extensive preparations” for an offensive war against Germany.

Finally, even Colonel General Gorkov, in his foreword to an interview of Marshal Vasilevsky, cannot help admitting that the plan of attack of the General Staff of the Red Army very quickly (i.e., within nine days, on May 24, 1941) became the object of a conference of the top leadership levels in Stalin’s presence. That this conference in the Kremlin was, in fact, an event of the greatest importance, is also proven by the participation of the First Deputy to the President of the Council of People’s Commissars (i.e., Deputy Premier to Stalin) and Foreign Minister Molotov, as well as Timoshenko, Zhukov, Vatutin, and Commander of the Air Forces of the Red Army Zhigarev. In addition, the commanders of the five military border regions, Generals Popov, Kuznetsov, Pavlov, Kirponos, and Cherevichenko, the members of their military councils, and other leading officers from their fields were also present.

Due to detailed research, colonel Kiselev arrives at the conclusion that Stalin, even if he did not expressly approve the plan of attack of May 15, 1941 (in accordance with his style), he, nevertheless, accepted it “One of the most important references to the accuracy of this assumption”, in his view, “is that the measures for which the High Command was searching in the document of May 15, were actually carried out.” “The measures listed in the ‘Considerations on the Strategic Deployment Plan of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union’ of May 15, 1941,” as Kiselev summarizes, “began to take shape, which would not have been possible without the approval of the political leadership, meaning Stalin.” Michail Mel’tiukhov has accepted this research finding, and defended it against misleading ideological criticism. He writes:

It is therefore impossible, insofar as one can pursue it, not to agree with V. Kiselev and V. Danilov that the plan of May 15 was approved by the Soviet leadership, since, as stated above, the measures proposed in the plan were carried out in May-June. Consequently, the opinions of V. Danilov, V. Kiselev and B. Petrov in this regard, that the Red Army created an offensive army, appear entirely justified.

The argument adduced by General Colonel Gorkov and other Stalin apologists that the plan of attack of the General Staff of the Red Army of May 15, 1941, should be considered “defensive” because it contained no supplementary political plans for the occupation of the territories to be incorporated, is groundless. Thus, for example, the expert American historian Professor Richard C. Raack replies: “There had to have been some other planning somewhere, at some level, for some sort of political result from a successful invasion according to the plan Gorkov reported.” To Raack, the “non-existence of a supplementary Soviet plan is inconceivable.” As Viktor Suvorov stresses, the failure to find such a plan is no proof to the contrary; since in Moscow, as the Katyn case teaches (the site of an NKVD massacre of Polish officers), the only documents ever found were those that they wanted to be found. Finally, from 1939 onward, the huge territorial regions of Poland, Finland, the Baltic Republics, and East Romania were also annexed more or less off the cuff.

Suvorov makes it clear that the preparations of the Red Army for the “Campaigns of Liberation” in 1939 and 1941 were conducted according to the same scheme. As in 1939, military councils selected higher party officials for Special Applications Groups (Osnaz), whose existence was later hushed up. These groups came to be formed in regard to the planned “War of Liberation” in 1941 for the purpose of executing the goal of Sovietization. We can infer from an official work of the Institute for the Military History of the 18th Army (which, incidentally, passed all the censors) that, in addition to other party officials, the later General Secretary Brezhnev was assigned to such an Osnaz group prior to the beginning of the war. On page 11 of the work, it says “Until mid-September 1941, Leonid Ilyich belonged to the Special Applications Group of the Military Council for the Southern Front.” Suvorov considers this as an involuntary admission that the Bolshevization of the territory to be conquered in 1941 was indeed planned, and that corresponding political plans must also have existed, in addition to the plan of attack of the General Staff of the Red Army of May 15, 1941.

What were the details of the Soviet General Staff’s plan? The above mentioned short “Credo of Attack” ran as follows:

When one considers that Germany keeps its army mobile through the installation of rear support services, then it can preempt us [predupredit’, with double underlining by General Vatutin] during deployment, and carry out a surprise attack. In order to prevent this, and to crush the German army [the latter is crossed out], I consider it necessary not to leave the initiative to the German command at any time, under any circumstances, and to preempt the enemy during deployment [upredit’, with double underlining by General Vatutin], and to attack the German army during the deployment stage, when it is not yet able to build a front and organize the cooperation of its branches of service.

As a perceptive observer, Pourray, has remarked, if the Soviet General Staff feared that the Germans might “preempt” the Red army, this must have been because the Russians were already doing something that the Germans needed to preempt.

The first strategic objective, according to the Soviet General Staff plan, was the destruction of the chief forces of the German Wehrmacht south of the Brest-Deblin line and the attainment of the Ostroleka-Narew- Lodz-Kreuzburg-Oppeln-Olmiitz line within 30 days. A second strategic aim was the continuation of the offensive out of the region around Kattowitz to the north and northwest, to crush the forces of the left wing and take possession of all of Poland and East Prussia as well. The main blow should be led with forces from the Southwest Front out of the Lemberg salient, to cut off the German Army from its southern allies. It was simultaneously planned to encircle and annihilate the German group in the Lublin-Radom region with the right wing of the Southwest Front, in cooperation with the left wing of the Western Front, in an offensive from the Bialystok salient in the direction of Warsaw-Deblin. Against Finland and East Prussia—apparently a result of the war-game staff maneuvers of January—and against Romania and Hungary, an active defense was to be organized in the south from the regions around Czernowitz and Kishinev. Romania was then to be attacked to capture Jasi and destroy the left wing of the Romanian army.

The General Staff plan of May 15, 1941, meant, in terms of one central point, a deviation from previous doctrine: an enemy offensive was no longer to be answered with a devastating blow. Rather, the Red Army was to preempt enemy attack, which was, at this point, still purely hypothetical, since the armored shock forces of the German Armies East were deployed on the eastern border for the first time only on June 3, 1941. Since the great devastating blow was intended to introduce the “military policy of attack operations” ordered by Stalin on May 5, 1941, and, as Kalinin revealed on May 20, 1941, this really involved a political aim, i.e., of “expanding the zone of Communism,” which meant expanding the power of the Soviet Union, it was, therefore, a purely offensive war, a war of conquest, not a preventive war that was being prepared, similar to the manner in which Hitler—although for different reasons—planned an offensive war of his own.

This is true, regardless of whether or not German deployment served as the motivation, and essentially proves that the Soviet preparations for attack by the concentration and deployment of Red Army troops was covered in the guise of local defense. The success of the planned large-scale surprise attack against the troops of the Wehrmacht presupposed a few measures expressly advocated by the General Staff of the Red Army on May 15, 1941.

1. Secret mobilization was to be carried out under the cover of exercises for the soldiers of the Red Army.

2. Troops were to be concentrated in the vicinity of the western border areas under the pretense of the concentration of training camps; as a priority, all the reserve armies of the Soviet High Command were to be concentrated.

3. The Air Forces were to be secretly concentrated on airfields, while the development of the ground organization was to begin immediately.

4. The rear support services were to be organized under the screen of training procedures and exercises.

These demands generally corresponded to the new operational and tactical principles of the Red Army, of which the Germans soon became aware. Beginning in the spring of 1941, the Germans noticed that “extensive studies” of the “initial phase of a new war” were being recorded in Soviet military literature. All these studies, according to a summary of the High Command of the German 18th Army of April 15, 1941, climaxed in the recognition that all modern wars would begin “with a ‘sneaking up’ into war, without an official declaration of war, and with gradual mobilization that was concealed until the final opening of hostilities.” Motorized forces and cavalry would be concentrated “on troop training areas and during maneuvers,” and be used “within the shortest time as an army of penetration.” The objective of the “surprise opening of hostilities” was to carry the “military operations into enemy territory, and take the initiative from the beginning of the campaign.” The question arises: to what extent were these requisitions still in the planning stage, and to what extent had they actually been completed by June 22, 1941?

As for secret mobilization, Soviet troops in the western border regions, in accordance with the new mobilization plan MP-1941, received orders from the General Staff of the Red Army to prepare for a full mobilization by June 1941. The date indicated for all troops and installations of the western special military districts was June 15, 1941; for that of the Baltic special military districts, June 20, 1941. The mobilization of the troops was to be prepared “down to the last detail” in accordance with the date established in the deployment scheme. The General Staff apparently wished “to take a resolute step forward” in June, and also to actually carry out a general mobilization. In the meantime, Stalin rejected a similar proposal of Timoshenko and Zhukov on June 14, 1941, since mobilization would automatically mean the opening of hostilities, which should, in the opinion at that time, begin with a surprise blow at a point in time chosen by the Soviets. The measures already taken, as Colonel Filippov recently showed, had been so effective that mobilization was no longer even necessary. In May 1941, Stalin ordered the call-up of a further 800,000 reservists, so that approximately 300 divisions were now ready. These divisions were only approximately 2,500 men short of wartime strength per division. The German command authorities were, of course, quick to perceive the intent behind this move. They knew that the increasing call-up of specialists and the drafting of all the eligible men born in the same year meant the systematic strengthening of the Red Army without this being apparent to the outside for the sake of camouflage.” “Due to this procedure,” was the conclusion, “a public general mobilization is no longer necessary under certain circumstances.”

As with the secret mobilization, the secret concentration of troops under cover of training camps was largely completed. Soviet historians, precisely to prove alleged Soviet peaceful intentions, have adduced a system of “decentralized camp exercises,” In reality, however, the General Staff had, once again under the strictest secrecy, shifted four armies from the interior of the country to the border region as early as May 13, 1941, on Stalin’s instructions. These armies were followed by others in June. The armies in question were the 16th, 19th, 20th, 21th, 22nd, 24th, and 28th, ie, a total of seven armies, as well as the 21st and 23rd Mechanized Corps and the 41st Infantry Corps. These huge troop movements were conducted under the umbrella of denials inspired by Stalin. Thus, the news agency TASS, on May 15, 1941, attacked the rumors of large troop concentrations with the truly baffling claim that a whole division had been transferred from Irkutsk to Novosibirsk due to better lodging conditions. On June 13, 1941, TASS called rumors of war preparations against Germany as “mendacious and provocative,” and the call-up of reservists for the forthcoming maneuver was only intended for “training” and to “control the railway apparatus.” At this time, according to later German statements, so far “almost the entire available armed might of the Soviet Union was transported out of the interior of Russia to the German eastern front in one month of continuous movement.” Otherwise, large units would hardly have appeared before the German army eastern front in numbers that, according to the enemy situation report of Panzer Group 4 of August 10, 1941, amounted to 330 Soviet divisions, but, according to the intelligence report on the enemy of Panzer Group 3 of August 3 to 7, 1941, amounted to as many as 350 Soviet divisions. In the belief of the German General Staff of the Army, such a concentration of troops must have begun quite a long time before the beginning of the war, particularly when one considered the “vast expanse of the regions” and the “difficult transportation conditions” in the Soviet Union.

“That the Soviet Union was preparing to begin an offensive war against the German Reich” is, however, also evident from the type of troop deployment, the actual “battle order,” as vigorously stressed in a memorandum undersigned by the Chief of the Foreign Armies East Branch of the German General Staff of the Army, Colonel Gehlen, on September 9, 1943: “Proofs of Russian Offensive Preparations Against Germany (preparedness in terms of personnel and the deployment of personnel).” Thus, strong forces, especially “mobile” forces, i.e., mechanized, motorized, and cavalry units, were predominantly concentrated in the salient extending far into German controlled territory at Biatystok and Lemberg. The memorandum pointed out:

These two chief points of emphasis make clear the intention, that through a thrust in the general direction of Lizmannstadt (Lodz), to encircle and destroy the German forces in the projecting part of the General Gouvernement [German occupied Poland] and to cut East Prussia off from the Reich upon suitable development of the situation in the north through a thrust in the direction of Elbing.

But here, the full extent of the Soviet General Staff plan of May 15, 1941, had not even remotely been correctly recognized. It is also characteristic that this “operative configuration” was maintained regardless of the certainty of a German attack, although the troops thus deployed were in immediate danger of profound enclosure, encirclement, and destruction, as Marshal Zhukov also admitted after the war. According to Major General Grigorenko, such concentrations would only have been justified

if the troops there were intended to be used in a surprise attack. Otherwise, they would have been halfway surrounded right from the start. The enemy only needed to deal two opposing blows at the base of our wedge, and the encirclement would have been complete.

Documents captured by the German army, moreover, confirm the fact observed by Colonel Filippov, that even before the beginning of the German attack, between June 18 and June 21, 1941, the majority of the Soviet divisions were placed on combat readiness. Furthermore, from June 14, 1941, the order was issued to relocate the newly created Front Staffs (formed out of the staffs of the peacetime military districts) to field combat positions, which was understandable only in the event of forthcoming hostilities.

The secret concentration of the Soviet Air Forces, the development of the ground organization, and the organization of the rear support services were already almost entirely finished on June 22, 1941. The General Staff of the Red Army had concentrated “the most combat-ready aviation attack formations” in all previous air war history, in “the immediate vicinity of its national borders,” and, to this end, had installed a dense network of operative airports in the area since early 1941. This was done, consistently and by preference, in the salients extending from Biatystok and Lemberg, from which the great surprise blow on the Western and Southwest Front was to be dealt according to the Soviet General Staff plan of May 15, 1941. A map prepared during the war by the German Luftwaffe Operation Staff clearly shows the concentration of Soviet airports in the intended main direction of thrust. At least 142 Soviet airfields were built west of the Wilna-Kovel’ line, and at least 260 west of the Luck-Czernowitz (Chernovicy) line. The concentration of airports in the Baltic region, as well as Romania, was also conspicuous. Between 1937 and 1940, the Soviet Air Forces also worked out exact documentation and descriptions of their objectives in a large number of German cities, at least as far as the Kiel-Celle-Erfurt line. To the Luftwaffe Operation Staff, this was “clear proof” of the methodical war preparations of the Red Army even in these early years.

Clear offensive intentions were also revealed by the transfer forward of all material resources of the armed forces that were stationed immediately adjacent to the western national borders. Gigantic depots of ammunition, weapons, equipment, fuel, provisions, and other stores and materiel, in fact all mobilization supplies, were, as Colonel Danilov has also stated, installed practically in the effective range of enemy fire—even railway tracks were ready for use. For example, in Brest-Litovsk alone, the Germans captured ten million liters of fuel. This was “an unmistakable indication of plans of aggression,” because these quantities of gasoline, immediately on the border, were, furthermore, stored in front of the deployed units of the 14th Mechanized Corps. The then Chief of the Administration for Signal Services of the People’s Commissariat for Defense, Major General Gapich, writes from a knowledge of his field of expertise: “All steps were thus directed to the creation of bridgeheads, to prepare to deal a blow against the enemy, and to carry the war into enemy territory.” In G. P. Pastukhovsky’s opinion, everything was prepared “to ensure profound offensive operations.”

The maps supplied to Red Army troops are another infallible indication of large-scale offensive plans. At various places near the border, as well as far behind the lines, the Germans captured maps extending far to the west and into Germany territory, as well as equally copious documentation providing other information on Germany. Such map discoveries were made at Kobryn, Dubno, Grodno, and many other places. In October 1941, the German XXIV Panzer Corps captured a map of Lithuania and East Prussia, as well as “an apparent operational study entitled ‘Attack on East Prussia.’” As the XXXXVIII Panzer Corps reported on July 1, 1941, the citadel of Dubno contained

warlike-packed supplies of map materials drawn up for divisional tasks. These maps covered territory west of the border regions as far as the region of Cracow [in German occupied Poland]… large quantities of exercises for general staff officers and lecture documentation on Germany were also found.

At an unidentified military drill location, as the activity report of the XXVIII Army Corps stated on July 16, 1941, “mobilization maps of the Red Army were found showing nothing but southern Lithuania, the former Polish areas, and parts of East Prussia. These maps clearly reveal the intent of the Red Army to attack the German Reich.”

On July 23, 1941, Soviet Captain Bondar, Chief of Staff of the 739th Infantry Regiment of the 213th Infantry Division, stated that “the Red Army had adjusted itself not for defense but rather for an attack against the General Gouvernement.” “Maps extending as far as Cracow” were made available to his regiment, as to other parts of the Red Army. These maps were “rendered useless by the German surprise advance.” Such Red Army map supplies in fact prove even more treacherous as the Soviet troops had a lack of military maps of their own territory when military operations—contrary to expectations—suddenly shifted east of their national borders and into Soviet territory. Reliable witnesses, such as Colonel Liubimov, artillery commander of the 49th Armored Division and long-time teacher of tactics at the Artillery Academy in Moscow; Colonel Ovanov, Chief of Staff of the 46th Infantry Division; Major Kononov, Commander of the 436^thInfantry Regiment of the 155th Infantry Division; as well as Stalin’s son, as strong in character and as clever as his father, First Lieutenant Dzhugashvili, of the 14th Howitzer Artillery Regiment of the 14th Armored Division, testified that the lack of maps in the units was, in fact, so serious that combat operations were seriously hindered by it. Professor of Eastern European History at the University of Mainz, Dr. Gotthold Rhode, was at the time an interpreter and Sonderfuhrer (K)(special leader K) in the staff of the 8th Infantry Division. As he made note of it in his diary, on June 23, 1941, in the headquarters building of the Soviet 3rd Army in Grodno, he found, “in a room, stacks of maps of East Prussia, beautifully printed, on a scale of 1:50,000, much better than our own maps, covering all of East Prussia.” Why, he wondered at that time, did the Red Army “need hundreds of maps of a neighboring country?” “One thing remains incomprehensible,” Rhode remarked recently:

If Stalin did not wish to start his own offensive war no later than late summer 1941, then why did he jam-pack the Bialystok pocket full of divisions that were too numerous for defense? Or did Stalin wish to appear to have been attacked, to be the victim of surprise, and then be able to strike back quickly, and only miscalculated the comparison of strengths?

Soviet aggressive intentions are also indicated by the fact that war-game map maneuvers, staff exercises, and the like were fundamentally offensive and aggressive in nature. Even at the division level, described by the First Ordinance Officer of the 87th Infantry Division, First Lieutenant Filipenko, “attack was practiced almost exclusively, with the support of artillery and combat vehicles”; “defense only rarely, up to company strength at most.” On May 24, 1941, German radio reconnaissance in the border area near Grodek “with certainty” listened in on a Soviet exercise with the participation of tank units called “attack on Land N,” meaning Germany. Lieutenant Colonel Kovalev, initially the Commander of the 223rd Infantry Division, and, until May 1941 a student at the Military Academy of Moscow, and Captain Pugachey, First Ordinance Officer on the Staff of the 11th Mechanized Corps, described the war games at the Army level, which exclusively involving the right wing (West Front) of the Soviet offensive front, but that already provide an introduction to the extent of the profound operations that were to be brought about according to the General Staff Plan of May 15, 1941. According to Kovalev, the following map maneuvers for subsequent “counteroffensives” were drawn up at the Moscow Military Academy:

From Leningrad in the direction of Helsinki; out of the Grodno – Brest-Litovsk line in the direction of East Prussia; in the south, from the Ukraine, in the direction of Warsaw-Lodz, with flank protection through the Pripet swamps and the Carpathians.

Even more revealing was Pugachev’s description of a map maneuver of the Commanders of the Western Special Military District with the Army Commander-in-Chiefs and Corps Commanders as early as March 18 through 21, 1941:

The 3rd Army was ordered to break through to Suwalki by way of Augustow. The 4th and 10th Armies were ordered to break through to Warsaw and Litzmannstadt [Lodz]. This assignment was to be completed in fourteen days. The troops stationed in Lithuania were to hold the borders toward East Prussia and to march into East Prussia as soon as the southern army had completed the above mentioned assignments.

This is an obvious reflection of a fundamental concept of the General Staff Plan of May 15, 1942.

The shifting forward of the principal forces of the Red Army to the West and to the national borders took place under strict secrecy, but it could not, of course, remain entirely concealed. Only the actual extent of the preparations east of the German-Soviet borders remained unknown to the Germans…

Since the Germans did not know about the existence of approximately one hundred armored and motorized divisions before June 22, 1941—rather, they assumed only seven armored divisions and thirty-eight motorized, mechanized brigades—they were very surprised after the onset of the war by the huge mass of armored divisions that suddenly confronted them. It “soon appeared obvious that the Russians had many more divisions available than had been assumed by the OKH before the beginning of the eastern campaign,” noted the 1st Panzer Army on December 19, 1941. “Throughout the entire section, the enemy was obviously stronger than had been assumed at the beginning of the operation,” stated Panzer Group 3 as early as June 23, 1941. This astonishment not only related to the numbers of tanks and aircraft, which exceeded all expectations, but also to the quality of Soviet weapons and equipment. To some extent, the Soviet leadership even received a word of praise, and was described, for example, in the appraisal of the enemy situation of Panzer Group 3 of July 8, 1941, as “extremely skillful, energetically active, and deliberate.”

The admission of a crass underestimation of the Red Army is also found in Dr. Goebbels’s diaries. Looking back, he noted on August 19, 1941:

We obviously quite underestimated the Soviet shock power and, above all, the equipment of the Soviet army. We had nowhere near any idea of what the Bolsheviks had available. This led to erroneous decision-making…

The Reich Minister for Enlightening the People and Propaganda expanded upon how difficult it had been for Hitler to make the decision to attack the Soviet Union to start with, adding:

But if the worries of the Fuhrer due to our inaccurate estimate of Bolshevik potential were so great as it is… and caused him such nervous strain, it would have been far worse if we had had a clear picture of the real extent of the danger!

Hitler, Goebbels added, was now very indignant

that he had allowed himself to be so deceived by the reports from the Soviet Union over the potential of the Bolsheviks. Above all, his underestimation of the enemy armored and air forces caused us extraordinary problems in our military operations. He has suffered a great deal over this. It was a very serious crisis…

Hitler made statements that fully confirm this testimony. In the Fuhrer main headquarters on April 12, 1942, Hitler frankly admitted that he had been deceived in regard to the strength of the Red Army, when he declared that the Soviets had

surrounded everything relating to their army with enormous concealment. The whole war with Finland in 1940 — just like the Russian invasion of Poland, which was carried out with ancient tanks and weapons, and badly uniformed soldiers — was just one whole gigantic deceptive maneuver, since the Russians already possessed equipment that could only be compared with German and Japanese equipment.

The initial successes of the Wehrmacht no longer permitted a true estimate of the situation. Another strength report by the Foreign Armies East Branch of the German General Staff of the Army on August 9, 1941, considered the combat strength of the Red Army as now exhausted; and that no more significant Soviet deployments were to be expected. “Their total strength is now insufficient either for a large-scale offensive or for the formation of a drastic defensive front.” It also stated, “they will have reached the limit in the foreseeable future in terms of men as well.”

Since the General Staff Plan of the Red Army of May 15, 1941, assumed 258 Soviet divisions, but since 330-350 divisions had already appeared before the front of the German army by August 8, one would not be wrong in assuming that nearly 300 Soviet divisions must have been concentrated immediately on the national border or not far away, as early as the first day of the war. By June 17, 1941, the High Command of the German Army only recognized the existence of 182 Soviet divisions (including 7 armored divisions) and 38 motorized, mechanized brigades. In a proclamation on June 22, Hitler even spoke of only “160 Soviet divisions on our border,” indicating that even that number of divisions was a threat in his eyes. Although the Germans had only inaccurate notions of the actual extent and striking power of the Soviet attack army, the Soviet deployment, even in the form in which it was merely assumed, had already been the object of careful considerations. Soviet measures generally were evaluated as only defensive, not least of all on political grounds (because of the Non-Aggression Pact of 1939). Nevertheless, the fear of forthcoming Red Army offensives repeatedly arose ever since the spring of 1941 due to the known course of Soviet forces.

As early as March 1941, reports increased of strong troop concentrations in the Baltic States. Statements had been received from Latvian officers, such as Colonel Opitis and Colonel Carlson, that large maneuvers were taking place in the vicinity of the German border, and that the war with Germany would then begin. An initial “attack against the Memel region” could no longer be “completely excluded,” but was, on the contrary, “considered possible.” The Chief of the German General Staff of the 18″ Army gave a preventive order to “hold the bridgehead at Tilsit,” and conferred on the XXVI Anny Corps a similar warning. “It is possible that the Russians will open the struggle, at least to a limited extent, by way of an offensive,” the German High Command of the 16th Army said on May 1. The Commander of the 3 Panzer Group made a similar statement on May 30, 1941, “Because of Russian rapid units in the immediate vicinity of the border region, it appears that it is not impossible that the Russians intend to penetrate German territory.” From April on, it was quite clear that the Red Army also “had enough forces to begin a surprise-attack operation to the Romanian border.” In May and June, increasing reports linked the concentration of “strong Soviet mobile forces” in the immediate vicinity of the border near Czernowitz and in southern Bessarabia, as well as the preparation to cross the river Pruth, with Soviet offensive intentions in a southerly direction against Romania.

…The Chief of the Operations Staff of the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, High Command of the Armed Forces), Lieutenant General Jodl and the Chief of the OKW, Field Marshal Keitel, sent several letters to the Foreign Office and to the Reich Government between April and June 1941, in which, with increasing concern, and, finally, in almost imploring tones and with “the strongest emphasis,” they drew their attention to the fact that Soviet Russia “was conducting the most gigantic military deployment in its history, directed against Germany” and that “a huge Soviet troop force” to the west could be set in motion “at any moment.”

Were these warnings part of an attempt to protect the now completed and planned “Operation Barbarossa” by means of propaganda, in which the German attack was described as a response to an increasing threat from the Soviet Union, or were they motivated by true concern? The usual interpretation by Stalinist-influenced “anti-fascism,” particularly in Germany, is that such warnings can only have constituted a preventive propaganda maneuver to justify German attack, stereotypically characterized by these groups as “the treacherous fascist attack on a unsuspecting, peace-loving Soviet Union.” If one, however, considers the facts of Soviet preparations for a war of conquest, which are obvious today, these warnings appear in another light, particularly in view of the still incomplete state of knowledge of the OKW. Thus, for example, the Chief of the Wehrmacht Operations Staff, in his letter to Ambassador Ritter on June 20, 1941, could only discern one armored division and five armored brigades in tank forces in the salients projecting far to the west around Bialystok. This alone was sufficient cause for concern, however, in reality, no fewer than three mechanized corps, each one numbering a minimum of 1,030 tanks, were concentrated in the semicircle around Bialystok, and another mechanized corps was in service of the salient between Brest and Kobryn. Although the German reconnaissance findings might still have been defective, the situation reports of the OKW, nevertheless, added up to an overall picture of an already menacing nature.

According to the state of knowledge of the OKW, “the Soviet Army leadership had systematically employed all the methods of reconnaissance available to them” in the service of offensive planning. This included the “deliberate use of the Soviet Air Force over the sovereign territory of the Reich,” the “almost daily incoming reports of additional border violations by Soviet aircraft,” and “deliberate provocations.”…

The constant shifting of Soviet units closer to the border, in fact, all along the front line from the Baltic to southern Bessarabia, was perceived by the OKW as a “serious threat”; yet the scope of these movements was still far underestimated. A matter of entirely justified concern, as we know today, was the rapid progress in the development of the ground organization and the filling up of “air fields near the border containing strong units of the Air Force,” as confirmed by the OKW. These measures were accurately interpreted as “preparations for extensive bombing attacks on the German Reich by strong combat aircraft units.” This assessment was all the more so reliable as there were numerous known statements of leading Soviet officers that “openly spoke of a forthcoming Russian offensive.”

On May 11, 1941, Field Marshal Keitel sent the Reich Foreign Minister a letter in which, for the first time, he spoke of the “constantly increasing concern” of the OKW about the “development of the deployment of Russian forces along the German eastern border.” This letter from the Chief of the OKW, who, after all, had cabinet rank, to his Minister colleague could, of course, be interpreted as a mere alibi in regard to the forthcoming Operation “Barbarossa”; yet its contents are fully confirmed by what we know today. Keitel’s mention of the OK W’s conviction “that the extent of Russian deployment, which is practically equivalent to Russian mobilization along the German eastern border, can only be interpreted as a preparation for Russian offensive measures on the largest scale,” is a reflection of one of the basic principles of the General Staff of the Red Army of May 15, 1941. Just as accurate as it was disturbing was the conclusion that the “deployment, which is approaching conclusion,” would enable “the Soviet State leadership to select the attack date at its own discretion,” as it was indeed planned.

Fundamental confirmation may also be found in the contents of the memorandum sent by the Chief of the OKW on June 11, 1941, by way of the Reich Foreign Minister directly to the address of the Reich Government. Keitel’s repeated warning that Soviet “military measures” had led “to a great deployment of the Red Army from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea,” which was “clearly aimed at preparing for an attack on the German Reich,” corresponded to the actual situation. From the vantage point of our knowledge today, Keitel was quite correct when he remarked that the “Russian deployment” was shifting increasingly closer to the border, that “the individual units of the Army and Air Force” were moving forward, and that the “air fields near the border are being equipped with strong units of the Air Force… All these facts, linked with a determination to destroy Germany, as cultivated within the Russian army,” suggested to Keitel “that the Soviet Union was preparing itself to attack the German Reich at any moment that appears suitable to the Soviet Union.”

Unlike the OKH, the OKW had therefore drawn entirely accurate conclusions within the scope of its limited possibilities. Hardly a passage in the letters of Keitel and Jodi contains a factual exaggeration; on the contrary, the danger was minimized from lack of knowledge. In reality, the offensive preparations of the General Staff of the Red Army were no longer very far from completion, as we know today. With similar certainty as for the operational part, this can also be said for the ideological part of the offensive preparations, which were drawn up by the Main Administration for Political Propaganda of the Red Army (GUPPKA) under Army Commissar First Rank Zaporozhets. Stalin issued quite definitive directives, not only to the General Staff, but also to the “political” Main Administration in keeping with his remarks of May 5, 1941. General Colonel Volkogonov summarized this instruction in the following telling statement: “The Vozd’ [Leader] made it unmistakably clear that war is inevitable in the future. We must be prepared for the complete smashing of German fascism.” Stalin demanded the preparation of the directive “On the Tasks of Political Propaganda in the Red Army in the Near Future.” Upon his instructions, this was to incorporate every demand previously made on May 5, 1941:

The new conditions in our country, the present international situation, which is full of unexpected possibilities, demand a revolutionary power of decision and constant readiness to launch a devastating attack on the enemy… All forms of agitation and propaganda are to be directed to one single goal—to the political, moral, and fighting preparation of all personnel to wage a just offensive and an all-destroying war… all personnel are to be educated in the spirit of active hatred of the enemy, to an eagerness to take up the struggle with him, to a readiness to defend our nation on the territory of the enemy, and to deal him a lethal blow…

…At a meeting of the Main Military Council of May 14, 1941, Army Commissar First Rank Zaporozhets was entrusted with the preparation of a suitable draft of the directive given on behalf of Stalin. Zaporozhets informed Zhdanov, Shcherbakov, and Alexandrov on May 26, 1941, of the preparation of further supplementary documentation entitled “Changing Tasks of the Party Political Work in the Red Army,” “On the Marxist-Leninist Instructions of the Leadership Resources of the Red Army,” and “The Current International Situation and the Foreign Policy of the USSR.” All these documents and, of course in particular, the text of the propaganda instructions upon which they were based, “On the Tasks of the Political Propaganda in the Red Army in the Near Future,” were drenched with the spirit of the offensive plan of the General Staff that was being worked out at the same time. For example, the directive “On the Political Education of the Men and Non-Commissioned Officers of the Red Army in the Summer Period of 1941,” which was, likewise, issued to the troops. It had been prepared by the Main Administration for Political Propaganda and recalled the words of Lenin: “as soon as we are strong enough to smash capitalism completely, we will grab it by the throat. In it, it was also remarked that “the Red Army will only conduct a defensive war; but the truth is sometimes forgotten that every war waged by the Soviet Union will be a just war.”

Such words, expressed at such a time, reveal the true reality of the situation: it was not a question of “preempting” the threat of foreign aggression, but rather achieving “extensive plans based on Communist ambitions.” The allegedly necessary preventive blow served merely as an occasion and pretext for the elimination of Germany, “Fascism,” and, thereby, the principal obstacle to the expansion of Soviet power. Of course, in view of such lofty political objectives as those of the world revolution, as Valeri Danilov puts it, “the initiation of hostilities by the Soviet Union against any country at all, in Stalin’s view, was deemed justified, even a moral affair.” The plan of attack of the General Staff and the Directives of the Main Administration for Political Propaganda of the Red Army complemented each other and both served the same purpose. These documents were in accord with Stalin’s remarks before the graduates of the Military Academies on May 5, 1941, as well as with the political speeches of Zhdanov, Kalinin, and other leading Bolshevik officials, and were therefore issued upon Stalin’s instructions. This is confirmed by two accompanying letters from Army Commissar First Rank Zaporozhets relating to the Propaganda directives of May 26-27, 1941. In these letters he repeatedly and deliberately confirmed that the documents were assembled “based upon the instructions of Comrade Stalin, which he had issued on the occasion of the graduation of the students of the Academies” on May 5, 1941. Following a detailed analysis of the propaganda directives prepared at the highest political levels, Vladimir Nevezhin arrives at the same conclusion, i.e., that they were issued “in the spirit of Stalin’s appearance before the graduates of the Military Academies” in the Kremlin on May 5, 1941. “The guiding propaganda documentation of May and June 1941, constantly stresses the view,” he writes, “that the USSR, in the situation that was developing, was compelled and duty bound to take the initiative in dealing the first blow, beginning the war of attack with the objective of expanding the borders of Socialism.”

As early as May 1941, a large-scale propaganda campaign was initiated with the objective of adapting all human resources of the Red Army to Stalin’s demands, both politically and ideologically, in accordance with the concept of an offensive war. Thus, the Department for Political Propaganda of the 5th Army, in consultation with the Chief of the 7th Department of the GUPPKA, who was sent from Moscow, worked out a “Plan for Politically Securing Military Operations during the Offensive” that reveals that Stalin’s directives were being immediately implemented. This document was captured by German troops in the headquarters building of the 5th Army of the Kiev Special Military District in Luck, in addition to other important documents. The document contains detailed instructions by the Chief of Political Propaganda of the 5″ Army, apparently Uronov, for the political and propagandistic preparation and implementation of a surprise attack on the German Wehrmacht. This “Plan for Politically Securing Military Operations during the Offensive” was worked out on the directive of the GUPPKA (“On the Tasks of Political Propaganda…”) on Stalin’s orders, and apparently upon additional instructions from the emissary from Moscow. The plan states: “The German Army has lost the taste for a further improvement in military technology. A significant part of the German Army has become tired of the war.”

Accordingly, a report from the Leader for Political Propaganda of the 5th Army from Rovno dated May 4, 1941, on the “Morale of the Population in the General Gouvernement” noted the “first indications of a collapse in morale in the German Wehrmacht.” German soldiers were said to be unsatisfied, and this dissatisfaction was said to find expression in “open and covert opinions against the war and against Hitler’s policies,” “in hostile statements,” in “the distribution of Communist propaganda literature,” in “drunkenness,” “quarrelsomeness,” “suicides,” “lack of enjoyment in doing service,” and “desertion.” In plain language, the “Plan for Politically Securing Military Operations during the Offensive,” says:

It is necessary to deal the enemy a very hard, lightning-like blow, in order to quickly shatter the morale and strength of resistance of the soldiers… a lightning-like blow by the Red Army will undoubtedly have the consequence of a growing and deepening of the phenomena of decomposition already becoming perceptible in the enemy army…

The “concentration of the army, the capture of lines of departure, and preparation to traverse the Bug [River]” were viewed as the “first” stage, and this formulation alone shows the preparation of an offensive war.

…The “Plan for the Political Protection…” gave the political workers of the 5th Army exact instructions about their duties during the forthcoming offensive operations. The extensive propaganda preparations even included the publication of newspapers (“number of copies for the first few days, in German: 50,000”) as well as leaflets for both German soldiers and the Polish population. Suitable leaflets for “enemy troops,” “the content of which is to conceal our intentions while exposing the imperialistic plans of the enemy, and inciting German soldiers to disobedience,” were already being prepared in large numbers even before the outbreak of the war. Thus it was not surprising that “leaflets of the Soviet Union for German soldiers” were discovered at Shakiak, Lithuania, in the sector of the German 16th Army, as early as the first day of the war—June 22, 1941. These leaflets, according to the High Command of the 16th Army, “are decisive proof of Soviet military preparations.”

Not a few political workers and officers of the Red Army have testified to the effects of the anti-German war propaganda that was now going into high gear. A paper entitled “Politkom und Politorg” states:

Thus, the aim of Soviet propaganda, shortly before the beginning of the eastern campaign, was unequivocal. Quite unexpectedly, new slogans appeared: Germany is in a bad way. Lack of all necessities… Stalin believes that a second world war is brewing, which will be fought on German territory this time.

The Commissar of the 16th Infantry Division, Goriainov, a deserter, made the following written statement on July 21, 1941, that was transmitted to the Foreign Office:

On June 15, 1941, in Gagala camp (Zsoland), on a furlough day, Sunday, the Divisional Commissar Mshavandse, in a speech to the Red Army men and the commanders, declared that we would not wait for a German attack, but would rather seek a favorable moment and then attack Germany ourselves.

The Brigade Commander of the 7th Infantry Brigade, Nikonov (Timofeev), also a deserter, active in the Political Department of the Staff of the 13th Army until August 8, 1941, reported on August 23, 1941, that the propaganda campaign against Germany was

officially stopped after conclusion of the Non-Aggression Pact. Covertly, however, it continued without letup, and was carried on with particular vehemence among the leadership cadres of the Red Army. There was open incitement everywhere after May 1941.

That a change for the worse set in, starting in May 1941, did not remain unknown to German radio reconnaissance. “The radio messages quite suddenly reveal a hostile mood against German soldiers that had not been hitherto perceivable,” stated a radio-interception report of the 44th Infantry Division of May 19, 1941.

The hostile mood incited in the Red Army was expressively reflected in a political talk by a decisive authoritative official on June 15, 1941, before an apparently prominent audience. It was held one week before the beginning of the war, only two days after the famous declaration by the TASS agency which was obviously intended to have a “tranquilizing” effect. The full text of this revealing propaganda speech fell into the hands of the German troops on July 19, 1941, in the Buiuoani barracks before Chisinau. The following are a few key sentences:

In recent times, Germany has been able to expand by bloating itself up through the conquest of other countries, but this does not mean that it has become capable of survival… the war is dragging on, and is acquiring a form that will be fatally exhausting to Germany… Germany can wage blitzkriegs, but not a long war. England can dare to wage a long war, a war to exhaustion, all the more so because it is supported by the USA… Germany is obviously striding toward its defeat.

Due to Germany’s unfavorable political-strategic situation, this high official, in regard to the Soviet Union, on July 15, 1941, drew a conclusion that was in harmony with Stalin’s directives of the previous month. He said:

The peoples of the USSR are against imperialistic war. We are for revolutionary war. The peoples of the USSR are ready for this war of revolution. They like to fight and are good fighters… We are for the just war. In the interests of accelerating the world revolution, we support the peoples who are fighting for their liberation. The Red Army draws the following conclusions:

1. Utmost vigilance.

2. Constant military preparedness…

4, Readiness to carry out, with honor, the forthcoming orders of our Bolshevik party and the Soviet government, under Comrade Stalin.

5. The Red Army will struggle to achieve the complete annihilation of the enemy…

In accordance with Stalin’s instructions, the Main Administration for Political Propaganda in fact succeeded in creating a mood within the Red Army before June 22, 1941, in which war between the Soviet Union and Germany was believed to be inevitable and that the Red Army would have to deal the first blow. There are many concurrent testimonies in this regard, a few of which should be noted. Thus, Abschnittsstab (Section Staff) Gotzmann (German 17th Army) reported on May 22, 1941:

Russian Commissars, who are active in party work (Politruks), are educating the population to the effect that war with Germany is inevitable, that the Army will have to fight against the Reich, and that the poor must fight against the rich.

Similarly, even before the outbreak of the war, Panzer Group 4 reported the statement of a deserter:

Since Molotov’s visit to Berlin [Nov. 1940], the prevalent opinion is that war between Germany and Russia is inevitable. The officers say, we will attack when Stalin gives the order.

…Shortly before his extradition to the Soviets in 1946, the Major General of the Vlasov Army (VS KONR; Military Forces of the Committee to Free the Peoples of Russia; ROA Army to Free Russia), Meandrov, former Chief of the Operations Branch of the 6th Red Army, made the following statement: “The policy of the government for the preparation of a big war was completely clear to us… What was described to us as defensive measures proved in reality to be long-prepared and carefully concealed plans of aggression.” “The policies of the Soviet Union were directed against Germany even after 1939,” said a well-informed official of the Central Apparatus of the NKVD, Zhigunov, as early as September 18, 1941.

The Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 was concluded to drive Germany into war, and to profit from the resulting weakening of Germany… If Germany had not preempted Moscow, the Soviet Union would have attacked Germany, sooner or later.

Such statements are still indefinite as to the possible date of a Soviet attack. On November 20, 1941, Lieutenant General Ershakov, Commander- in-Chief of the 20th Army, referred to an alleged statement by Zhukov in the spring of 1941, according to which war must be avoided in 1941. While such opinions are supposed to have been expressed in the spring of 1941, Stalin, however, deviated from this, since there is significant proof that he brought the attack date forward. Everything indicates that the date must have lain between July and September, because the Red Army could not have wintered in western territory in such massive numbers. As German command authorities also recognized, a movement to the rear would have been required in early summer, unless these forces were simply preparing to attack. The fact that Stalin wished to delay war for a bit longer, “even if by only a few weeks” (Volkogonov); “even if only for a month, a week or a few days” (Danilov)” for tactical reasons, ie., to complete his preparations, indicates offensive intentions during the summer. What would have been gained by such a short respite, if the intent had not been to attack the German Reich by surprise?

Furthermore, what did the Politburo of the Central Committee mean, according to point 183 of Protocol No. 33 in its meeting of June 4, 1941, when it made the decision to fix July 1 as the date of “the establishment of an Infantry Division consisting of personnel of Polish nationality and Polish language in units of the Red Army.”? In Boris Sokolov’s opinion, the arguments in favor of a “Soviet attack upon Germany on July 6, 1941” thus acquire “the status of a scientific certainty.”

Nor is it any accident that Soviet Commanders and Staff Officers who, after all, were not just exposed to a massive propaganda campaign, but were also, at least to some extent, entrusted with the present situation of the war preparations, expected an initiation of hostilities between July and September 1941. Captain Krasko, Adjutant of the 661st Infantry Regiment of the 200th Infantry Division, declared, for example, on July 26, 1941: “In May 1941, among the officers, the opinion was already expressed that the war would begin right after July 1.” Major Koskov, Commander of the 24th Infantry Regiment of the 44th Infantry Division, testified:

In the view of the Regimental Commander, the justification — namely the evacuation of the western Ukraine, ‘because the Soviets were allegedly attacked without preparation’ was in no way true, because Soviet military preparations had been underway for a long time, and, in accordance with the extent and intensity of these military preparations, the Russians would have attacked Germany of their own accord in two to three weeks at the latest.

Colonel Gaevsky, Regimental Commander of the 29th Armored Division, declared to the Germans on August 6, 1941:

Among the commanders, there has been a lot of talk about a war between Germany and Russia. There was the opinion that the war would break out on approximately July 15, 1941, upon which date Russia would assume the role of the attacker.

Lieutenant Kharchenko of the 131st Infantry Division stated on August 21, 1941:

that large-scale preparations for war with Germany were underway since the spring of 1941. The general opinion was that war would have broken out at the end of August or the beginning of September at the latest, i.e., after the harvest, if Germany had not preempted us. The intent to conduct the war on foreign soil was obvious. All these leadership plans were upset by the outbreak of the war inside Russia.

…The key to an understanding of Stalin’s offensive preparations in the spring of 1941 lies in the great “overestimation of the strengths of the USSR and the Red Army,” in an “overestimation of the fighting skills of our troops,” in a “huge… overestimation of our capacities.” These overestimations were made by Soviet military officers of all ranks, including Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasilevsky. Military historians unanimously and repeatedly make similar statements. This feeling of Soviet superiority was, materially speaking, very justified in view of the multiple superiority of the Red Army in tanks, aircraft, and artillery pieces. Furthermore, the industrial capacity of the USSR had increased to an extent where it was able to equip the Soviet armed forces “with a truly inconceivable amount of armaments” within very short periods of time. This superiority related, moreover, not just to equipment and materiel, but to personnel and even leadership cadres. For example, it suffices to mention that, for example, the German Reichsheer had only 4,000 officers in 1935, while the Red Army at that time had over 50,000 “commanders,” thus the Germans suffered from a significantly poorer initial situation. Where were the Germans to obtain sufficient numbers of officers during the armaments phase? Soviet superiority extended to the sector of leadership cadres as well, since, as Colonel Filippov has proven, even the gigantic bloodletting of the Great Purge had been to some extent already compensated for by the summer of 1941 through graduates of the numerous military training installations, including the academy of the General Staff and the Frunze Military Academy. Stalin also counted upon an incipient demoralization of the troops of the Wehrmacht. In addition, the prevalent opinion in Moscow was that the German proletariat would help the Red Army in the event of war with the Soviet Union. This was a delusion, but such delusions gave increased vehemence to the aggressive mood before June 22, 1941, rather than, of course, reducing it.

The consciousness of Soviet strength combined, at the same time, with a knowledge of the difficult political-strategic situation in Germany, which could not, as was well-known, fight a war on two fronts, led to the decision that has been called the “kernel of Bolshevism” ever since the time of Lenin. Namely, that it was important to exploit a unique historical opportunity and bring about a so-called “revolutionary war of liberation,” thus vastly expanding the power of the Soviet State, as crudely illustrated by the symbolism of the Soviet governmental coat of arms. Stalin and Kalinin, as well as other high officials such as Zhdanov, openly propagated Soviet imperialism in several of their speeches in the spring of 1941. In November 1940, the feeling of a growing superiority had given Stalin the occasion to make demands in Berlin which, at any rate, made one thing quite plain: he saw no danger in Germany at that time. The Red Army had taken up offensive deployment on the Western border with overwhelming forces which were not organized for defensive purposes even as it became evident that, for its part, Germany was also preparing an attack.

It is today proven beyond a doubt that Stalin was very closely informed about the German offensive. As early as 1966, Soviet Defense Minister and Marshal of the Soviet Union Grechko made it quite clear that perhaps some front-line troops may have been surprised by the German offensive, but not the Soviet government and Red Army leadership”! Remarkably, Khrushchev, in addition to other military officers, left no doubt in this regard when he declared: “No one who has the most minimal political understanding can believe that we were surprised by an unexpected and treacherous attack.” One cannot speak of a “German sneak attack,” as Colonel Filippov recently put it. Stalin’s feelings of superiority was, furthermore, so great that he thought himself capable of defeating “any surprise attack by Germany and its allies at all… and to destroy the attacker.” The President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Kalinin, expressed this conviction in a lecture before the V.I. Lenin Military Political Academy on June 5, 1941, openly assuring his listeners:

The Germans intend to attack us… We are waiting for it! The sooner they do that, the better, since we will then wring their necks once and for all time.

With such an attitude, neither Stalin nor the Politburo itself, on June 22, 1941, doubted even for a moment that they would be successful in dealing Hitler the defeat that he deserved. General Sudoplatov, Chief of the Reconnaissance Service, even spoke of the “Big Lie of a panic in the Kremlin.” Stalin was not surprised on June 22, 1941, but, on the contrary, as Colonel General Volkogonov stresses, the shock set in only several days later, i.e., when the illusions evaporated and catastrophe was looming on the front line, a catastrophe in which it finally became clear that the Germans were, nevertheless, superior in combat…

Stalin, the General Staff, and the GUPPKA, in any case, expected an easy victory by the Red Army. They expected that the huge offensive they were planning would end with the complete destruction of the enemy with only a few Soviet casualties. As for Hitler and the Germans, they had only a very incomplete notion of what the Soviets were preparing. When one considers the extent of these preparations, however, it becomes clear that Hitler under high pressure only barely preempted an attack planned by Stalin. June 22, 1941, was therefore pretty much the last date on which it would have been possible to initiate a “preventive war.”

Colonel Petrov, a candidate in the historical sciences, expressed this in plain but accurate language on the anniversary of the victory on May 8, 1991, in a leading article of the official party organ Pravda:

As a result of the overestimation of our own possibilities and the underestimation of enemy possibilities, we drew up unrealistic plans of an offensive nature before the war. In keeping with these plans, we began the deployment of the Soviet armed forces on the western border. But the enemy preempted us.

Finally, the Russian historian M. Nikitin should be mentioned who made a detailed analysis of the objectives of the Soviet leadership during the decisive months of May and June 1941. He summarized his research findings in the following words:

We once again repeat that the fundamental objective of the USSR consisted of expanding the ‘Front of Socialism’ to the greatest possible territorial extent, ideally to include all of Europe. In Moscow’s opinion, circumstances favored the realization of this scheme. The occupation of large parts of the continent by Germany, the protracted futile war, the increasing dissatisfaction of the population of the occupied countries, the dispersion of the forces of the Wehrmacht on various fronts, the prospects of a conflict between Japan and the United States — all these factors were thought to give the Soviet leadership a unique chance to smash Germany by surprise attack, and to ‘liberate Europe’ from ‘rotting capitalism.’

A study of the guiding documents of the Central Committee of the VKP (b), in Nikitin’s view, “together with the data on the immediate military offensive preparations of the Red Army… unequivocally proves the intention of the Soviet leadership to attack Germany in the summer of 1941.”

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Source: White Biocentrism