Posted on 08/19/2017 6:58:39 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
According to the book, Stalin spent since August 1939 preparing to attack Germany and had 191 first line divisions in the first echelon positioned on his western frontier on 21 June, 1941. The second attack echelon Armies were on their way to the border when Hitler attacked. They were sitting ducks for the Wehrmacht. The book claims that the Soviets planned to move their top leadership to a giant combat CP they built at Vilnius on 22 June to run their planned attack but Hitlers attack canceled these moves. The Soviet plan was to attack with the largest army ever assembled on 6 July and they planned to go all the way to the Atlantic. The book says the Soviets were massed and ready for a massive strike but were situated horribly for defense. That explains to me how the Germans were able to take millions of prisoners at the very beginning of the war. Stalin and the rest of the Soviet leaders were firmly convinced that Hitler would not start a suicidal second front and discounted any evidence to the contrary. The book talks about Hitlers lack of preparations for winter fighting being a factor that reinforced Stalin’s beliefs. I think that is why it took them a while to recover from the shock. The book raises some interesting questions.
The book is called Icebreaker by Viktor Suvorov. He uses mostly the speeches and writings of people involved as he claims the official Soviet sources and archives are sanitized of all evidence that Stalin planned to attack Hitler and take over Europe. Interestingly, he claims that Stalin considered Soviet involvement in WW2 a failure as they ended up with just a few countries instead of the whole of Europe as he had planned.
You'd do well in adhering to your own words! However, what does your comment have to do with the headline???
But as usual, your writing and your thought processes inhabit different dimensions!
I was responding to another poster of what they said. Not the headline. Okay?
So, you responded to that posters comment with, "So then believing in Yeshua as the Son of G-d works." As if believing in Yeshua as the Son of G-d is a superstition or invalid?
It was just waiting for the tomb to be opened.
Himmler would have believed this along with the other bat-shiite-crazy stuff he believed.
It is nonsense. USSR was supplying Germany with critical war materials right up to the attack (which Stalin had been repeatedly warned about.)
Leadership in the Red Army had been decimated during the Great Purge three or four years prior. Executions and imprisonment included all officers above Major or Colonel.
The Red Army could not have invaded anyone, probably not even Finland. One of the major reasons for the initial German successes was this lack of leadership,it had to be re-created on the hoof.
I have seen it claimed that the Purges were the result of a German misinformation campaign designed to make it appear the leadership of the Red Army were traitors, spies and plotters.
True? Sounds highly likely since Stalin was extremely paranoid.
Laughable for the reasons listed above. In addition, there is no indication that he told his generals this was the reason for the attack.
Russian industry was incapable of supplying a modern army well enough to invade Europe. The virtual impossibility of establishing and maintaining a Supply Chain shows this to be highly doubtful.
It was only America which provided the supplies to Stalin to defeat Hitler not Soviet industry.
Nope, what it means is, or what I meant was, if you (editorially speaking) believe in superstition and it was implied that there are some things not to be messed with means that some things that are superstitious are real. My comment to that was: If that superstition was real, then believing in Yeshua is just as real. Lot’s of nonbelievers believe that Yeshua didn’t exist and if He did, then He wasn’t the Son of G-d and therefor nothing but superstition too.
WOW, there are too many hair-pin curves on that response, that I crashed my brain.
A simple question requires a simple answer.......do you believe Yeshua is the Son of G-d?
Yep, it's why I brought it up.
It explains a few things to me. Armies on defense do not generally mass at their borders, if the Soviets were getting ready to attack it is easy to see why the Germans took all those prisoners right at the start. If the attack By Germany were a hurried response to an anticipated attack by Russia it would explain why there was almost zero preparation by the Germans to fight in the winter, unless you believe the German General Staff were idiots and failed to anticipate there would be a Russian winter. Those are a couple of things I have wondered about over the years that make sense when looked at as the book describes. I won’t dismiss it out of hand.
The Germans took all those prisoners because they drove hundreds of miles in weeks allowing the Soviet supply chains be severed. Blitzkrieg was intended to pierce the front allowing it to be rolled up.
Since the German military had trained and developed weapons in the USSR for a decade or more its capability was known making such a course even less likely.
Hitler believed that all it would take would be to kick in the door and the whole rotten edifice would collapse. That might have occurred had the military needs been considered rather than the real reason for the war being implemented -the extermination of the Jews. Most of the parts of the USSR that the Germans conquered hated Stalin more than Hitler until the killings of civilians started.
Destroying the Soviet frontline forces did not mean that German troops could not be supplied with suitable Winter clothing. He expected to winter in Moscow. And it was one of the coldest winters on record.
I have read all of that before. The standard story as told since WW2 never did explain a lot of things very well to me. Wintering in Moscow is a pretty lame reason to not order winter equipment, fuel or lubricants. I do not think taking Moscow would have won the war for them in any case. It is not like the Germans fell just a few miles short of winning. The USSR was something like 5,000 miles west to east and the Germans never got more than 900 miles or so into it. I guess it is possible that the General Staff was simply very stupid but I do not believe that. Barbarossa seems to me like it was more desperation rather than a well thought out plan. I thought this book does a good job of explaining why it looked that way.
Hitler had gone through the Allied armies like a knife through butter and figured he would do the same with an even less prepared army.
Don’t forget by this time his brains were being fried by the crank Dr. Morrel. His judgment had turned to outright idiocy.
There was no desperation on Germany’s part and no impending invasion by Stalin. Makes no sense.
Think what you want. I will look into it further. I think the book makes a lot of sense.
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