Icebreaker (non-fiction book)
OCLC 21407864 | |
Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War? (
Content
Suvorov first wrote about the theory in a short 1985 article.[2] He expanded on it in his book Icebreaker and in subsequent books, ending with the 2007 monograph, The Chief Culprit: Stalin's Grand Design to Start World War II.[3] He says that in 1930s, Stalin was planning a conquest of Europe, had been working toward this objective for many years, and directed his military to plan for it.[4]
Suvorov argues that the
He argued that Soviet ground forces were well-organized and mobilized en masse along the
He claimed that maps and phrasebooks issued to Soviet troops supported that theory. Military topographic maps, unlike other military supplies, are strictly local and cannot be used elsewhere than in the intended operational area. Suvorov claims that Soviet units were issued with maps of Germany and German-occupied territory and phrasebooks including questions about SA offices, which 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 MK Kudryavtsev, was not punished by Stalin, who was known for extreme punishments after failures to obey his orders. According to Suvorov, that demonstrates that Kudryavtsev was obeying the orders of Stalin, who simply did not expect a German attack.[3]
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 buildup 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 (the date that World War II had begun) and by changing the minimum age for joining the Red Army from 21 to 18, Stalin triggered a mechanism to achieve 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.[3] Also, 18,000,000 reservists were drafted[citation needed] for a duration of service of 2 years. Thus, according to supporters of that 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 Marxism-Leninism theory that capitalism will be overthrown through communist revolution.
- The Soviet Union made extensive preparations for a future war of aggression in the 1920s and the 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 to prepare the Soviet Union for war. The first focused on collectivization, the second on industrialisation, and the third on the militarization of the country.
- Stalin escalated tensions in Europe by providing a combination of economic and military support to 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, "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".[9]
- World War II was initiated by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which became co-belligerents after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The essence of the pact was in the secret protocols, which divided Europe into spheres of influence and removed the Polish buffer between Germany and the Soviet Union. Some countries that fell into the Soviet sphere of influence, Estonia and Latvia, were occupied. The difference between the smaller nations, occupied and annexed by the Soviets, and Poland, which was initially attacked by Germany, was that Poland had military assistance guarantees from the United Kingdom 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 Soviet preparations to attack Germany. Therefore, the Wehrmacht had drafted a pre-emptive 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 assaulton the Soviet Union.
The book is based on an analysis of Soviet military investments, diplomatic maneuvers, Politburo speeches and other circumstantial evidences.[5]
Reception
Icebreaker and subsequent books by Suvorov had sparkled what is currently known as "Suvorov's debates".[10] Only a few authors now agree with Suvorov's main thesis about prewar Soviet plans for Europe conquest[4][11] (another extreme view, expressed by Carley, is that the Soviets had no aggressive plans at all[12]). It is currently believed that whereas the war against "capitalist powers" was seen as potentially inevitable by Soviet leadership and the Soviet Union was making some preparations for war, the Soviet pursuit for collective security system in Europe, or "Litvinov's line", was sincere in late 1930s, and the event that marked active Soviet war preparations was the rapid collapse of the Anglo-French alliance in 1940.[4]
"Suvorov debates"
The Suvorov thesis about the
Glantz argues that the Soviet Union simply was not ready for the war in the summer of 1941[22] Robin Edmonds said that "the Red Army planning staff would not have been doing its job if it had not devoted some time between 1939 and 1941 to the possibility, at some future date, of a pre-emptive strike against Wehrmacht".[23] David Brandenberger said that recently-published pre-1941 German analysis of Soviet military readiness came to conclusion that Soviet preparations were assessed to be "defensive" by German intelligence.[24]
Public reception
The book was enthusiastically accepted by a fraction of a German society that hoped to reintroduce Hitler as a legitimate part of the patriotic historical discourse.[14] In post-Soviet Russia, whose collapse of communist ideology coincided with the wave of criticism of Stalin's rule, the Icebreaker thesis about Stalin's responsibility for World War II outbreak and about Soviet plans for world conquest found a considerable support in many of society who wanted to disassociate themselves with the uncomfortable past.[14]
Editions
- — (1989). Le brise-glace [The icebreaker] (in French). Translated by Berelowitch, Madeleine; Berelowitch, Vladimir. Olivier Orban. OCLC 461996651. (First published edition)
- — (1990). Icebreaker: Who started the Second World War?. Translated by Beattie, Thomas B. London: Hamish Hamilton. with different pagination.
- — (1993). Icebreaker. London: OCLC 24905790.
- — (2000). Ледокол : Кто начал Вторую мировую войну? [Icebreaker: Who started the Second World War?] (in Russian). Moscow: OCLC 1288384665.
- — (2002). Ледокол : Кто начал Вторую мировую войну? [Icebreaker: Who started the Second World War?] (in Russian). Moscow: OCLC 213444762.
- — (31 January 2006). Ледокол [Icebreaker] (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2011-02-20.
- — (March 2006). Ледокол: В пересказе автора [Icebreaker: As told by the author] (Audiobook) (in Russian). Bristol, UK: PL UK Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9552744-0-4. Read by the author. 4-CD set. Includes previously unpublished chapters.
- — (2009). Icebreaker: Who started the Second World War?. Translated by Kurr, Hans-Udo (Expanded and updated ed.). Bristol, UK: PL UK Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9552744-7-3. (in English)
- — (2014). Ледокол : Кто начал Вторую мировую войну? [Icebreaker: Who started the Second World War?] (Audiobook) (in Russian). Tallinn, Estonia: Estonian Library for the Blind. OCLC 1111078116. Read by Dmitri Kosjakov.
- — (2017). Ледокол: В пересказе автора [Icebreaker: As told by the author] (Audiobook) (in Russian). Moscow: EAN 460-703176822-8. Read by the author. 192 Kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo.
See also
- Germany–Soviet Union relations before 1941
- German–Soviet Axis talks
- Eastern Front (World War II)
- Soviet invasion of Poland
- Soviet–Polish Non-Aggression Pact
References
- ) says it was published in 1988.
- ISSN 0307-1847.
- ^ a b c Suvorov 2008.
- ^ OCLC 1110330981.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-375-72471-8.
- ^ a b c Uldricks 1999.
- ISSN 1538-5000.
- OCLC 977844662.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8129-6864-4.
- ISSN 1351-8046.
- OCLC 1110330981.
- JSTOR 152863.
- JSTOR 131385.
- ^ JSTOR 2626201.
- JSTOR 245594.
- .
- .
- S2CID 154940593.
- ISBN 978-0-7425-2191-9.
- ISBN 978-0-7006-0879-9.
- ^ Bar-Joseph & Levy 2009, p. 476.
- JSTOR 1985920.
- JSTOR 2620392.
- JSTOR 153743.
Further reading
- Topitsch, Ernst (1987). Stalin's war: A radical new theory of the origins of the Second World War. Translated by Taylor, Arthur. New York City: OCLC 12780205.
- Gorodetsky, Gabriel (1999). Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08459-7.
- Király, Béla K. (1991). "Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War? by Suvorov". History: Reviews of New Books. 19 (4): 188–189. ISSN 0361-2759.
- Suvorov, Viktor (July 20, 2007). The chief culprit: Stalin's grand design to start World War II. ISBN 978-1-59114-838-8.
- Surovov, Viktor (2008). Ледокол 2 [Icebreaker 2] (in Russian). Minsk, Belarus: Современная школа. ISBN 978-985-513-443-6. Also available from RoyalLib.com.
- Short, Neil (2008-09-23). The Stalin and Molotov Lines: Soviet Western Defences 1928–41. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84603-192-2.
- Sinelnikov, Vladimir [in Russian]; Shevtsov, Igor (1999). Последний миф [The last myth] (Film) (in Russian). KLOTO.
- Uldricks, Teddy J. (Autumn 1999). "The Icebreaker controversy: Did Stalin plan to attack Hitler?". Slavic Review. 58 (3): 626–643. S2CID 153701270.
- Verkhoturov, Dmitry Nikolaevich (2023). Виктор Суворов врет! [Viktor Suvorov is lying!] (in Russian). Наше Завтра. ISBN 978-5-907729-13-1.
- Zorin, Andrey Alexandrovich (2005). Потопить «Ледокол» [Sink the 'Icebreaker'] (in Russian) – via militera.lib.ru.