Was Operation Barbarossa a preemptive invasion?

It's true. Stalin wished to carry out Lenin's agenda for conquering the world with global communism. Stalin had his eyes first on taking over western Europe. He saw the conflict going in in Western Europe as an opportunity for divide and conquer. The only reason why he did not succeed was that America was allied with Britain and France.

>I've only heard of one remotely reputable (read: not holocaust-denying) source that actually pushes the idea of Barbarossa being legitimately a preemptive attack, and supposedly it's been roundly criticized for being overly speculative.

If you are talking about Rezun, then you fell for neo-nazi misinterpratation of his work. The narrative he presents in his book is
>Hitler was an evil idiot with aggressive foreign policy
>Stalin wanted to conquer Europe
>Stalin wanted Hitler to "break the ice" and drive Europe to war, so he can conquer
>Stalin played Hitler like a damn fiddle and conquered half of Europe

>>Stalin wanted to conquer Europe
So he didn't?

From the Soviet's declassified archives - no, there was no military planning for an offensive into Germany, at least not anytime soon within the 1940's.

Stalin knew that war with Germany would come eventually, but accepted that the USSR could not be the aggressor due to the country's diplomatic isolation. The Communist Party that if war was to come, the Soviet Union would have to be the defender in order to avoid diplomatic backlash from the rest of the world and justifying the already prevalent anti-communist sentiment.

In short, Stalin knew that winning an offensive war would be more of an uphill battle than a defensive one, which the latter he could exploit more to his advantage with the narrative that the USSR was attacked.

To quote an excerpt from David Glant'z "Stumbling Colossus", which is a worthwhile read:

>As well constructed as Rezun's arguments are and as credible as the individual facts may be, the whole of his case regarding Soviet intentions in 1941 is incredible for a number of reasons. First, it is not consistent to reject in advance the validity of Soviet classified archival materials while basing one's arguments,in part or in total, on extensive unclassified memoirs and studies. Second, Rezun exploits memoir material, which in the main is accurate at least regarding time, place, and event but often contains subjective interpretation, by considering it wholly out of context and using it adroitly to support his arguments. Finally, and most important, the validity of Rezun's arguments is challenged by three fundamental types of sources: newly released and extensive Soviet declassified documents and studies on the war (all secret or top secret); German archival materials; and other materials that document the parlous state of the Red Army in 1941 and indicate that any offensive operations contemplated by the Soviets in 1941 would have bordered on the lunatic. Stalin may well have been an unscrupulous tyrant, but he was not a lunatic.

Huh that's pretty neat. I actually forget who exactly the source was, it was just something I remember from a while back when some user was trying to argue this exact point.

That's a pretty interesting premise, though. How does he back up that idea? Is it well received?

Stalin ended up conquering half of Europe though.

the Communist Party agreed*

Learn2read.

Rezun doens't say Hitler did considered Stalin to be an imminent threat, hence one can't speak about "preemptive strike".

>How does he back up that idea? Is it well received?
Badly, as you said it wasn't well received amongst both Eastern and Western historians. Rezun himself said something along the lines "It's based on my instincts, not facts".

>Red army pioneered airborne forces, airborne forces are always offensive, hence Stalin aimed to attack
>Red army had supply dumps near the front, a sign of offensive
>Zhukov's plan (which was entirely discarded by Stalin)

If you want to know more, I hope you know Russian.
>ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Лeдoкoл_(книгa)

From what I've read, while the Soviets were in no shape to attack Germany when Barbarossa started, Stalin was already in the process of expansive conquest, and quite certainly would have invaded Germany within the next five years (although I would posit he probably would have in the next year).

With all the uncertainty in the above sentence, we can at least say that Hitler knew war was inevitable with the SU. I don't know if Hitler would've invaded the SU had he not known that they were going to invade him.

Stumbling Colossus is great but I think not every user has access to it. this is a significantly shorter work (about 15 pages) but it gets the point through that Russia was in no way ready to do an invasion
sci-hub.la/10.1080/13518040590914136

Stalin would've invaded... eventually. But not in 1941 and probably not for at least a couple more years as Stalin was just ending the purges in essential millitary branches like air force and knew he wasn't ready.

For me it's purely an academic discussion and regardless of the answer it doesn't make either side look better or worse.

I think it's fair to say that Suvorov has a deep knowledge of the Soviet system and knows about many obscure facts that throw a new light at the things but he also went too far in a few places.

>and quite certainly would have invaded Germany within the next five years

The time table is debatable but don't you think Hitler would've had a sort of moral high ground had he let Russia invade? I'd imagine there would've been a lot of sympathy towards the Reich had they been fighting a defensive war instead of a war of imperial conquest. It's pure speculation on my part but I could see something like a lend lease taking place between America and Germany had the Nazis been the ones defending. I don't even think such a scenario would be out of the question considering America sent troops over to fight the Reds during the Russian Civil War. What do you think?

>Germany invades USSR
We got raided by those evil fascists. We were just minding our own business peacefully before THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

>USSR invades Germany
We saw how evil those fascists pigs were and decided to react in service to world peace and future of the working class

There's always a way to spin this.

>There's always a way to spin this.

Sure but the narrative surrounding the Nazis didn't emerge largely until near the end of WW2 and post-war. Considering the Wests staunch anti-communist views I could very well see support being drummed up in America in particular for the Nazis had they been the victims of Soviet aggression. Again just speculation on my part but it's very interesting to think how Hitler could've played out the situation with Russia had he known the disaster that was to be Operation Barbarossa

>We got raided by those evil fascists. We were just minding our own business peacefully before THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
Pretty everyone except for fascists agrees, massive popular support for the war.

>We saw how evil those fascists pigs were and decided to react in service to world peace and future of the working class
Pretty much only fascists agree, limited support for war. Shit morale like in Finnland or Poland.

*Pretty much only communists

for the second one

>I could see something like a lend lease taking place between America and Germany had the Nazis been the ones defending
lmao I don't think so. FDR (and the upper levels of the State Dept, which had been thoroughly compromised to the soviets, all the way up to one of FDR's personal aids) was a schmuck for Stalin and Churchill, and wanted any way he could to fight Hitler, provoking war with the Japanese for this purpose. Pearl Harbor itself wasn't a surprise attack--upper levels of the US gov't made sure the US presence there didn't see it coming, so as to launch the pacifist and non-interventionist US populous into a blood-thirsty fever.

Patton was assassinated by the OSS/State Dept. for his (imo) accurate and public appraisal of the situation in Europe.

>reputable means the holohoax occurred

why do edgy Russian pseudohistory writers always use names of famous Russian generals as pseudonyms?

wait wait wait when has this happened? I'm missing something

But Soviet and modern post-Soviet propaganda would be able to work with either of these scenarios anyway If the end result would've been the same. They're really good at this.

If you mean what I think you mean it's a Russian tradition to call people by their full name including their second name which is always that of the father (and mothers in case of women I presume?).

>In the end result would've been the same
No.

Otchestvo is entirely different thing, user, and even women take otchestvo from father.

>Was Operation Barbarossa a preemptive invasion?
Yes, Hitler saved western europe from gommunism

You're thinking of Trotsky. Stalin was more isolationist and focused on Russia; he shut down the Third International and instead of trying to constantly export revolution focused on building Russia's strength and creating buffer states between Russia and rival powers.

Trotsky pushed for constant expansion ("Permanent Revolution") under the belief that time was not on their side, that the revolution started in Russia must be spread ASAP because the longer it took, the more capitalist countries would coordinate against them economically and militarily. Essentially, that their one shot at survival was keeping the capitalist countries on their back foot and hopefully flipping France and/or Germany. Lenin and Trotsky tried to establish a land corridor to march westward and support local attempts at revolution in central and western Europe, while Poland wanted to expand eastward and grab territory from Russia. Those local attempts failed and the Red Army was beaten back by the Polish military.

Stalin concluded based on these failures that a global revolution was a pipe dream, that Soviet Russia was already overextending itself, going to be dogpiled by capitalist countries if they weren't careful, and therefore it was time to hunker down and build strength - "socialism in one country." As said, he was an IR realist. Annexing much of eastern Europe as the Third Reich retreated was an opportunistic move for gaining buffer states that his forces already controlled, not an ideologically motivated attempt at a Trotsky or Lenin-style global revolution. The way he handled East Germany is a key example; Trotsky or Lenin would've tried to strengthen it as a spearhead for future expansion, while Stalin demolished most of East Germany's industrial capacity, demilitarized it, and made them pay heavy reparations in an attempt to keep Germany too weak to be a threat to Russia again.

Are you refering to the fact that it were the problems and lack of progress in the Soviet Union which accelerated the final solution and that without it Germans wouldn't have become the designated bad guys so easily?

...how is Holocaust related to the argument?

do you actualy think that father of guy named "Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun" is named Suvorov?

So Stalin completely changed his mind after the failure in 1920? For someone who was interested in staying in his own country for good he sure as hell knew what to do to enlarge his empire on several occassions and fought to get more eg. Greece. Moles in the governments of other countries were also conveniently saying that Stalin would stay in the USSR.
He was just smarter about his conquests.

Is it weird to call an author by his pen name?

What's weird is that he had chosen pen name of a man far greater than he is.

His explanation was that he was simply impressed with him until he found out he was responsible for some war crimes. Similar to his views on Zhukov.

>Suvorov's war crimes

Doesn't matter whether there would have been a military attack, bolshevism had to be stopped.

Pretty much yeah this is the reason he gave. As good as any I guess but it was too late to change the name.

No one did more to advance the communist march through Europe than Hitler.

how

Different user here, it sounds like you might be misinterpreting it. Stalin's approach sounds like it was far more pragmatic. He stopped the hyper-aggressive things that Lenin and Trotsky were doing, but the occupations of the Baltic states, invasions of Poland and Finland, and occupation of Bessarabia show that he was perfectly willing to expand the USSR when it was clear the Capitalist powers couldn't coordinate against him effectively.

Postwar, the expansion of Soviet influence very much seems to be a case of creating buffer states rather than exporting communism like Lenin and Trotsky would have wanted. But with that, the idea was purely to create puppets and buffer states, and, where it was clear that a puppet wouldn't be possible (like China), he offered no support at all.

hmmmmmmmm

>get shit slapped, refuse to surrender or negotiate terms that would prevent total defeat
>allow Soviets to steamroll half of Europe and install their own puppet regimes
>even help the Soviets eliminate pro-Western clandestine governments in the East through suppression of Polish resistance

It would have taken the Soviets decades to set up puppets like that in peacetime. Hitler let then do it in four years.

Yeah I get you he wasn't like Lenin or Trotsky though the times were different as well.
That early Soviet Russia/USSR was so much creepier. Embodiment of those 19th century plans set on those early communist meeting attended by activists and thinkers from different countries. The red wave in 1917/20 must've seemed like armageddon or fulfilling of some old prophecy told by some hairy dudes. Before it was stopped of course. Maybe this was the closest they've ever gotten to take over with all that post-WWI chaos even though Stalin of course conquered more geographically but with little chance of expanding further (apparently he was waiting to have the ledge over the West, which would be the hydrogen bomb but he died weeks before the tests, need more data on that) aside from the new theatre of proxy wars in Africa, Asia, South America and the Caribbean.
His regime was different of course more classical dictator rather than ideological which lead people to wonder if he really believed in the dogma. But the end goal was always to take over the world. Eventually. Stalin knew to choose his battles carefully.

Colonel David Glantz thoroughly debunks this meme in his books.

>Before it was stopped of course

Meanwhile it brought:
>Bela Kun in Hungary
>revolutions in Germany
>the USSR
>conflict in Romania
>USSR invading eastern Europe
>Communists in the Baltic trying to seize the whole thing themselves with non-Bolshevik Bunds

none of that even compares to FDR

The Nazis at least took out a sizeable chunk of the USSR's humans. The Soviets wouldn't have made it to Berlin if the US didn't give them a shitload of oil, cars, artillery, etc. During the war he postured himself as if he cared about Poland's independence, but one of his personal advisers was a commie mole who let Stalin know that he didn't really care. Not to mention the pressure taken off of the Soviets from the US entering against the Japs, or the immense tactical intel the Soviets were given as an act of cooperation

Non argument. General Hoth and Hitler himself in a speech with Mannerheim both suggest explicitly that the USSR is planning an invasion. Not to mention the work of former Lt. Colonel Suvorov.

>the military blunder we know as Operation Barbarossa
they were fucked with or without it

>The Nazis at least took out a sizeable chunk of the USSR's humans
And yet it still gave them the perfect excuse to take over half a continent in less than half a decade. FDR not giving a shit doesn't make the Nazis' fuckup any less significant.

The speech in question is just Hitler trying to justify Barbarossa to Mannerheim.

Get this - sometimes politicians lie when trying to convince people to agree with them.

he didn't just not give a shit

without lend-lease and the flood of intel being spewed from the US, the SU's war machine would have been seriously hampered, probably to the point that they wouldn't have gotten very far into Poland before the allies got there

Another thing, how was it a fuckup? They would've invaded Germany anyway, and nobody was going to do anything anyway about the fact that the SU occupied Poland, the baltic states, declared war on Finland, attacked Romania, etc

There is literally no documentary evidence of this, it's purely CONNECT THE DOTS SHEEPLE type reasoning associated largely with one fringe historian named Viktor Suvorov.
Given the opening of Soviet archives in the 1990s (they remain partially open today), the level of falsification of documents that would be required to conceal something as massive as a full-scale Soviet offensive into Central Europe is beyond all practicality.
Not to mention the massive circumstantial evidence that all has to be explained away for this theory to work. Why would the Soviets attack just before their modernization of the Tank Corps kicked in, while they were delivering huge amounts of raw materials to Germany on credit, etc.
The Soviets were not about to invade Central Europe in 1941.

>Linking IHR
Lmaoing at your life senpai

>probably to the point that they wouldn't have gotten very far into Poland before the allies got there
You realize that we explicitly let the Soviets go all the way to Berlin because we didn't want to waste our manpower on it, right? With or without Lend-Lease, they would have gotten to Berlin, and the German invasion (combined with its brutality) gave the Soviets a blank check to do pretty much whatever they wanted.

>They would've invaded Germany anyway
Says who? So far the only people who've made any attempt to back up that claim are
>IHR, a holocaust-denying site that's infamous for retarded and outlandish claims
>some meme-tier historian who's generally discredited by everyone

>they remain partially open today
To some historians though Putin is careful not to release too much things that would damage the reputation of the Soviet Union (if such thing even exists).

Sorry I'm not familiar. I was linked this when I asked for some form of evidence of a Soviet Offensive into Europe. Is it a storm fag tier site?

It's a holocaust denial website that has consistently had its claims BTFO

Just read this
sci-hub.la/10.1080/13518040590914136
It's onyl 15 pages, short, and it explains very clearly why the USSR was not ready to attack Germany in 1941.

>Is it a storm fag tier site
Yup. They're pretty good at not making it obvious to the layman unless you get to holocaust-related material, but they're pretty infamous among anyone who knows what they're talking about.

Related anecdote - I've seen a real-life SJW strawman on facebook use IHR as "proof" that Japan tried to surrender before we nuked them. They had no idea it was a holocaust denial site and were pretty embarassed when I called them out.

>From the Soviet's declassified archives
>implying they would release damning info like that
>implying that releasing that info wouldn't spiral into a rabbit hole with people doubting their history.

>Says who? So far the only people who've made any attempt to back up that claim are
actually the claim being disputed here is whether or not the Soviets were planning to invade Germany IN 1941, as the Zhukov plan proposed (and Stalin rejected). Literally everyone agrees they would have gone to war with each other eventually--don't you think the SU acted a little, I don't know, expansive?

>You realize that we explicitly let the Soviets go all the way to Berlin because we didn't want to waste our manpower on it, right?
actually no I have never heard that explanation. My only recollection of the reasoning was to be "diplomatic" with the Soviets, ie let them have free land because muh war allies (more seriously, because FDR and his gov't sympathized with the commies--I would believe this to be true regardless of the explicit reason given).

Before 1920 Stalin already disagreed with Lenin and Trotsky's belief that the rest of Europe was boiling up and ready for a wave of revolutions. He agreed with them that Soviet Russia was too weak and needed allies and buffer states, but thought that their reading of the political climate was way off.

Soviet Russia under his leadership comes off as more a continuation of Russia's long-standing obsession with defensive depth to thwart possible invasions, securing ports and access to the Baltic and Mediterranean, and extreme paranoia that neighbors pose an existential threat. It's like that old line from Livy about how "Rome conquered the Mediterranean in self defense;" a strategic culture of paranoia driving "preemptive" expansion to create buffer states and defensive depth.

This user covered the bases well.

Thanks boys I appreciate it. I knew something was up as I constantly get this site linked on /pol/ but I didn't realize it was a straight out denial site. Nothing funnier than pseudo-intellectual deniers

Scihub shit I sent here actually mentions how scholars failed to find suvorov's citations:
>Further, Mr. Suvorov, in response to criticism that top secret documentation supporting the preparation of Soviet aggression has not been found, and therefore, historians can neither defend nor refute his version of history, he responded that the documentation would be discovered, that is, if “they” wanted it to be found (Yesli zakhotyat.)
>TRUST ME TOVARISCHY, THEY DO EXIST

>Literally everyone agrees they would have gone to war with each other eventually
Well then you should be able to provide some kind of evidence to back that up, shouldn't you?

>reasoning was to be "diplomatic" with the Soviets
Stalin wasn't the only person in the world who realpolitiked. Yalta established the planned occupied zones for postwar Europe so as to prevent either side from rushing to try to occupy as much as possible. It saved both us and the Soviets manpower (as we could now take our time to plan with the knowledge that neither the Soviets are going to reach the Atlantic nor the Americans are going to reach the Vistula) and had the convenient effect for the West of letting the Soviets waste manpower to take over areas that the West didn't particularly care about. For all the talk of "saving" Poland, Eastern Europe wasn't considered nearly as important to the Western Allies as Western Europe was.

Being "diplomatic" is just a nice way to simplify the idea of formally recognizing the realities on the ground and trying to leverage a favorable postwar decision.

Was Germany considered part of the West? Pre-1945 I mean.

>Well then you should be able to provide some kind of evidence to back that up, shouldn't you?

>Being "diplomatic" is just a nice way to simplify the idea of formally recognizing the realities on the ground and trying to leverage a favorable postwar decision.
whatever their explicit explanation for it, FDR was a fucking schmuck and let the Soviets get away with murder. He shouldn't have even supported them.

Yes, but they were at war with the west too.

Not sure exactly, although I know traditionally the eastern reaches of Prussia (Pomerania, Posen, Silesia, and East and West Prussia) were generally considered backwaters compared to the rest of the country.

Given the attitude toward Germany at the time, however, I'm pretty sure the partition of Germany was more a strategic decision than anything else. On the mainland, France and Italy were the priority, while the focus in Germany was to create a buffer state and eliminate what was seen as toxic Prussian culture.

>and eliminate what was seen as toxic Prussian culture.
Based.

>toxic Prussian culture

To be fair an element of Prussian culture was pretty toxic which was the militarism. I don't know how big a factor it played exacttly in Germany's violent 20th century history but it seems to have been a part of Prussian culture for a long time. However, I can't say that militarism was anymore prevalent in Prussia and Germany than it was for Western countries

>toxic militaristic culture

>FDR was a fucking schmuck and let the Soviets get away with murder
Hello, Carter. Turns out you can't play with the major powers and do the right thing all the time.

Supporting the Soviets through Lend-Lease was done to bring the Soviets together with the West as part of the war effort against Germany. It helped create a diplomatic basis with which to force Stalin to play ball with the West when it came to the immediate postwar situation instead of just grabbing whatever he could take.

Nobody really gave a shit about Eastern Europe anyways outside of moral concerns that unfortunately just can't be considered in international relations like this. Given that the Soviets were out for blood and were taking on the majority of Axis forces alone, it was far better to let them continue fighting through Eastern Europe and have their slice of Germany (complete with Berlin) to burn out their manpower and conserve ours.

By the time Yalta came around, Poland and much of Eastern Europe was already a lost cause anyways. Even if we had objections with it, what would FDR realistically have done?

vurry good

>implying that releasing that info wouldn't spiral into a rabbit hole with people doubting their history.

you may have a point with that one, but then again maybe you're just a far right racist conspiracy loon

Oh yeah I know. "Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947" by Christopher Clark brings that up in the beginning when talking about the abolition of Prussia, but it also discusses the controversy over that exact point. The Allies cited the toxic militarism of Prussian culture as one of their main justifications for its abolition, but plenty of counterpoints were made in the decades that followed about how Prussian culture had plenty of enlightened elements to it, or how the problems associated with Prussian culture were really just a perversion of it by the Nazis.

While a lot of the Allies' smearing was a bit overboard, they did have a point about Prussian attitudes and militarism being a problem, and by no means was it merely the product of Nazi perversion of the Prussian identity. Plenty of the negative aspects of the Prussian culture were pretty well known in popular stereotypes by the time Germany unified, and in many ways things like Ober Ost or the events leading up to the Kiel uprising in 1918 exemplified the problems with Prussian culture more than the Nazis did.

The British archives have tons of stuff protected by law because it would damage the image of Great Britain. But Hitler wanting to have some kind of white piece with the UK is nothing new or revolutionary. I don't know why some people expect it to change anyone's opinion about anyone.
But once the Soviet archives are open history will have to be rewritten.

Mannerheim agreed with him. Mannerheim had first hand experience with the Soviets since they declared war on Finland in the first place in the winter war! The mandate of communism is to spread in the first place whether people want it or not. As soon as the USSR took power they immediately invaded the Baltic and Poland.

I don't think anyone living directly next to the Soviets ever doubted that they're at least just as bad as nazis.

Probably true. It's just odd the other user thought USSR aggression was invented out of thin air. It existed as a hard reality for two decades before ww2 though.

Stalin only ended consolidating his power for real in 1938 or so but wouldn't really ready to expand the revolution (or basically just his personal area of influence) until later. There's no way to know for sure what would've happened without Barbarossa but I don't think there was an actual invasion planned for earlier than 1943.

it's not as if finland gave a fuck what else they were gonna invade

>Stalin wished to carry out Lenin's agenda for conquering the world with global communism
educated by /pol/

>isolationist
>creating buffer states

Pick one

>more isolationist than his predecessors that wanted to take on the entire planet
Learn reading comprehension.

Here's some more scihub:
sci-hub.la/10.2753/rsh1061-1983360322
In this one, it's shown that all of the Red Army's plans were defensive in nature and called for a combination of offense and defense when under attack. Zhukov's plan came at a time when Germany was massing troops at the border and increasing railroad capacity (ironically, the Soviets have a greater justification for a preemptive strike here), and there is no evidence it was ever adopted as official policy by Stalin. Furthermore, its offensive nature is questioned:
>After examining the May 1941 plan, some authors have concluded that “the Red Army was preparing for an offensive.” However, the overall strategic idea of this plan was not aggressive in character. The plan, after all, called for mounting a defense along 90 percent of the entire front for the span of almost one month, and only later, depending on the circumstances, for the launching of offensive combat actions.
There's also the logistical realities of the attack, namely the low stockpiles Soviet troops had in the western districts. At the end of the paper various supplies are listed; none of them would last more than two and a half months. This note about fuel stocks is critical:
>Stocks of fuel intended for the western districts have been stockpiled to a large extent (because of limited capacity in their territories) in the interior districts.
If the Soviets wanted to launch a large scale mechanized offensive, they would need to bring in the fuel needed via train, something that would be very noticeable.
Railroads are mentioned here:
sci-hub.la/10.2753/rsh1061-198336038
where it's shown that Germany's railroads had a capacity two times greater than the Soviets, and they converted to maximum traffic in 25 May, which the Soviets didn't do until the start of the war. That isn't something that can prepare for or sustain a large scale offensive efficiently.

>Stalin wished to carry out Lenin's agenda for conquering the world with global communism

Completely the opposite you fucking inbred

>I sed /pol/, now I'm rite.

Funny how like ahlf the worlds population was under communist control at one point.. Definitely NOT expansionist. Funny how even Mao was surrounded by Jews, just like Stalin.. Jews are definitely NOT to blame though. Obviously.

wew now that's some btfo style weaponized posting right there

Um no retard Communism in one country means one country authoritatively dictates world communism instead of creating a communist version of the UN instead. Communism expands either way, but the contest between Trostkyism and Stalinism is one of who controls the power in the overall communist relationship. Trotsky thought third worlders helping to run communism at large was a good idea instead of the national system.