In accor­dance with the offi­cial his­tory the Sec­ond World War  (in Rus­sia called ‘the Great Patri­otic War’) was com­menced on the Soviet ter­ri­tory by Ger­many: the treach­er­ous attack on 22 June, 1941when they invaded into the USSR.  This offi­cial ver­sion of the Soviet Gov­ern­ment is writ­ten in every his­tory book.  At the same time there is numer­ous evi­dence of Stalin’s desire to start the war first with the inten­tion sim­i­lar to Hitler’s . And that is why there is the the­ory that Stalin pro­voked Ger­man aggres­sion against the USSR.

In 1939 the USSR gov­ern­ment signed a his­tor­i­cal agree­ment with Ger­many (‘the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact”). This non-aggression pact guar­an­teed that both par­ties never make war with each other. Sign­ing this doc­u­ment, the USSR implic­itly per­mit­ted Ger­many to com­mence the war against the West.  This would have allowed Stalin to start the eman­ci­pa­tion move­ment of the coun­tries which would have been invaded by Hitler. It was the right moment – Ger­many, exhausted with its West­ern cam­paign, would not have been able to fight in the East (East being the West of the USSR), should the USSR invade the Ger­man bor­ders later. By win­ning the war with Hitler, the USSR would become the main World Sav­iour and, as per the Lenin’s pre­cept, it may be the start of World Com­mu­nism Revolution.

What would have hap­pened if the USSR began that war?  The war – is the Mother of rev­o­lu­tion, and the world war – the mother of World rev­o­lu­tion.  Accord­ing to the main rev­o­lu­tion philoso­pher Friedrich Engels, the World War with the vic­tory of Com­mu­nists would result in the ‘total exhaus­tion and cre­ation of con­di­tions for the ulti­mate vic­tory of the labour force’. For­tu­nately, this guy died before the Sec­ond World War and, unfor­tu­nately, Lenin — the fol­lower of the idea of World Rev­o­lu­tion gained an access to power in Rus­sia and cre­ated the mon­ster Stalin.

In 1939 a  Ger­man colonel Heinz Gud­er­ian paid a visit to the Soviet Loco­mo­tive Fac­tory which also pro­duced tanks. The num­ber of tanks pro­duced daily was 22(!). That was a time when Sovi­ets were not par­tic­i­pated in any war. Just six years prior to that, Ger­many which was not at war, did not have any tanks at all.  Also when Ger­many com­menced the war they had only 3200 tanks – the same amount which could have been pro­duced by the Soviet loco­mo­tive fac­tory for less than half a year! And now a lit­tle bit about those tanks. Sim­i­lar to the Soviet cars, copied from the Amer­i­can tem­plates, that tank’s pro­to­type was first cre­ated in the USA (where it was never put into mass pro­duc­tion) and trans­ferred to the USSR with the utter­ance of forged doc­u­ments where it was listed as the agri­cul­tural tractor.

Later, this ‘trac­tor’ was copied and then assem­bled in tremen­dous num­bers  under the brand HST – High-Speed Tank. First HST could gather speed of 100 km/h. Even at present this speed for the tank is con­sid­ered to be enor­mous. The shape of the tank’s body was sim­ple and ratio­nal. None of the tanks in the World had such an armour shape. The best tank of the Sec­ond World War, T34, was the direct descen­dant of the HST. The prin­ci­ples used in this tank was later copied by the Ger­man ‘Pan­ther’ and then spread in the world. In 1936 these tanks could move on the bot­tom of the deep creek — almost under­wa­ter. In 1938 these tanks were assem­bled with the diesel engines – unprece­dented fea­ture for that time. Finally, these tanks were equipped with the very pow­er­ful weapon. Those tanks had only one dis­ad­van­tage – they were use­less on the ter­ri­tory of the Soviet Union as they were not adapted for the impass­abil­ity of roads rather than to good roads of  Europe…

Another instance of Soviet pre-war weapon was the Soviet pur­suit plane which was the first one in the world equipped with rock­ets. By that time the Soviet engi­neers already cre­ated the unique plane IL-2 with the armour body – the real “tank” able to fly, with the super power equip­ment includ­ing 8 rocket mis­siles. Did the Soviet avi­a­tion have the supremacy in the air then? No.

Mostly Russ­ian pilots includ­ing the pilots of pur­suit planes were not trained to con­duct the fight in the air, rather they could strike the tar­gets on the ground. Accord­ing to the code of the mil­i­tary avi­a­tion they were directed to con­duct one supe­rior offen­sive war destroy­ing the enemy planes on the air­fields and then hold­ing the supremacy in the air. In 1929 the mag­a­zine ‘War and Rev­o­lu­tion’ in the arti­cle ‘The begin­ning of the War’ con­cluded: ‘It is very advan­ta­geous to seize the ini­tia­tive and start the war first, mak­ing a sur­prise attack’. Later, this con­clu­sion was cited in all the Soviet avi­a­tion codes.

One more proof to the alter­na­tive ver­sion of the offen­sive war inten­tions were the how­itzer artillery groups cre­ated in the USSR as a part of the Red Army mil­i­tary force. If the Sovet gov­ern­ment pre­pared to the defen­sive actions then they would have pro­duced can­nons as they are ini­tially designed for defence – as graz­ing fire forces the enemy to stop. In an oppo­site case, how­ever, how­itzer is bet­ter as it has a high-angle fire tra­jec­tory and proved to be the best to smoke out the defender from the trench. Should the Sovi­ets pre­dict  the defen­sive actions they would def­i­nitely have built can­nons rather than howitzers.

The debates over the dif­fer­ent ver­sions of  the rea­sons of Ger­many attack­ing the USSR have started in early 90s. These debates are con­cen­trated on Stalin’s obscure inten­tions when he maimed the entire coun­try while cre­at­ing the unique sys­tem of gov­er­nance. What was his ulti­mate purpose?

There are only two pos­si­ble out­comes – the first one is com­pli­men­tary for the USSR while the sec­ond one is dete­ri­o­ra­tive. Unfor­tu­nately for the Soviet adher­ents there is no proof that Stalin pre­pared for the defen­sive war and this fact puts the Stalin’s regime on the same line with the Hitler Nazi one.  Some­times it seems to be bet­ter not to look back in his­tory where the old myths let the Stalin’s sup­port­ers live in a fool’s paradise.

Related posts:

1. The Vic­tory After­math. Rus­sia in Sec­ond World War.
2. Cold Clone War
3. Happy Birth­day Dear USSR! The Great Octo­ber Social­ist Rev­o­lu­tion. Novem­ber 7^th 1917.
4. Declas­si­fied: the Great and Pow­er­ful Stalin.
5. Best of Fall 2009