Soviet offensive plans controversy


The Soviet offensive plans controversy was a debate among historians whether Soviet leader Joseph Stalin planned to attack Axis forces in Eastern Europe prior to Operation Barbarossa. Most historians agree that the geopolitical differences between the Soviet Union and the Axis made war inevitable, and that Stalin had made extensive preparations for war and exploited the military conflict in Europe to his advantage. Viktor Suvorov has argued that Stalin planned to attack Hitler from behind while Germany fought the Allies, and Barbarossa was a preemptive strike by Hitler. Many historians have written in response to Suvorov's views. Gabriel Gorodetsky and David Glantz authored books refuting his claims. Suvorov received some support from Valeri Danilov, Joachim Hoffmann, Mikhail Meltyukhov, and Vladimir Nevezhin

Background

Immediately after the Axis invasion of the USSR Adolf Hitler asserted that the Soviet Red Army had prepared for an offensive war in Europe and thus justified the German invasion as a preemptive strike. Some Wehrmacht leaders supported this view after the Second World War.

Suvorov, ''Icebreaker'', and the 1980s

Vladimir Rezun, a former officer of the Soviet military intelligence and a defector to the UK, considered the claim in his 1987 book Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War under the pseudonym Viktor Suvorov and again in several subsequent books. He argued that Soviet ground forces were well-organized and mobilized en masse along the German–Soviet frontier for a Soviet invasion of Europe slated for Sunday, July 6, 1941 but were unprepared to defend their own territory.
One of Suvorov's pieces of evidence favoring the theory of an impending Soviet attack was his claim regarding the maps and phrasebooks issued to Soviet troops. Military topographic maps, unlike other military supplies, are strictly local and cannot be used elsewhere than in the intended operational area. Suvorov claims Soviet units were issued with maps of Germany and German-occupied territory, and phrasebooks including questions about SA offices—SA offices 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 M.K. Kudryavtsev, was not punished by Stalin, who was known for extreme punishments after failures to obey his orders. According to Suvorov, this demonstrates that Kudryavtsev was obeying the orders of Stalin, who simply did not expect a German attack.
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 build-up 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, and by changing the minimum age for joining the Red Army from 21 to 18, Stalin triggered a mechanism which achieved 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. Eighteen million reservists were also drafted. The duration of service was 2 years. Thus, according to supporters of this 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:
While most agree that Stalin made extensive preparations for an eventual war and that he exploited the military conflict in Europe to his advantage, the assertions that Stalin planned to attack Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941, and that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike by Hitler, are generally discounted.
In some countries, particularly in Russia, Germany, and Israel, Suvorov's thesis has jumped the bonds of academic discourse and captured the imagination of the public. Among the noted critics of Suvorov's work are Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, American military historian David Glantz, and Russian military historians Makhmut Gareev, Lev Bezymensky, and perhaps his most vehement Russian critic, Alexei Isayev, the author of Anti-Suvorov. Many other western scholars, such as Teddy J. Uldricks, Derek Watson, Hugh Ragsdale, Roger Reese, Stephen Blank, Robin Edmonds, agree that the major part of Suvorov's writings rest on circumstantial evidence, or even on "virtually no evidentiary base". Jonathan Haslam "would be comical were it not taken so seriously". and Alexander Nekrich also disagreed with Suvorov.
Studies by some historians, such as Russian military historian Mikhail Meltyukhov, nevertheless gave partial support to the claim that Soviet forces were concentrating to attack Germany. Other historians who support this thesis are Vladimir Nevezhin, Boris Sokolov, Valeri Danilov, and Joachim Hoffmann. Offensive interpretations of Stalin's prewar planning are also supported by Sovietologist Robert C. Tucker and Pavel N. Bobylev. Hoffmann argues that the actual Soviet troop concentrations were near the German-Soviet border in the former Poland, as were fuel depots and airfields. All of this is claimed to be unsuitable for defensive operations.
GermanySoviet UnionRatio
Divisions1281741 : 1.4
Personnel3,4593,2891.1 : 1
Guns and mortars35,92859,7871 : 1.7
Tanks 3,76915,6871 : 4.2
Aircraft3,42510,7431 : 3.1
Source: Mikhail Meltyukhov Stalin's Missed Chance table 43,45,46,47,
Supporters of the 'Soviet offensive plans' theory also refer to various facts, such as the publication of Georgy Zhukov's proposal of May 15, 1941, which called for a Soviet strike against Germany, to support their position. This document suggested secret mobilization and deployment of Red Army troops next to the western border, under the cover of training. However, Robin Edmonds argued that the Red Army's planning staff would not have been doing its job well if it had not considered the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against the Wehrmacht, whereas Teddy J. Uldricks pointed out that there is no documentary evidence that Zhukov's proposal was ever accepted by Stalin. Another piece of evidence is Stalin's speech of 5 May 1941, when he spoke to graduating military cadets. He proclaimed: "A good defense signifies the need to attack. Attack is the best form of defense.... We must now conduct a peaceful, defensive policy with attack. Yes, defense with attack. We must now re-teach our army and commanders. Educate them in the spirit of attack". However, according to Michael Jabara Carley, this speech could be equally interpreted as a deliberate attempt to discourage the Germans from launching an invasion.
Other Russian historians, Iu. Gor'kov, A.S. Orlov, Iu. A. Polyakov, and Dmitri Volkogonov, analyzed newly available evidence to demonstrate that Soviet forces were certainly not ready for the attack.
Colonel Dr. Pavel N. Bobylev was one of the military historians from the Soviet Ministry of Defense who in 1993 published the materials of the January 1941 games-on-maps. More than 60 top Soviet officers for about ten days in January rehearsed the possible scenarios of the beginning of the war with Germany and its allies. These materials show that no battles were played out on the Soviet soil. The action started only when the Soviets attacked westward from their border, and in the second game- even from the positions deep inside the enemy's land.

Criticism

Among the noted critics of Suvorov's work are Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, American military historian David Glantz, and Russian military historians Makhmut Gareev, Lev Bezymensky, and Dmitri Volkogonov. Many other western scholars, such as Teddy J. Uldricks, Derek Watson, Hugh Ragsdale, Roger Reese, Stephen Blank, and Robin Edmonds, agree that the Suvorov's major weakness is "that the author does not reveal his sources"
and rely on circumstantial evidence.. Historian Cynthia A. Roberts is even more categorical, claiming that Suvorov's writings have "virtually no evidentiary base".
Suvorov's most controversial thesis is that the Red Army made extensive preparations for an offensive war in Europe, but it was totally unprepared for defensive operations on its own territory. Thereby Suvorov essentially reiterates the argument put forward by Adolf Hitler in 1941. According to Jonathan Haslam, Suvorov's claim that "Germany frustrated Stalin's war" "would be comical were it not taken so seriously".
One of Suvorov's arguments is that certain types of weapons were mostly suited for offensive warfare and that the Red Army had large numbers of such weapons. For example, he pointed out that the Soviet Union was outfitting large numbers of paratroopers — preparing to field entire parachute armies, in fact — and states that paratroopers are only suitable for offensive action, which the Soviet military doctrine of the time recognized. Suvorov's critics say that Soviet paratroopers were poorly trained and armed. In like fashion, Suvorov cites the development of the KT/Antonov A-40 "flying tank" as evidence of Stalin's aggressive plans, while his critics say that development of this tank was started only in December 1941.
David M. Glantz disputes the argument that the Red Army was deployed in an offensive stance in 1941. According to Glantz, the Red Army was only in a state of partial mobilization in July 1941, from which neither effective defensive or offensive actions could be offered without considerable delay.
Antony Beevor writes that "the Red Army was simply not in a state to launch a major offensive in the summer of 1941, and in any case Hitler's decision to invade had been made considerably earlier." However, he also notes that "it cannot be excluded that Stalin... may have been considering a preventive attack in the winter of 1941 or more probably in 1942..."

Middle positions

In a 1987 article in the Historische Zeitschrift journal, the German historian Klaus Hildebrand argued that both Hitler and Stalin separately were planning to attack each other in 1941. In Hildebrand’s opinion, the news of Red Army concentrations near the border led to Hitler engaging in a Flucht nach vorn. Hildebrand wrote "Independently, the National Socialist program of conquest met the equally far-reaching war-aims program which Stalin had drawn up in 1940 at the latest".

Support

While Western researchers criticised Suvorov's thesis, he has gathered some support among Russian historians, starting in the 1990s. Support in Russia for Suvorov's claim that Stalin had been preparing a strike against Hitler in 1941 began to emerge as some archive materials were declassified. Authors supporting the Stalin 1941 assault thesis are Valeri Danilov, V.A. Nevezhin, Constantine Pleshakov, Mark Solonin and Boris Sokolov. Although the USSR attacked Finland, no documents have been found to date which would indicate 26 November 1939 as the assumed date for the beginning of provocations or 30 November as the date of the planned Soviet assault.
One view was expressed by Mikhail Meltyukhov in his study Stalin's Missed Chance. The author states that the idea for striking Germany arose long before May 1941, and was the very basis of Soviet military planning from 1940 to 1941. Providing additional support for this thesis is that no significant defense plans have been found. In his argument, Meltyukhov covers five different versions of the assault plan, the first version of which was developed soon after the outbreak of World War II. The last version was to be completed by May 1, 1941. Even the deployment of troops was chosen in the South, which would have been more beneficial in case of a Soviet assault.
Mark Solonin notes that several variants of a war plan against Germany had existed at least since August 1940. He argues that in the Russian archives there are five versions of the general plan for the strategic deployment of the Red Army and ten documents reflecting the development of plans for operational deployment of western military districts. The differences between them were slight, all documents are the plans for the invasion with depth offensive 300 km. Solonin also states that no other plans for Red Army deployment in 1941 have been found so far, and that the concentration of Red Army units in Western parts of USSR was done in direct accordance with the May "Considerations on plan for strategic deployment":
Planned and actual Red Army deployment on the Soviet Western Border
"Considerations", May 41"Reference", June 13Actual confinement as of June 22, 1941
Northern FrontThree armies, 21 / 4 / 2------ 22 / 4 / 214th, 7th, 23rd Armies, 21 / 4 / 2
North-Western FrontThree armies, 23 / 4 / 2------ 23 / 4 / 227th, 8th, 11th Armies, 25 / 4 / 2
Western FrontFour armies, 45 / 8 / 4------ 44 / 12 / 63rd, 10th, 4th, 13th Armies, 44 / 12 / 6
South-Western Front and Southern FrontEight armies,122 / 28 / 15------ 100 / 20 / 105th, 6th, 26th, 12th, 18th, 9th Armies,
80 / 20 / 10
Stavka reservefive armies, 47 / 12 / 8five armies, 51/ 11 / 522nd, 20th, 21st, 19th, 16th, 24th, 28th Armies, 77 / 5 / 2

Notes: first digit – total number of divisions; second digit – tank divisions; third – motorized divisions
According to the Plan of Cover, after the commencement of combat actions, two divisions of the Northwest front, expanded in Estonia, were transferred to the Northern Front.
In Stalin's War of Extermination, Joachim Hoffmann made extensive use of interrogations of Soviet prisoners of war, ranging in rank from general to private, conducted by their German captors during the war. The book is also based on open-source, unclassified literature, and recently declassified materials. Based on this material, Hoffmann argues that the Soviet Union was making final preparations for its own attack when the Wehrmacht struck. Danilov and Heinz Magenheimer examined this plan and other documents in the early 1990s, which might indicate Soviet preparations for an attack. Both researchers came to the conclusion that Zhukov's plan of May 15, 1941 reflected Stalin's alleged speech of 19 August 1939 heralding the birth of the new offensive Red Army.
In 2006, a collection of articles by various historians who share some views with Suvorov was published. This was followed by a number of sequels, six as of September 2010. In a 2009 essay entitled "Don’t Blame Hitler Alone For World War II", journalist Eric Margolis endorsed Suvorov's assertion that Operation Barbarossa was a "preventive war" forced on Nazi Germany by an alleged impending Soviet attack, and that it is wrong to give Hitler "total blame" for World War II.
In another sequel to the collection, entitled the New Truth of Viktor Suvorov, Uri Milstein also defended Suvorov's positions.
Several politicians have also made claims similar to Suvorov's. On August 20, 2004, historian and former Prime Minister of Estonia Mart Laar published an article in The Wall Street Journal titled When Will Russia Say 'Sorry'?. In this article, he said: "The new evidence shows that by encouraging Hitler to start World War II, Stalin hoped to simultaneously ignite a world-wide revolution and conquer all of Europe". Another former statesman to share his views of a purported Soviet aggressive plan is former president of Finland Mauno Koivisto, who wrote: "It seems to be clear the Soviet Union was not ready for defense in the summer of 1941, but it was rather preparing for an assault.... The forces mobilized in the Soviet Union were not positioned for defensive, but for offensive aims." Koivisto concludes: "Hitler's invasion forces didn't outnumber , but were rather outnumbered themselves. The Soviets were unable to organize defenses. The troops were provided with maps that covered territories outside the Soviet Union."

Books that advance the existence of Soviet offensive plans