Revisiting World War II

This unfortunately rings far too true.  Stalin was a proven sociopath who dreamed of conquering the world for communism.  I have thought that Hitler’s rather chauvinistic dream was naturally circumscribed by the reality of a limited population of Germans.  Also he notably did not establish an imperial concept until he had stumbled into it.  The evidence more suggests that he was happy to have French Nazis protecting France however curious their thinking.

Stalin did have a global ideology that we continued to oppose and fight for an additional forty years.

Yet we all have believed that Stalin was not preparing for war or at least had weak forces to deploy.  That was never true and this helps us to begin to see why.

The surprise attack by the Germans was launched by Hitler because he claimed that a soviet attach was eminent.  We thought this merely propaganda.  That it was necessary was never suspected and it certainly was a rude surprise for Stalin.

The fact is that a proper defensive position for the Russians particularly after Poland and France was to position large strategic reserves well back with ample air cover out of range from the border.  Any other disposition was offensive.  Yet the early German assaults bagged huge Russian armies totaling millions with impunity.

How could they have been so lucky?  Is Russian stupidity a good and sufficient answer to the question?  Was Stalin just that stupid?

If however the Russian army was ready to hurl several million soldiers into Germany, then they would be caught flat footed and hugely out of place and exposed.  It is possible that the swift German success in 1940 in France gave Stalin pause and he hesitated, yet failed to move to the defensive.

This is all a surprising reconsideration that needs to be taken seriously.

Revisiting World War 2

MAY 01, 2010

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/05/revisiting-world-war-2.html

One of the big secrets of World War 2 is why Nazi Germany succeeded in surprising Soviet Russia in June 1941. The usual reasons were that Stalin trusted a non-aggression pact with Hitler or Stalin was afraid of Nazi Germany. Viktor Sukorov analyzes some recently released Soviet documents and comes to a different conclusion which makes more sense. All of Stalin's actions and what happened with the Soviets was the result of Stalin planning to sweep across all of Europe. Stalin was planning to let the Nazis fight Europe and weaken themselves and weaken those they attacked and then the Soviets would attack and defeat the Nazis and what remained. The Soviets were prepared and positioned to launch an attack on the Germans and were out of position for defense when the Nazis attacked. This left planes too close to the front and in position to be overrun. Why did the Soviets not think that the Nazis were going to attack? The Soviets spies detected no build up of winter gear by the Nazi units. How could an army unit attack the Soviets and Russia without winter gear? They did not think the Germans would be so foolish as to think that they could attack and defeat the Soviets in three months before winter.

Viktor Suvorov was an analyst from the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces. (GRU) He was not a spy that killed people but a detective and puzzle solver who would take a hundred thousand pieces of information and work out what was missing and solve the one, two or three or N numbers of puzzles in piles of information. Historians treat the Soviet Union as a regular country. Viktor considers the Soviet Union a criminal conglomerate. Therefore, he uses the methods of criminology and intelligence rather than classical scientific research. It has been over sixty years since the German invasion yet most of the Soviet archives are still closed. Suvorov indicates that the Russians publish the documents that show the Soviet "unpreparedness" for war but hide the offensive war plans. 

The Soviets in 1920s helped train German Panzer corps and helped them to make tanks and prepare for the Second World War.

After the war the soviets called the T-28 tank that they started the war with as "obsolete and worn out". However the T-28 had a 500 horse power engine and 30 mm armor 76 mm gun with 555 m/s muzzle velocity. The T-28E had 80mm thick armor. The Germans did not catch to this tank until 1942. the T-28 was obsolete only compared the newer soviet T-34 (introduced in 1939 and widely quoted by German generals and field Marshalls as being the best tank in the world).

The Soviets had more tanks and better tanks and even after the disastrous start of the war and the loss of thousands of tanks and millions of troops. The Soviets were still able to mass produce thousands of tanks and mobilize over 30 million troops. 

The Nazi attack on the Soviets broke up an imminent Soviet attack, that Soviet attack would have crushed the Nazis who were not positioned for defense and probably resulted in a Soviet victory in 1942 or 1943. Both the Soviets and the Nazis were ready to and preparing to attack each other and only the Nazis struck first.

Superior soviet tank designs and greater troop mobilization capabilities and the large terrain which allowed factories for tanks, weapons and planes to remain beyond the reach of the Nazis meant that a Nazi loss was inevitable. 

On June 22, 1941 Hitler dealt a death blow to the Soviet Union. The best part of the male population of the Soviet Union died in the war against Germany. The underaged men stayed in Stalin’s army until Stalin’s death 7-8 years after the war. There were not enough people in the farms and famine broke out in 1946 and 1947. The Soviet Union also lost World War 2. The Soviet Union was created for war and conquest. It concentrated all of its strength and resources in preparing for a new war and it was crushed in 1991 by the burden of its military expenditures.