In a file published last year, I gave a detailed analysis of the two books by Victor Suvorov (nickname of [the Soviet jewish military historian] Vladimir Rezun [who became anticommunist and defected to the West).

It was Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War? , published in 1988, and The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II, a version enriched by recent access to Soviet archives. Only the first of these books has been translated into French, under the title Le Brise Glace,

but it is the second, published by an editor specializing in military history (Naval Institute Press), which really brought  the Suvorov hypothesis into major academic debate.

It is no exaggeration to say that the “Suvorov thesis” has revolutionized the history of WWII, opening up a whole new perspective to which many historians, Russians and Germans, have now added their own supportive details: among the Germans, we can cite Joachim Hoffmann, Adolf von Thadden, Heinz Magenheimer, Werner Maser, Ernst Topitsch, Walter Post and Wolfgang Strauss, who have reviewed this Russian historian Suvorov on the subject.

The debate takes a new turn today with a book published in April by the American historian Sean McMeekin: Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II , an unassailable book in terms of the professionalism of the author, sources, bibliography, and footnotes. It therefore remains now to examine his thesis.

McMeekin covers the whole of WWII, politically, strategically and militarily, focusing on the Eastern Front. Concerning the responsibilities of the war, and in particular its extension on the Eastern front, does McMeekin corroborate Suvorov’s analysis, or does he deny it?

McMeekin’s main thesis is that WWII was primarily wanted and orchestrated by Stalin, while Hitler was drawn into it by Stalin’s intrigues. This is precisely what Suvorov meant by calling Hitler ” Stalin’s Icebreaker” and titling his second book: The Chief Culprit. Stalin’s grand design to start World War II . So I expected McMeekin’s book to quote Suvorov extensively and favorably. But I was surprised to find that Suvorov was only mentioned once. After noting that Suvorov “found thousands of intriguing documents ” in support of his own theory and that “dozens of Russian historians have studied Suvorov’s thesis “, producing in passing “two thick volumes of additional documents,” McMeekin concludes [bizarrely or snarkily]:”  But a considerable mystery remains around Stalin’s intentions on the eve of the war “, and he adds the claim that no clear written document can be produced which ” proves unambiguously that Stalin had already resolved on war, whether it be preventive, defensive or other“.

I find it hard to understand this dismissive comment, as McMeekin actually agrees with almost all of the important points Suvorov raised. Like Suvorov, and drawing like him from declassified Soviet archives, McMeekin shows that, despite his tactical claim to be all about “building socialism in one country, ” Stalin was actually unconditionally devoted to Lenin’s goal of sovietizing all of Europe.

His analysis of how Stalin lured Hitler into a war on the Western Front via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is totally in agreement with Suvorov. McMeekin attributes the same meaning as Suvorov did to Stalin’s announcement on May 5, 1941 that “we must move from defense to attack. » (This os the speech to which McMeekin devotes his prologue.) His interpretation of Stalin’s simultaneous self-designation as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars echoes Suvorov’s exactly: “  From that moment on, all responsibility for Soviet foreign policy, for peace or war, for victory or defeat, rested in the hands of Stalin alone. The time for subterfuge was over. War was imminent.  ”

McMeekin echoes much of Suvorov’s evidence that Stalin’s preparations for war were offensive and potentially overwhelming. He insists, like Suvorov, on the undefended air bases built near the border:

The most spectacular physical evidence of a more offensive Soviet intention was the construction of forward air bases contiguous to the new border separating Stalin’s empire from that of Hitler. The main Soviet Airfield Construction Administration, led by the NKVD, ordered the construction of 251 new [Soviet] Air Force bases in 1941, of which 80% (199) were located in western districts adjoining the German Reich.

The Pe-81 Soviet long-range bomber

In view of these elements, McMeekin estimates that “ the ideal date for launching the Soviet offensive… fell at the end of July or during August [1941].”

*** JdN: This agrees with what I have been saying for years — that our preemptive attack on 22 June 1941 beat Stalin to the punch by about six weeks.

McMeekin even reinforces Suvorov’s argument that Hitler’s mobilization on the Eastern Front was a reaction to Stalin’s preparations for war, rather than the other way around, showing that as early as June 1940 the Germans were receiving intelligence reports according to which “ the Red Army, taking advantage of the Wehrmacht’s concentration in the West, was preparing to march from Lithuania into [German] East Prussia and German-occupied Poland, which are practically defenseless. (…) On June 19, a German spy reported from Estonia that the Soviets had informed the British Ambassador to Tallinn that Stalin planned to deploy three million troops in the Baltic region ‘to threaten the eastern borders of the German Reich’ ”.

McMeekin generally uses the same archives as Suvorov, but never gives him credit for being the first to bring them to light. The only exception is in a single endnote, where he mentions that one of the reasons Stalin believed Hitler would not attack in June was that he had ” learned through spies in Germany that the OKW [Oberkommando — engl. Supreme Command — der Wehrmacht] had not ordered the sheepskin overcoats which were deemed indispensable for a winter campaign in Russia, and that the fuel and lubricating oil used by the armored divisions of the Wehrmacht would freeze in sub-zero temperatures“.

The note states: “Not all of Suvorov’s assertions hold water, but this fits well with Stalin’s optimistic attitude toward reports of a German arms build-up.”

In another footnote, McMeekin disputes Suvorov’s assertion that Stalin ordered in the spring of 1941 the dismantling of the ” Stalin Line” of border defenses which would hamper the forward advance of his troops: it was not dismantled, but simply ‘ neglected  ‘, says McMeekin, before adding: “Here, as elsewhere, Suvorov damages his argument by overdoing it.”

This criticism would be fair if McMeekin had also acknowledged the enormous amount of valuable facts Suvorov uncovered. For example, I myself believed that Suvorov was going a little too far in asserting that almost a million [Soviet] paratroopers were ready for combat – and it is known that paratroopers are only useful in an invading war. Now McMeekin confirms this figure, and even cites a large Pravda article  making the same claim.

Apparently McMeekin thought it was tactically wise not only to snub Suvorov even when he proves him right, but also to insert this formal praise of his harshest opponent, David Glantz (who, McMeekin writes, had “reason to underline to what extent the Red Army was in reality ill-prepared for the war“), even when hefinds Glantz wrong up and down the line, showing that in June 1941 the outcome of the war “would be determined by who strikes first, taking control of enemy airspace and destroying airfields and tank parks”.

It is not difficult to guess the motive for McMeekin’s ostentatious contempt for Suvorov. Suvorov crossed the line in suggesting that Barbarossa saved Europe from complete sovietization. Although he expresses no sympathy for Hitler, Suvorov agrees with him that, if he had not attacked first, “Europe would have been lost.”

So Suvorov [a jew!] committed an unforgivable sin. The untouchable cornerstone of Western and Russian historiography is that Hitler is the embodiment of absolute evil and that no good could have come from him. So, academic historians on the Eastern Front are expected to show good manners by avoiding Suvorov and not asking questions such as, “What if Hitler hadn’t attacked first?” They should not suggest that Hitler ever told the truth, or that his military commanders were wrongly hanged on charges of “crimes against peace” in Operation Barbarossa.

If the price to pay for defending Suvorov’s revisionism in the academic debate is to deny his debt to Suvorov, so be it. WWII historians have to be smart: one reckless phrase or reference can cost you a career and a reputation, as happened to David Irving (who is not in McMeekin’s bibliography by the way). It is best to leave it to others to draw some obvious conclusions. There is no doubt that McMeekin’s book is a great achievement and it is to be hoped that it will become an obligatory reference in the historiography of WWII. It is already the subject of much praise in the press and gives a good reputation to “revisionism”.

There are, of course, nuances between the perspectives of McMeekin and Suvorov. Rather than insisting that Barbarossa ruined Stalin’s plan for the conquest of Germany and Europe, McMeekin points out that Barbarossa was for Stalin ”  a kind of public relations miracle  ” that brought him to life. changed from the status of ”  mass murderer and swallower of small nations … to that of victim in the eyes of a large part of the Western public  “. Stalin himself, in his radio speech of July 3, 1941, said that German aggression had brought ”  enormous political gain to the USSR  “, creating support for London and Washington which was ” a serious and lasting factor which can only form the basis for the development of decisive military successes for the Red Army  ”. This is a good point, but a minor point.

From what we know of Churchill and Roosevelt’s secret intrigues before Barbarossa, it is doubtful that Stalin would have been deprived of their support had he attacked first. Churchill had been urging him to attack Germany since 1940, and Roosevelt had started planning his aid right after his second re-election in November 1940, when he told Americans that their country was to become ”  the great arsenal of democracy  ” and appointed pro-Soviet Harry Hopkins to start making arrangements.

In fact, McMeekin shows that ”  Roosevelt did all he could to improve relations with Stalin  ” from the early years of his long presidency, starting with the official recognition of the USSR in 1933. He purged the department of anti-communists and stuffed it with sympathizers or outright NKVD agents, like Alger Hiss. As early as November 1936, he appointed a Soviet sympathizer, Joseph Davies, as ambassador to Moscow, replacing William Bullitt who had been too openly critical of Stalin. ”  Where Ambassador Bullitt saw deceit and cunning in Stalin’s foreign policy, his successor saw unicorns  “, showering him with compliments: ” You are a greater ruler than Catherine the Great, than Peter the Great, a greater ruler even than Lenin, etc…  ”

So even though Barbarossa made it easier for Roosevelt to turn American public opinion in favor of Stalin, that does not mean that Roosevelt would have prevented Stalin from engulfing Europe if he had attacked first.

Stalin’s plan for the conquest of Europe

Like Suvorov, McMeekin provides compelling evidence that Stalin planned to invade Europe in 1941, and has done so for a very long time. Like Suvorov, he stresses that the Comintern, founded in Moscow in 1919, explicitly aimed at the sovietization of the whole world.

Lenin’s primary objective was Berlin. For this, he wanted to destroy Poland, a country reconstituted after the First World War and located between Russia and Germany. But after the Soviets’ failed invasion attempt of Poland in the summer of 1920, Lenin proclaimed a new strategy at a party congress in Moscow on November 26, 1920: ”  Until the final victory of socialism all over the world, we must exploit the contradictions and oppositions between two different groups of imperialist powers, between two groups of capitalist states, and incite them to attack each other.  ”

The failure of the communist uprising in Germany in October 1923 furthermore proved that fomenting revolutionary agitation was not enough. What had to be done was to help create the conditions for a new world war and, during this incubation period, to put a brake on Soviet world-conquest discourse in order to maintain good trade relations with the capitalist countries (which would eventually let “the the Communists sell the capitalists the rope that they will use to hang them “).

McMeekin agrees with Suvorov that Stalin was the true heir to Lenin, whose public worship he orchestrated: ” Stalin’s dialectical view of Soviet foreign policy – in which the metastasized conflict between warring capitalist factions would allow communism to advance towards new triumphs – was firmly rooted in Marxism-Leninism, grounded in the precedent of Russia’s own experience in World War I, and clearly and consistently stated on numerous occasions, both verbally and in writing.”

In his first major work after Lenin’s death, Foundations of Leninism (1924), Stalin recalled that the Bolshevik revolution had triumphed in Russia because the two main coalitions of capitalist countries had “grabbed each other by the throat“.  “When a new capitalist war breaks out ,” Stalin told the Communist Party Central Committee in 1925, “ we will have to act, but we will be the last to do it. And we will do it in order to throw our decisive weight on the scales, the weight that can tip the scales.”

While preparing for World War II, Stalin’s domestic policy consisted, on the one hand, in 1) consolidating his control over the population and, on the other hand, 2) in building a huge military-industrial complex.

“Stalin’s industrialization campaign,” writes McMeekin, “was conceived, sold and executed as a military operation targeting the capitalist world. (…) Whenever expensive production targets were not achieved, capitalist ‘saboteurs’ were accused, as if they had been spies on an army base. ”

Since the inauguration of the first five-year plan in 1928, the Soviet economy had been on a war footing. The production targets of the Third Five-Year Plan, launched in 1938, were staggering, providing for the production of 50,000 warplanes per year by the end of 1942, as well as 125,000 aircraft engines and 700,000 tonnes of aerial bombs. ; 60,775 tanks, 119,060 artillery systems, 450,000 machine guns and 5.2 million rifles; 489 million artillery shells, 120,000 tonnes of naval armor and 1 million tonnes of explosives; and, for good measure, 298,000 tonnes of chemical weapons.

In 1939, all Stalin needed was to push the capitalist countries to confront each other in yet another murderous war. This is the main objective, from Stalin’s point of view, of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed on August 23, 1939, with a secret protocol for the partition of Poland and the distribution of “spheres of influence”.

The gangster pact

Two months earlier, Stalin was still negotiating, through his Foreign Minister Molotov and his ambassador in London Maïski, about the possibility of a military alliance with England and France in order to contain Germany and protect the integrity of Poland. On June 2, 1939, Molotov handed the British and French ambassadors a draft agreement, under which the Soviets could provide mutual assistance to small European states under “threat of aggression by a European power. “. On August 12, an Anglo-French delegation arrived in Moscow to continue the discussions. But Stalin then changed his mind and Molotov did not receive the delegates. In a Politburo speech on August 19, 1939, Stalin explained why he finally opted for a pact with Germany:

The question of war or peace has entered a critical phase for us. If we conclude a mutual assistance pact with France and Great Britain, Germany will withdraw from Poland and seek a modus vivendi with the Western powers. War would be avoided, but events could become dangerous for the USSR. If we accept Germany’s proposal and make a non-aggression pact with it, it will of course invade Poland, and the intervention of France and England would then be inevitable. Western Europe would be subjected to serious upheavals and disorders. In this case, we will have a great opportunity to stay out of the conflict, and we could plan the right time to go to war. (…)

Our choice is clear. We must accept the German proposal and, by refusing, politely send the Anglo-French mission home. Our immediate advantage will be to take [half of] Poland to the gates of Warsaw, as well as Ukrainian Galicia …

For the realization of these plans, it is essential that the war continues as long as possible, and all forces, with which we are actively involved, must be directed towards this goal …

Therefore, our goal is for Germany to wage the war as long as possible, so that England and France tire and exhaust themselves to such an extent that they will no longer be able to defeat a Sovietized Germany.

Comrades! It is in the interest of the USSR – the homeland of the workers – that war breaks out between the Reich and the Anglo-French capitalist bloc. Everything must be done to make it last as long as possible in order to weaken both parties. For this reason, it is imperative that we agree to conclude the pact proposed by Germany, and that we then work so that this war, once declared, is prolonged to the maximum. We need to step up our propaganda work in warring countries, so that we can be ready when that war is over.

This speech was leaked to the French news agency Havas the same year. Stalin immediately denounces him as a fake in Pravda , which was an exceptional action on his part. Its authenticity has long been debated, but in 1994 Russian historians found an authoritative transcription of it in Soviet archives, and its authenticity is now generally accepted.

Be that as it may, other sources confirm Stalin’s ploy, so that there is no doubt, for McMeekin, that with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, ” far from wanting to prevent a European war between the Germany and the Western powers, Stalin’s goal was to make it break out.”

For Stalin, “the advantages of the Moscow Pact for Communism were obvious. The capitalist world would soon be embroiled in a terrible war, and the USSR would be able to expand its territory substantially westward against seemingly defenseless enemies. All Stalin had to do was make sure that neither Germany nor its adversaries gained a decisive advantage. Once both sides exhaust themselves in a fight to the death, the way would be clear for the armies of communism to step in and take the capitalist world by the throat.  “

But how could Stalin be so sure that France and England wouldn’t declare war on Russia as well? Part of the answer is that he had not broken off his negotiations with Britain after signing a pact with Hitler. It is even believed that on October 15, 1939, less than two months after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a secret Anglo-Soviet agreement was signed behind Hitler’s back.

With the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler believed he had countered the British policy of encirclement against Germany. And he believed the pact would protect him from a declaration of war by Britain and France if Germany and Russia intervened in Poland.

He had greatly underestimated Stalin.

When Hitler invaded Poland from the west on September 1, the Red Army did not budge from the east. On September 3, England and France therefore declared war on Germany alone. It was a bad surprise for Hitler. He urged the Russians to launch their attack, but the latter turned a deaf ear. “On September 3, writes McMeekin, Ribbentrop sends a telegram to Ambassador Schulenburg in Moscow, asking him to ask Molotov if the USSR would participate in the war in Poland as promised and bring ‘relief’ to the Wehrmacht under pressure. Didn’t Stalin, asked Ribbentrop, consider it desirable that the Russian forces act at the appropriate time against the Polish forces in the sphere of Russian interest and, for their part, occupy this territory? ”

Molotov replied on September 5: “  The time has not yet come. It seems to us that by excessive haste we could harm our cause and promote the unity of our adversaries.”

On September 8, a new Wehrmacht communiqué urged the Soviets to move forward as Warsaw was taken. The Soviets answer that the fall of Warsaw was not yet confirmed and that “Russia, being linked to Poland by a non-aggression pact, cannot move forward  “.

On September 10, Molotov told Schulenburg bluntly that “to keep up appearances we should not cross the border into Poland until the capital has fallen,” and that the pretext for the Soviets entering Poland would be to “protect Ukrainians and Belarusians in danger“. Stalin even tried to persuade the Polish government, which had taken refuge in Kúty, to ask for his protection.

Finally, on September 17, the Polish ambassador in Moscow was summoned at 3 a.m. and was given the following message:

The German-Polish war showed the internal bankruptcy of the Polish state. During the first ten days of hostilities, Poland has lost all of its industrial zones and cultural centers. Warsaw, the capital of Poland, no longer exists. The Polish government has disintegrated and shows no more signs of life. This means that the Polish state and its government have, in effect, ceased to exist.

Likewise, the agreements concluded between the USSR and Poland have ceased to function. Left to her own devices and deprived of direction, Poland has become a breeding ground for all kinds of dangers and surprises, which can pose a threat to the USSR. For these reasons, the Soviet government, which has been neutral until now, can no longer maintain a neutral attitude towards these facts. Nor can the Soviet government regard with indifference the fact that the White-Russian [Belarussian] and Ukrainian people who live on Polish territory and are at the mercy of fate, are left defenseless.

Under these circumstances, the Soviet government ordered the High Command of the Red Army to order the troops to cross the border and take under their protection the lives and property of the people of Western Ukraine and Belarus.

At the same time, the Soviet government intends to take all measures to bring the Polish people out of the unfortunate war into which they have been drawn by their reckless leaders, leaving them helpless.

 

Although he does not explicitly mention Germany as the aggressor, the message is clear: the USSR is not the aggressor, but the defender of Poland. The Soviets had waited two and a half weeks before entering Poland, leaving all fighting to the Germans and giving the world the impression that they were intervening to prevent Germany from taking over the whole country. The USSR therefore remains officially neutral and incurs no reproach from France and England.

Hitler tries to regain the advantage

Although the partition of Poland was Stalin’s idea, only Hitler was blamed. His Faustian pact with his worst enemy had not protected him from a war with France and England, nor would it protect him from a Soviet invasion. It is clear that he was duped. By instigating Hitler to invade Poland, Stalin started World War II while remaining on the sidelines. All he had to do was wait for the countries of Europe to exhaust each other in a new war.

On September 1, the very day of the invasion of Poland by Germany, the Supreme Soviet adopted a general conscription law which, under the guise of establishing a two-year military service, was equivalent to a general mobilization. This is proof that Stalin knew that the partition of Poland would start the second world war, instead of avoiding it as Hitler hoped.

Meanwhile, Stalin made the most of Germany’s difficulties in the West, seizing three Baltic states bordering Germany and stuffing them with military bases.

As McMeekin notes:

By taking opportunistic measures against the Baltic states, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina following Germany’s humiliation of France, Stalin was making the most of his partnership with Hitler while escaping, in one way or another, from the hostility of Hitler’s opponents. Britain, then in what Churchill calls the country’s “finest hour”, now stood alone against Nazi Germany. However, Britain did not declare war on the alliance partner of Berlin, although Stalin had invaded the same number of sovereign countries since August 1939 as Hitler (seven).

But there were limits to Hitler’s patience, and Stalin was on the verge of reaching them.

Like Suvorov before him, McMeekin emphasizes the hypocrisy of the British. “The number of victims murdered by Soviet authorities in occupied Poland in June 1941 – around five hundred thousand – was even three or four times higher than the number killed by the Nazis.”

Yet Stalin did not even receive a slap on the wrist from the Western powers. Foreign Secretary Halifax explained to the British War Cabinet on September 17, 1939 that “Britain was not bound by treaty [with Poland] to engage in war with the USSR as a result of its invasion of Poland “, because the Anglo-Polish agreement” foresaw that Her Majesty’s government would act only if Poland suffered aggression from a European power,” and Russia was not a European power.

*** Ridiculous!

Michailovsky Palace in Saint Petersburg

***

At a war cabinet meeting on November 16, 1939, Churchill even approved of the Stalinist aggression: “No doubt it seemed reasonable to the Soviet Union to take advantage of the present situation to reconquer part of the territory which Russia had lost in the last war, at the beginning of which it had been the ally of France and Great Britain.”

McMeekin comments: “  The fact that Hitler used the same justification for Germany’s territorial claims to Poland did not concern Churchill or bother him.”

Stalin hoped that Germany would fight France and England for two or three years before he intervened. It therefore continued to supply Germany with raw materials, and was careful not to cut off its supply of ores from Sweden, and oil from Romania, when it had the military means to do so.

When the Germans launched their offensive against France on May 10, 1940, Stalin rejoiced. “Finally, the Communists could rejoice to see ‘two groups of capitalist countries … fighting a really bitter fight and weakening each other”, as Stalin boasted to the General Secretary of the Comintern, Dimitrov, in September 1939.”

But the war turned out to be less bloody and lengthy than he had wanted.

The speed of the German victories was alarming, however. Stalin and Molotov would have preferred a slow and bloody battle of attrition – a German victory, to be sure, but one that would have weakened Hitler almost as much as his enemies. According to Khrushchev’s later recollections, after learning of the extent of the Allied debacle later in May, Stalin “cursed the French and he cursed the British, asking how they could have let Hitler crush them like that.”

The military successes of Germany oblige Stalin to speed up his preparations to put the Red Army on the starting blocks in the summer of 1941. In the spring, the armament, the troops and the transports would be ready, and the preparations would enter their final phase.

On May 5, 1941, Stalin told military officers that the “Soviet peace policy  ” (i.e. the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) had enabled the USSR to ” advance west and north, increasing thus its population by thirteen million people“, but that the days of such a conquest “had come to an end. We can no longer gain a single foot of ground with such peaceful maneuvers”.  “Anyone who did not recognize the need for offensive action was a bourgeois and a fool.” “Today, now that our army has been completely rebuilt, fully equipped for modern warfare, now that we are strong – we must move from defense to attack.”

To do this, we must “transform our training, our propaganda, our agitation, and impress an offensive mentality on our mind.”

By then Hitler must have understood that he was trapped. He may have remembered what he wrote in 1925: “The forming a new [anti-German] alliance with Russia would lead to a new war and the result would be the end of Germany.” ( Mein Kampf, vol . 2, chapter 14).

With Operation Barbarossa, Hitler was trying to regain the advantage. But, according to Suvorov, it was impossible for Germany alone to defeat Russia, for reasons linked to the vastness of its territory, the harshness of the winter and the limited resources of Germany compared to those of Russia.

Arguably, Hitler could have won and conquered the  Lebensraum of his dreams if Stalin had not been saved by Roosevelt’s loan aid: more than ten billion – the equivalent of trillions today. Planes and tanks, locomotives and rails, building materials, entire assembly lines for military production, food and clothing, aviation fuel and much more flowed in torrents.

Over four dense chapters, McMeekin strives to show (like Albert Weeks before him in Russia’s Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the USSR in World War II, 2010), that without the help of the United States, the Soviet Union would probably not have been able to push back the Germans, let alone conquer Eastern Europe in 1945.

Another factor that McMeekin insists on – and which is certainly less contested – was Stalin’s almost unlimited supply of cannon fodder: a total of 32 million soldiers throughout the war, led to slaughter with machine guns in the back and the threat that, if they were captured rather than killed, their families would be punished: ”  The USSR under Stalin is the only state in known history to have declared the captivity of its soldiers a capital crime  ” .

Ultimately, as Stalin entered the war on the German side, he will come out on the Allied side. While England and France officially entered the war to defend the territorial integrity of Poland, at the end of the war all of Poland will be under Stalin’s rule. While the pact deciding the partition of Poland between Germany and Russia was signed in Moscow – in the presence of Stalin and not of Hitler – history will retain only the aggression of Germany, and will consider the USSR as one of the countries attacked.

But a revisionist tendency is now asserting itself on this subject, and is consolidated with books of an excellent level like that of McMeekin.

McMeekin’s main thesis is that WWII was primarily willed and orchestrated by Stalin, while Hitler was drawn into it by Stalin’s intrigues.

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[END OF GUYÉNOT’S ARTICLE IN ER].

As the honest Jew Suvorov said and McMeekin, the white man, didn’t, it was probably thanks to Operation Barbarossa that Soviet troops failed to raise their red flag over Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Rome, and Stockholm, possibly even over London.

And Hitler was NOT a madman who deliberately started an incredibly bloody world war. The warmongerer was Stalin.

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