Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia

Rating:
Summary: Authoritative Interpretation of Stalin's "Grand Illusion"
Review: Few events in the history of the Second World War inspire as much controversy and debate as the circumstances surrounding the legendary chaos and lack of preparedness of the Soviet forces at the onset of Hitler's invasion of Russia with Operation Barbarossa. Given Stalin`s legendary cynicism and distrust for the West, it has been hard for historians to accurately determine what Stalin's motives and perspectives were during the period of time preceding the invasion, and as to whether it was a calculated and very dangerous risk he was willing to take, or if, on the contrary, he and the Soviet army were suddenly caught unaware and off-guard by the most daunting frontal assault in the history of WWII. This book magnificently addresses these historical questions in a captivating, authoritative, and magisterial argument that it was, at least in Israeli author Gabriel Gorodetsky's opinion, a combination of all of the above that led to the astounding Russian debacle and military collapse of 1941.

Gorodetsky emphatically rejects the idea that Stalin was in fact beat to the punch while planning an invasion of his own, posting instead that Stalin was convinced based on circumstances as well by his own preoccupations with internal Russian concerns that Chancellor Hitler would, at least temporarily, live up to his non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union. The author marshals a convincing and well-substantiated argument detailing a multitude of circumstances that lead him to conclude he had little to fear from Hitler in the short term, but recognized and was preparing for the ostensible long-term threat to Mother Russia once Hitler had conquered the rest of Europe. In this sense, he discounts, and even ridicules, what he considers to be the preposterous notion that Hitler struck preemptively against he saw to be an imminent threat from the Russian army massed all along the border with Poland for a strike against the Third Reich.

Instead, the author argues that Stalin's fabled paranoia, his concern with consolidating power, and his unfounded concerns with possible internal threats emanating from the General Staff of the professional military led to a wide-ranging set of purges within the ranks of the officer corps and vitiated the capability of the army to conduct offensive operations. Under such circumstances, it would have been suicidal to propose aggressive action against such a well-prepared foe as the Wehrmacht would have been at that time. Indeed, the Soviet experience in the campaign conducted the year before against Finland had convincingly disabused them of any illusions they might otherwise have had regarding their state of war readiness.

In essence, the portrait of Stalin painted in this work is that of a man literally obsessed with the historical precedents of Soviet diplomacy and political intrigue. After a year spent dabbling in the deep waters of international bargaining with England, France, and Germany, and skillfully playing them off each other to gain ground for Russia, he hoped to watch the west beat each other into the stone age. Thus, having concluded he had somehow successfully negotiated his way into a fabulous and harmless bargain with the devil, he just couldn't bring himself to believe the devil would then promptly double-cross him. After all, Hitler needed all the raw materials and petroleum products Stalin alone could give him, making Hitler immune to the kinds of slow death via blockades that had so damaged Germany during WWI. Why would he then turn on the one country he needed to stave off any threats from the Allies.

This in essence was the "grand illusion" he subscribed to: that based on the mutual benefit to both countries of the non-aggression pact, he could successfully negotiate his way out of immediate danger until he and the Soviet Union was better prepared in the mid 1940s to take on the Nazis. This is a terrific book, and one I highly recommend. It already has become a standard text, and will, I am sure, become a perennial favorite. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: A mixture of fact and hot air
Review: Gabriel Gorodetsky has this strange problem. Somewhere along the line, he got the idea that Adolf Hitler had to be dishonest in all circumstances.

So when Hitler claimed that he invaded Russia because Stalin was about to invade him, and Viktor Suvorov supports it in his brilliant book ICEBREAKER, Gorodetsky finds it necessary to dispute the idea. Otherwise, I guess, G. couldn't condemn the Nazis' mass murder in Russia.

Go figure. It's obvious Hitler would have invaded eventually. But what was Stalin planning at the same time?

Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't support Gorodetsky's arguments that Stalin had no intention of invading Germany, that he wanted peace, that he was willing to cooperate with the West, Hitler or anyone.

G. boasts about using new information, but much of what he quotes is from the period before the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Russian authors published what the State wanted, or else, and foreigners had to guess at what had really gone on.

G. claims to have seen various documents that are now in closed archives, but since the entire document isn't published, we can't be sure they're quoted in context.

And even when documents are available, the Soviet Union of Stalin's time produced hundreds of tons of official documents that had no relationship to reality, such as confessions to crimes the interrogators knew had never happened.

Nor is everything in the documents, even if we could see them all and separate out the deliberate lies. Stalin was good at keeping his own counsel, and changing course without warning.

G. uncritically repeats various Soviet claims, e.g. that the Red Army troop deployment in June 1941 was meant to be defensive. But the Soviet deployment then made no sense for defensive purposes. In fact, it was a mirror image of the Wehrmacht's just before the German attack!

G. tends to make his own assumptions without sufficient thought. He says that Stalin's foreign policies weren't ideologically driven. His evidence is that Stalin didn't pursue stupid Trotskyite attempts to cause foreign revolutions in the twenties and thirties. But that was when Stalin was consolidating his power and building up Soviet military strength. When he got the chance after WWII, he acted just like a committed Communist.

And G. knows this! Many of the criticisms I've made, he makes himself in other contexts.

The only good things in this book are the translations and references to other sources. There's a lot of information here that will be valuable for those doing research on the unsettled questions, but its own answers don't convince.

Rating:
Summary: A Book of Scholarship
Review: Stephen Onge has written a harsh and unfair review of GRAND DELUSION. Unfortunately, Onge chooses to be misled by what might charitably be labeled the circumstantial evidence of Suvorov's ICEBREAKER and rejects the hard evidence presented by Gorodetsky. Gorodetsky provides specific reference notes to his archival materials in case anyone doubts the wisdom of his interpretation. In addition, he impressively marshals supporting evidence from published and unpublished memoirs and from the public record. Moreover, Onge tosses in points totally irrelevant to the issue at hand -- that Stalin acted like a "committed Communist" after WW II (a controversial view) and the horrid suggestion that Gorodetsky, a highly respected scholar, would somehow misread the historical record so that he and others might condemn Nazi mass murder in Russia.

Rating:
Summary: Solid Post-Cold War history
Review: The Cold War gave birth to a myth that the Soviet Union was cunningly planning a strike against Germany in July 1941. As a result, some historians had been calling for justification of the invasion to Russia, which Nazi Germany started on June 22, 1941. The logic goes if Stalin was planning an aggression against Germany, Hitler had a right to a preemptive strike against Russia. The creators of the myth use a testimony of a defector from the Russian military intelligence by the name of V. Resun. Under a pen name "Suvorov" he wrote a book called "Icebreaker" where he presented a theory that Stalin in 1939-1941 was meticulously preparing a war against Germany. Therefore according to this theory Russia was an aggressor rather than the victim in 1941.

In "Grand Delusion" Israeli professor Gabriel Gorodetsky shows beyond reasonable doubt that Suvorov's arguments are ridiculous. He presents evidence that Stalin was not contemplating attack on Germany; but in fact was trying to avoid any confrontation with Germany while playing a compacted diplomatic game to limit Germany's political influence on the Balkans, particularly in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. He shows Stalin's obsessions with the Turkish Straits and Bulgaria, which wasn't new, but was an old Imperial policy of Russia for many years. I was surprised to learn how much "tsarist" Stalin's foreign policy really was - there was very little in it related to the communist ideology or "class struggle" theory of Karl Marx.

The failure to understand Hitler's bellicose plans was a result of Stalin's misjudgment of power structure and decision-making process in Berlin. As an extremely suspicious person, Stalin mistrusted everyone, but looks like he believed misleading information presented to him by opponents of Hitler's policy such as Count Werner Von Schulenburg (German ambassador to Moscow, who became later a leading figure of anti-Hitler failed coup) and Ribbentrop. Stalin mistrusted equally both Churchill and Hitler and attributed all warning signals to England's efforts to drag Russia into war with Germany. Also Stalin didn't believe that Hitler would allow Wehrmacht to fight on two fronts. German double agents "Litseist" encouraged this false believe. The Germans succeeded in their sophisticated disinformation campaign, which coupled with Stalin's wishful thinking, led Russians to believe that Germany was not planning to invade Russia at least in the near future.

Gorodetsky points out that the idea of a preventive war was embedded in the German (from Frederick the Great to Moltke) rather than the Russian military tradition. "Barbarossa" plan was devised to quickly crash Russia in quick 10-week war and to free Hitler's hands to complete his "mastery of Europe". Then he would take care of England without any distractions from the "Soviet Empire". It looked like everything was working just wonderful for Nazi Germany until June 22, 1941 - the beginning of the German invasion to Russia (which by the way started suddenly without any declaration or ultimatum). But it turned out that the Germans seriously underrated the opponent and seriously miscalculated the amount of the effort they would need to crush Russia. Sure, the German might was incredible, but so was German overconfidence. Hitler's disparaging attitude towards Russian "vermin" makes ridiculous the theory of preemptive strike. Gorodetsky shows that this attitude was widespread in the West - Sir Winston Churchill himself was prone to disparaging attitude towards Stalin and the Red Army.

But just before his attack on Russia Hitler was beating Stalin at his own game. Stalin's failure to prepare for the German onslaught, which cost many Russian lives, was a result of his own self-deception and wishful thinking. Although Stalin was very wily, I feel that he lacked formal education to think abstractly and deal with issues like, for example, proverbial German concept of "Drang nach Osten" or draw analogies from history. Although as a Georgian, he was obsessed with history of the Black sea and repercussions of potential German capture of the Turkish Straits. 150 years earlier the Grand Army of Napoleon stood looking across the English Channel - but there was nowhere for it to go - except to Russia. It seems to me again in June 1941 the same gravitational force was pulling 200 idle German divisions to the endless Russian steppes. Where else would these "drunk with success" armies go?

I really liked the book. This scholarly and dry book was not an easy read. But the amount of information looked at is enormous and the quality of analysis is good. Also for the first time the reliance is not only on the German and British sources, but also on the declassified Russian archives. The book de-romanticizes many myths and accounts, including well-known Churchill's history of WWII, which is "persuasive but excessively self-centered and therefore occasionally misleading interpretation of events". I highly recommend this book to everybody interested in reading a non-Disney history of WWII.

Rating:
Summary: Bizarre interpretation of documents
Review: The latest book by Gorodetsky is nearly useless.
The way in which G. interprets for example diary-entries of Dimitroff is absurd and completely misleading. Luckily these diaries have now been published in german language (Aufbau Verlag) so that everyone can read for himself what Dimitroff really wrote - in full - and not just the selective parts Gorodetsky presents.
Also, the way in which Gorodetsky presents the clearly offensive soviet force disposition in 1941 is a bit of remarkable absurdity.

Gorodetsky claims in one sentence to have corrected Suvorov's claims that Stalin was preparing an offensive against Germany. But how? Where is Gorodetsky showing that the numerous arguments of Suvorov are actually wrong?
The next bit of absurdity is that Gorodetsky writes that soviet doctrine was clearly offensive - but of course not in reality.
Another proof of Gorodetsky's fear to provide full documentation is that he doesen't provide the full text of the "Considerations..." from May 15th, 1941 where a preemtive strike against Germany was advocated by the General Staff. Gorodetsky claims that this document was written behind Stalin's back and that it has never been approved. Anyone who knows only a fraction about the great purges of Stalin in the Red Army can clearly see the bizarre absurdity of such a claim. Vassilievsky, Zhukov and Timoshenko would have ended in the hands of the NKVD and would have been executed had they written such a proposal against Stalin's intentions!

Gorodetsky knows that would he provide such important documents with their full text, the reader would reach quite different conclusions than claimed in the book. That's why Gorodetsky most of the time quotes documents that can't be checked by the readers.
One should rather read Joachim Hoffmann's "Stalin's war of extermination" or Albert Weeks forthcoming "Stalin's other war. Soviet Grand Strategy 1939-1941" because there one can find proper documentation and learn about Stalin's real intentions.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Winston Churchill's multi volume history of the Second World War was for many years influential. In talking about the period between the fall of France and the Invasion of the Soviet Union Churchill suggested that British Intelligence came to know of the German plans for Operation Barbarossa. Stalin was given a warning but he refused to head it. Churchill also saw the attack as inevitably flowing from the program which was outlined in Hitler's book Mein Kampf. As a result of Stalin's refusal to accept the warning the Germans were able to achieve enormous gains in the initial part of the invasion. This book is the most recent attempt to examine that period and to explain why Stalin acted as he did.

The book suggests that Hitler's decision to attack the Soviet Union was in fact not something which was cast in stone. Hitler and the German High Command also looked at alternate plans to end the war in Africa by the seizing of Gibraltar. Whilst this occurred Stalin seized a buffer zone in Romania and started to negotiate with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. It would seem that it was the Soviet Policy in the Balkans which led the German leadership to decide on Barabarossa.

Stalin at all times is portrayed in the book as totally pragmatic in deciding foreign policy. The Soviets in fact had more complete spy networks than the British. Stalin made on fatal miscalculation and that related to his assessment of the power structure in Germany. He believed that the German leadership was split on whether an invasion of Russia should occur. He thought that it would be possible to negotiate and to gain time through some form of appeasement. The reality was that although some German figures such as Ribbentrop were against Barbarossa they had no real power. The German ambassador to the Soviet Union fanned these hopes. He in fact hoped that Germany would not invade and ended up joining the plot against Hitler in 1944.

Stalin realised when France fell that the Soviet Union was in great danger. Not only did Germany have the best army in Europe but the Red Army was in disarray. The purges meant that 70% of serving officers had only been in their positions for less than a year. There were substantial problems in supplying units with ammunition and fuel. The T 34 tank had just been put into production and deliveries were slow.

Stalin hoped that if Germany was to invade Yugoslavia it would set back their time table by a month and delay the invasion of the Soviet Union by a year. Instead the crushing of Yugoslavia only took a few days. Stalin was eager for his army to remain passive and that it not provoke the Germans. He in turn hoped to stall events whilst Soviet factories cranked out munitions and tanks to try to get the Red Army in shape. When the warning came from Churchill to Stalin he was aware of the German preparations. It was viewed by the Russians however as an attempt to embroil them in the war rather than anything else.

In recent years some revisionists have suggested that there was some chance that the Soviets might attack Germany first. The book shows that this could not have happened. Zhukov raised the issue but Stalin was not keen because of the state of the Army. Zhulov himself later suggested that if a spoiling attack had taken place the Germans would have defeated it easily captured Moscow in 1941. A first class book which explains the moves prior to the German Soviet War.

Rating:
Summary: provocative
Review: You don't have to be a historian to be interested in the strange relationship between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the late 1930's and1940-1. The actions of these foresworn enemies who became bedfellows and then violent enemies again were always a source of frustrations for many noted personalities of the period. They were an enigma to many others. I found this book, with its access to many former secret documents a brilliant map to the happenings of that era. The author was able to turn a potentially boring load of official documents into an exciting drama. If you are interested in todays and yestedays political trickery....you must read this book!