John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY RON UNZ IN RUSSIA INSIDER
"Was Hitler's Invasion of Russia Defensive, to Foil an Attack by Stalin?"
There has always been the speculation that, with these two powerful states and two ruthless dictators, it was just a matter of time before one attacked the other. But that was speculation. The fact is Hitler literally felt himself destined to invade Russia, and Stalin had a gigantic job on his hands inside the USSR.
There is no evidence that Stalin was planning to invade Europe. None.
Stalin had enough problems at home without setting out on any fantastic venture, a venture which, by the way, would have brought him into direct conflict with the United States, which would never allow Europe to go under, just as it did not allow it to go under the Germans in WWI.
Not only that, but an invasion by Stalin would give the United States an excuse it would welcome to end the Soviet Union.
Stalin was actually in many ways a far more cautious man than many realize. Even though the USSR at this time had some of the world’s best spy networks abroad, owing to idealistic motivations of some educated foreigners in the 1930s, Stalin was so cautious, he often rejected really good intelligence brought to him for fear it was planted.
He was always ready to take advantage of a favorable opportunity right before his eyes, but he wasn't one to go seeking titanic new problems abroad. Russia, for example, had had enough problems in its war with Finland, a comparatively small, but very tough and determined, country.
Stalin did fully understand that Hitler would one day attack - how could he not with Hitler always talking of it? - and he prepared for it. His preparations were part of what stopped Hitler. German intelligence much underestimated the extent of things like Soviet armor reserves.
Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a treaty which surprised the world in 1939, Stalin worked very hard to deliver on promises and any shipments of resources Germany requested. It looked odd to be assisting the enemy you expected would invade one day, but Stalin was buying time, time to keep intense preparations going for the eventual invasion.
Stalin had massive reserves of tanks in the East. They weren't the best quality, as compared to Germany's best stuff, but they proved to more than make up for the fact in their sheer numbers. Some of the Germans’ most sophisticated equipment proved difficult and costly to maintain and repair – and especially given long supply lines and winter - whereas some of the Soviet equipment could almost be viewed as disposable.
We know Hitler's single biggest dream was always - going clear back to writing “Mein Kamp”’ in the 1920s - the conquest of Russia. He basically saw it as an act which could make Germany competitive with the United States in terms of amount of agrarian lands and bigger markets and space in which to grow in the long term.
He only got entangled in many of the conquests in Europe - apart from the early consolidation of Germany with re-occupying the Rhineland and seizing Czechoslovakia and the merger with Austria - because western leaders were not willing to give him a free hand with his dream mission.
By the way, if he had stopped at this early stage of consolidating a larger Germany, he might have gone down as one of the great German Chancellors, one who successfully enlarged Germany in the very heart of Europe, but, no, there was always the fantastic dream of Russia and new lands in the East. He actually did see himself as on a kind of mystical Teutonic religious crusade.
His diplomacy, over and over emphasized to the West, that they should allow Germany to move East and crush Communism, and his view did have supporters in the West. Remember, countries like Britain and the United States actually had sent some troops to Russia to intervene in the early days of the USSR. They were inadequate and unsuccessful, but the effort reveals the hostility the West felt. A hostility Hitler constantly tried to exploit.
But the prospect, some years down the road, of facing such an enlarged Germany was not a welcome one for many leaders in the West.
Hitler had nightmarish notions of clearing large parts of Russia for Germans and reducing Russian populations to mass slavery to serve the Reich. His visions were on such a scale that, even if he had been given a free hand, likely in the end, he would have created a mess. What a vast population and territory to try holding in subjugation and slavery.
What the author has effectively done here is to revive the Hitlerian argument to the West about Russia. That seems most unfortunate, but of course it comes at a time of intense American anti-Russian hysteria.
If readers want a little background on what the invasion actually did, see:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/05/09/john-chuckman-comment-russian-victory-day-parade-ignorantly-called-defiant-russias-wwii-experience-has-no-parallel-in-all-human-history-dwarfing-american-and-french-and-british-losses-now-a/
