Icebreaker (Suvorov)
Encyclopedia
Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?, by Viktor Suvorov
(Russian
title: Ledokol, Ледокол) is a 1987 documentary book, which alleges that World War II
started as a result of Joseph Stalin
's ploy to "liberate" the working class
of Europe and eventually the whole world.
and the Nazi
regime attacked an unsuspecting USSR on June 22, 1941 with a much superior and better prepared force. Instead, Suvorov argues that the Soviet Union was poised to invade Nazi-controlled territories in July 1941.
Suvorov claims that Stalin successfully manipulated Hitler into removing the "buffer zone" (Poland) between Europe
and the USSR. Suvorov further argues that Stalin's goal was the export of communism
to other countries. Once Hitler 'broke the ice', Soviet victory in the large-scale war that followed would enable the USSR to impose Stalinist regimes on most of Europe. In this theory, Nazi military aggression would ironically form the icebreaker for a communist invasion.
Suvorov is often accused (or praised by historical revisionists) of shifting the blame of World War II on Stalin and thus removing the blame from Hitler; however, the actual content of the book contains no praise of Hitler or justification of his terror. In his later books, Suvorov insists that Stalin was a true evil genius (although unlucky), while reducing Hitler to a grossly incompetent evil.
Suvorov mounts two arguments in support of his thesis. The principal argument is based on analysis of available data on troop numbers, weaponry, locations and behaviour, matched against technical specifications and Soviet tactics. To support the main argument, Suvorov argues that Stalin perceived the outcome of World War II as a loss.
is normally seen as a form of social control and a component of imperialism
, delaying the emergence of a class-conscious international working class or proletariat
. Once the first communist regime took political power in the Russian Revolution
and survived the Russian Civil War
, a major line of debate in the USSR during the 1920s was how the world's first socialist state should relate to other nations.
The view of Trotsky was that a communist revolution could succeed only by continuous revolutionary activity in other nation-states. The notion of socialism surviving in a single nation-state was considered ridiculous and self-contradictory. The remaining capitalist powers would swiftly move to crush the USSR. Since the bourgeois nations would be more powerful, they would probably succeed in destroying socialism. However, if the working classes of these countries could understand that a war of conquest in support of capitalism was not in their class interests, they would not support such a war and socialism would survive through the process of revolution abroad.
Joseph Stalin
, on the other hand, argued that 'socialism in one country' was feasible if properly managed. His subsequent program of militarizing the whole Soviet economy was simultaneously a means of maintaining his totalitarian power and ensuring the survival of the Soviet state without regard to the internal politics of other nations.
It is important to note that Stalin's approach flew in the face of most Marxist thought up until that point. It is also claimed by many that neither the Trotskyist nor the Stalinist views envisioned the use of conventional armed forces to wage aggressive war
. However, this ignores the Soviet Union's invasions of breakaway parts of the former Russian Empire, the attempt to conquer Poland in 1920 to "export revolution" and continue on into Germany, and the Soviet aggression against the Baltic Republics and Finland in 1939, as well as annexation of Bessarabia
in 1940.
.
A noteworthy rebuttal of Suvorov's thesis is contained in Colonel David Glantz
's work Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War. Glantz views Suvorov's argument as "incredible" on a variety of fronts: first, Suvorov rejects without examination classified ex-Soviet archival material, and makes highly selective picks from memoirs. Glantz points to this as a serious methodological flaw. Further, Glantz argues, Suvorov's thesis is strongly contradicted both by ex-Soviet and German archival material, and the facts do not support the argument that the Red Army was prepared to invade Germany. On the contrary, the appalling lack of readiness, poor training level, and abysmal state of deployments show that the Red Army was unprepared for static defense, much less large-scale offensive operations. Glantz's conclusion is that "Stalin may well have been an unscrupulous tyrant, but he was not a lunatic."
For his part, however, Suvorov not only admits his selectiveness but justifies his methods, recalling his work in the intelligence community:
Commenting on the existing plans for Soviet preemptive strike Robin Edmonds argues that "the Red Army planning staff would not have been doing its job if it had not devoted some time between 1939 and 1941 to the possibility, at some future date, of a pre-emptive strike against Wehrmacht". David Brandenberger notes that recently published pre-1941 German analysis of Soviet military readiness also do not support the major Icebreaker's thesis demonstrating that Soviet preparations were assessed to be "defensive" by German intelligence."
Although Suvorov claims that an attack date of July 6, 1941 had been selected, this is contradicted by the evidence as presented by Glantz and others. There were no stockpiles of fuel, ammunition, and other stores held in forward areas as would have been needed if an invasion was about to be mounted. Major ground units were dispersed into small garrisons rather than being concentrated at railheads, as they would have been had they been preparing an invasion. Units were not co-located with their own transportation assets, leaving, for example, major artillery units immobile. Air Force aircraft were parked in neat, tightly-packed rows along their airfields rather than dispersed. Over 50% of all Soviet tanks required major maintenance on June 22, 1941. If an invasion were being planned, these maintenance tasks would have been completed. Most Soviet armor units were in the process of re-organizing into new Tank Corps
; the German invasion caught these units in the midst of this reorganization. Such a large-scale reorganization is inconsistent with an impending invasion.
The origin of Suvorov's thesis may lie in the fact that Marshal Zhukov did suggest a pre-emptive strike
on Germany early in 1941. Zhukov recalled this plan later but claimed either that the plan was rejected by Stalin or didn't reach the leader at all. This doesn't sound too convincing, though, as military historian Mikhail Meltyukhov has pointed out. First, it is hard to believe Zhukov's claim that he had given the top secret document to a secretary so that the latter could deliver it to Stalin. Second, the claim by Suvorov rejectors that the document doesn't have signatures really proves nothing. It is known that during those years official military documents were almost exclusively passed without proper formatting.
Another major Icebreaker's issue is a lack of documentary evidence. Cynthia A. Roberts notes that the book contains "virtually no documentary sources", and therefore "has been viewed in the West as an anti-Soviet tract". This disregard fact, that Soviet archives are politically controlled and still it is not possible to make any research. Amount of destroyed materials remains and will remain unknown.
Summarising the western scholars' opinion on Icebreaker Hugh Ragsdale concludes that the book is "generally considered discredited" by now, whereas Jonathan Haslam notes that Suvorov's claims "would be comical were it not taken so seriously". According to the latter, "there is a significant segment of opinion in Germany that wishes to rehabilitate the Nazi past, and the end of the Soviet regime created an atmosphere favorable to the publication of the book." It is worth noting, however, that Suvorov draws much of his support from the former communist states of Eastern Europe, not just Germany.
Viktor Suvorov
Viktor Suvorov is the pen name for Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun , a former Soviet and now British writer of Russian and Ukrainian descent who writes primarily in Russian, as well as a former Soviet military intelligence spy who defected to the UK...
(Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
title: Ledokol, Ледокол) is a 1987 documentary book, which alleges that World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
started as a result of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's ploy to "liberate" the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
of Europe and eventually the whole world.
Suvorov's thesis
Suvorov challenges the widely-accepted view that Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
and the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
regime attacked an unsuspecting USSR on June 22, 1941 with a much superior and better prepared force. Instead, Suvorov argues that the Soviet Union was poised to invade Nazi-controlled territories in July 1941.
Suvorov claims that Stalin successfully manipulated Hitler into removing the "buffer zone" (Poland) between Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the USSR. Suvorov further argues that Stalin's goal was the export of communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
to other countries. Once Hitler 'broke the ice', Soviet victory in the large-scale war that followed would enable the USSR to impose Stalinist regimes on most of Europe. In this theory, Nazi military aggression would ironically form the icebreaker for a communist invasion.
Suvorov is often accused (or praised by historical revisionists) of shifting the blame of World War II on Stalin and thus removing the blame from Hitler; however, the actual content of the book contains no praise of Hitler or justification of his terror. In his later books, Suvorov insists that Stalin was a true evil genius (although unlucky), while reducing Hitler to a grossly incompetent evil.
Suvorov mounts two arguments in support of his thesis. The principal argument is based on analysis of available data on troop numbers, weaponry, locations and behaviour, matched against technical specifications and Soviet tactics. To support the main argument, Suvorov argues that Stalin perceived the outcome of World War II as a loss.
Marxist theory
In traditional Marxist theory, militarismMilitarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
is normally seen as a form of social control and a component of imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, delaying the emergence of a class-conscious international working class or proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
. Once the first communist regime took political power in the Russian Revolution
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
and survived the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
, a major line of debate in the USSR during the 1920s was how the world's first socialist state should relate to other nations.
The view of Trotsky was that a communist revolution could succeed only by continuous revolutionary activity in other nation-states. The notion of socialism surviving in a single nation-state was considered ridiculous and self-contradictory. The remaining capitalist powers would swiftly move to crush the USSR. Since the bourgeois nations would be more powerful, they would probably succeed in destroying socialism. However, if the working classes of these countries could understand that a war of conquest in support of capitalism was not in their class interests, they would not support such a war and socialism would survive through the process of revolution abroad.
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, on the other hand, argued that 'socialism in one country' was feasible if properly managed. His subsequent program of militarizing the whole Soviet economy was simultaneously a means of maintaining his totalitarian power and ensuring the survival of the Soviet state without regard to the internal politics of other nations.
It is important to note that Stalin's approach flew in the face of most Marxist thought up until that point. It is also claimed by many that neither the Trotskyist nor the Stalinist views envisioned the use of conventional armed forces to wage aggressive war
War of aggression
A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense usually for territorial gain and subjugation. The phrase is distinctly modern and diametrically opposed to the prior legal international standard of "might makes right", under...
. However, this ignores the Soviet Union's invasions of breakaway parts of the former Russian Empire, the attempt to conquer Poland in 1920 to "export revolution" and continue on into Germany, and the Soviet aggression against the Baltic Republics and Finland in 1939, as well as annexation of Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
in 1940.
Historians' views
Suvorov's view that a Soviet invasion of Germany was imminent in 1941 is not shared by the majority of historiansSoviet offensive plans controversy
The Soviet offensive plans controversy refers to the debate among historians on the question of whether Joseph Stalin was planning to invade Germany prior to Operation Barbarossa.-Background:...
.
A noteworthy rebuttal of Suvorov's thesis is contained in Colonel David Glantz
David Glantz
David M. Glantz is an American military historian and the editor of the Journal of Slavic Military Studies....
's work Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War. Glantz views Suvorov's argument as "incredible" on a variety of fronts: first, Suvorov rejects without examination classified ex-Soviet archival material, and makes highly selective picks from memoirs. Glantz points to this as a serious methodological flaw. Further, Glantz argues, Suvorov's thesis is strongly contradicted both by ex-Soviet and German archival material, and the facts do not support the argument that the Red Army was prepared to invade Germany. On the contrary, the appalling lack of readiness, poor training level, and abysmal state of deployments show that the Red Army was unprepared for static defense, much less large-scale offensive operations. Glantz's conclusion is that "Stalin may well have been an unscrupulous tyrant, but he was not a lunatic."
For his part, however, Suvorov not only admits his selectiveness but justifies his methods, recalling his work in the intelligence community:
- "If a hundred secret agents are reporting one way, and one sounds out of place and makes no sense, deal with him. No one will trust him or you, they will laugh at you, and they will not believe you. But this is how great discoveries are made".
Commenting on the existing plans for Soviet preemptive strike Robin Edmonds argues that "the Red Army planning staff would not have been doing its job if it had not devoted some time between 1939 and 1941 to the possibility, at some future date, of a pre-emptive strike against Wehrmacht". David Brandenberger notes that recently published pre-1941 German analysis of Soviet military readiness also do not support the major Icebreaker's thesis demonstrating that Soviet preparations were assessed to be "defensive" by German intelligence."
Although Suvorov claims that an attack date of July 6, 1941 had been selected, this is contradicted by the evidence as presented by Glantz and others. There were no stockpiles of fuel, ammunition, and other stores held in forward areas as would have been needed if an invasion was about to be mounted. Major ground units were dispersed into small garrisons rather than being concentrated at railheads, as they would have been had they been preparing an invasion. Units were not co-located with their own transportation assets, leaving, for example, major artillery units immobile. Air Force aircraft were parked in neat, tightly-packed rows along their airfields rather than dispersed. Over 50% of all Soviet tanks required major maintenance on June 22, 1941. If an invasion were being planned, these maintenance tasks would have been completed. Most Soviet armor units were in the process of re-organizing into new Tank Corps
Tank Corps (Soviet)
-Pre-War Development of Soviet Mechanised Forces:In Soviet Russia, the so called armored forces preceded the Tank Corps. They consisted of the motorised armored units made of armored vehicles and armored trains...
; the German invasion caught these units in the midst of this reorganization. Such a large-scale reorganization is inconsistent with an impending invasion.
The origin of Suvorov's thesis may lie in the fact that Marshal Zhukov did suggest a pre-emptive strike
Pre-Emptive Strike
Pre-Emptive Strike is the first release by Five Finger Death Punch on July 10, 2007. It was only released as a digital download to the American iTunes Music Store. The live version of "The Devil's Own" was recorded at a performance in Las Vegas, Nevada....
on Germany early in 1941. Zhukov recalled this plan later but claimed either that the plan was rejected by Stalin or didn't reach the leader at all. This doesn't sound too convincing, though, as military historian Mikhail Meltyukhov has pointed out. First, it is hard to believe Zhukov's claim that he had given the top secret document to a secretary so that the latter could deliver it to Stalin. Second, the claim by Suvorov rejectors that the document doesn't have signatures really proves nothing. It is known that during those years official military documents were almost exclusively passed without proper formatting.
Another major Icebreaker's issue is a lack of documentary evidence. Cynthia A. Roberts notes that the book contains "virtually no documentary sources", and therefore "has been viewed in the West as an anti-Soviet tract". This disregard fact, that Soviet archives are politically controlled and still it is not possible to make any research. Amount of destroyed materials remains and will remain unknown.
Summarising the western scholars' opinion on Icebreaker Hugh Ragsdale concludes that the book is "generally considered discredited" by now, whereas Jonathan Haslam notes that Suvorov's claims "would be comical were it not taken so seriously". According to the latter, "there is a significant segment of opinion in Germany that wishes to rehabilitate the Nazi past, and the end of the Soviet regime created an atmosphere favorable to the publication of the book." It is worth noting, however, that Suvorov draws much of his support from the former communist states of Eastern Europe, not just Germany.
See also
- Eastern Front (World War II)Eastern Front (World War II)The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
- Operation BarbarossaOperation BarbarossaOperation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
- Soviet offensive plans controversySoviet offensive plans controversyThe Soviet offensive plans controversy refers to the debate among historians on the question of whether Joseph Stalin was planning to invade Germany prior to Operation Barbarossa.-Background:...
- Timeline of the Eastern Front of World War II
Further reading
- Suvorov, Viktor. Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War? (Viking Press/Hamish Hamilton; 1990) ISBN 0-241-12622-3
- Glantz, David. Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War. University Press of Kansas (May 1998), ISBN 0-7006-0879-6
- Suvorov, Viktor. The Chief Culprit: Stalin's Grand Design to Start World War II. Potomac Books (July 20, 2007) ISBN 1-5979-7114-6