Has anyone on here read Viktor Surovov's controversial book Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War??
Link: http://www.amazon.com/Icebreaker-Who-Started-Second-World/dp/0241126223.
It looks incredibly interesting. A very different take on WWII than we're taught in school. If anyone has read this, can you vouch for its credibility and potential to be a good book? It's like $100-$500 dollars to buy on the internet, but I found the PDF for free. I just want to make sure it's worth reading before I dive into a 400-page book that contradicts most of what I learned about WWII throughout my life.
Sounds interesting. Can you link the pdf?
Definitely. Here it is: http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/icebreaker.pdf. It may take a few attempts/refreshes to load because it's so big, but it works eventually.
Good link.
Downloads pretty quick on FiOS.
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree." -James Madison
"If government were efficient, it would cease to exist."
See June 1941, the answer of John Erickson to this thesis in essay form. Erickson was a historian who specialised in the Soviet Union and wrote exhaustive military histories of the Eastern Front The Road to Stalingrad and The Road to Berlin with a focus on the Soviet perspective of the conflict. Download it here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HBLQ9NTY
To learn new things about the Second World War and turn your understanding of the origins of the war upside down I recommend AJP Taylor's Origins of the Second World War.
Rezun is a whore who made his living as a professional Russian defector. By raising alarm about and by casting as a cartoon villain a country he had defected from for the Western audiances. Surprisingly he also reached popularity among a section of a Russian populace in the 1990s when it briefly became hip to disparge everything that was local/Russian. He obviously has a knack for the market, he knows what will be in demand and is able to supply it. So as an enterprenur Rezun is somewhat brilliant. However as a scholarly work (rather than market geared sensationalism) his Icebreaker is imbecilic. All one has to do to see this is examine the state of the Red Army in 1941.
A military in the middle of a process of drastic reforms (undertaken following its poor showing in the Winter War) isn't a military planning to the next month invade an opponent than can field 150 divisions and had just conquered half of Europe. At the very least it will wait until all the changes have been implemented.
Mark Solonin has affirmed with great sources most of Rezun's claims. Russian and Russan Jews themselves do not for the most part find his thesis amazing (much of us were not surprised). Virtually all Russian Jews have his books on their bookshelf.
Solonin's books: Razgrom 1941, and Denh M. (Damn, my laptop still needs Russian letter stickers for the keyboard...)
Rezun knows that he talking about: see all his other books on life in the military and military police. His most recent book, the Chief Culprit, and Posledneya Respublika are better updated than Icebreaker, since Rezun had some data wrong (he took several Soviet statistics at their word, when they were fabricated by the Soviets). These corrections he took into account in later books, but they don't affect his thesis much.
Its merely that many Russophiles and Socialists hate Rezun in the same way they hate Vladamir Petrov (My Retreat from Russia and Russian Gold, about his days in Magadan concentration camps) or Anatoly Kuznetsov (Babi Yar). These authors reveal how much responsible what became the KGB was for the civilian losses at the beginning of the war, in Kiev and elsewhere.
Just because Stalin was attacked by Hitler doesn't mean Stalin did not want to attack Hitler: both coulnd't care less about their people and both expanded their borders since 1939. USSR spending statistics on the military since 1928 (pre-Hitler) to 1941 corrected by Naum Jasny easily confirm the pre-1941 USSR military build-up. Merely Stalin screwed up and lost most of this investment when the Nazi's attacked early.
Most arguments against Rezun are highly biased. A quick look at statistics that Rezun never used or heard of affirms his main idea, if we take into account merely the 1939 pact and post 1939-territory expansion.
USSR Military expenditures.
1928 .07 billion rubles annually to 5.7 annually by 1937 to 13.2 annually by 1940. Jasny, Naum. 1951. The Soviet Price System.
(BTW, in terms of % government expenditures, it's out of 26.8, 53.2, and 63.6, annually, respectively. That's the more important figure, once its in percent.)
Voroshilov himself wrote that they were planning an attack. It's in the Russian archives, which post Soviet researchers can now benefit from. But that is irrelevent to the topic.
Just because Stalin was attacked by Hitler doesn't mean Stalin did not want to attack Hitler:
Plausible as such. But not on July 1941. The claim that this attack was going to come in July 1941 discredits his particular case.
Stalin was petrified of no one and had robbed banks personally.
He did not especially fear anyone except his own subordinates, and he did not fear them as so much be always on his guard.
He was cocky, and that cost the lives of two million soldiers in the first days of the war and the waste of much of his military arsenal.
Rezun is not wrong because he presses this point to much. He is, in some people's opinion, too lax on Stalin, in fact. Because Rezun is NOT an economist. He merely says how useless offensive designed tanks were.
That military equipment was not merely useless for defensive war as Rezun claimed. It had an opportunity cost of about altogether a third of the government revenue integrated over 13 years! It was possible in the first place by starving the whole of Russia to force them to save (in the sense of not consuming, allowing more resources to go to capital).
Jasny showed that by 1940, 59% of annual GDP (in a Socialist country, this is government expenditure) went into the two related categories of big projects industrial capital and military capital. Even Gustav Cassel had a speech admitting this manner of saving as if it is common knowledge (Protectionism to Planned Economy to Dictatorship).
And all this was blown up on the ground at the start of the war due to Stalin's incompetence. All but a few factories were not wrecked; and many factories and power plants (were mined by NKVD to prevent them falling into German hands).
I have been able to find Taylor's Origins of the Second World War online. Here is the link.
Also useful is David Glantz's When Titans Clashed or better its first chapter (Prelude 1918-1941) in order to get a picture of the state of Stalin's military in 1941. (He wrote a whole book on this very subject, but that isn't freely avaliable so what can you do.)
I suggest you read the last two chapters of Origins (The War of Nerves and War for Danzig) and the chapter on the partiton of Poland in Icebreaker, then see for yourself.
1. Taylor is a socialist through and through, and a bad source in my opinion, but I'll pretend its a good one: what happens? Even his data trips you up if you intend to use it to support the anti-rezun thesis. "Germany spent on armament about 15% of her gross national product" "The Germans had 8500 tanks."
[http://i26.tinypic.com/2i297ah.jpg, if image gets clipped.]
Anyway, it quickly adds up to more than 8500 within the first few years of the 1930's. Then the advanced tanks roll out.
Meltuhov's conclusions for the USSR (p.506): each table is production of tanks during that year... (we'll get to this author later) 2. Solonin has statistics, and Rezun's newer books (pointed out above) are good. But here's, if you'd like, another source, that takes an anti-Rezun's conclusion but pro-Rezun's thesis approach (perhaps you'd like it more). Michael Meltuhov. 2008. Stalin's Lost Chance. He has literally thousands of footnotes to the most recent sources of data... I can post more of his data, like the table above; but I think its clear from that the extent of Soviet military production. Jasny was right; it is a big chunk of all government expenditures and we can clearly see where it went. He does not agree with Rezun (in an earlier book, in fact, rather sharply) that Stalin would have won so very easily if he attacked first. But his own data supports much of the opposite conclusion, and he is forced to meet the thesis half-way. However, the raw data in pp.506-525 really aid Rezun. Solonin is between Rezun and Meltuhov (who are in Russia and can't afford to upset in a violent way too many people by revealing just how much the Soviet commanders screwed up and wasted so many lives they might not needed have...) 3. Back to Taylor. The last chapters, pp. 80-81, in the pdf. "[T]he prime motive of Soviet policy....was a desire to be left alone. The Soviets were conscious of their own weakness; they feared a hostile coalition of the capitalist states; and they were anxious to press on with their economic expansion."
"The public Pact, signed on 23 August, provided for mutual non-aggression. A secret protocol excluded Germany from the Baltic states and from the eastern parts of Poland— the territory east of the Curzon line which was inhabited by Ukrainians and White Russians. This was, after all, what the Russians had sought to obtain from the Western Powers. The Nazi-Soviet pact was only another way of doing it: not so good a way, but better than none." What nonsense! Jasny revealed in the 1950's, based on Soviet Yearbooks and correcting based on use of confirmed data in the yearbooks, that Soviets decreased the real standard of living (real quantities of goods consumed) over 20% for workers since pre-revolution and 30% for peasants, and poured most into heavy industry related to military, power stations, dams, and military upkeep (the direct military expenditures). Agriculture was destroyed and formed a minor part of the economy. Consumer goods production was also very low. So what were they building? We know now after declassification.
Soviet Union baited Germany by pretending to discuss pacts of mutual defense with Britain and France. The Soviets wanted more territory since the 1920's, in fact. Taylor apparently thinks the Soviet Union was entitled to this territory? In fact, neither Germany nor the Soviet Union were entitled to any more territory. There is no such thing as being entitled to more territory. They were aggressors. "The pact was neither an alliance nor an agreement for the partition of Poland. Munich had been a true alliance for partition: the British and French dictated partition to the Czechs. The Soviet government undertook no such action against the Poles. They merely promised to remain neutral, which is what the Poles had always asked them to do". Tell that to the Poles. Katyn is just one example of this "aid" to the Poles. 4. Glantz is as biased as Taylor. He makes massive errors in interpreting events, right from the start. He claims Stalin was afraid of "innovative theorists such as Tukhachevsky." Tukachevstky was a terrible bumbler; many sources point out his incompetance in the then past, and that was why he was arrested. Who won the war? "If any one man deserved that label, it was not Eisenhower but Zhukov, Vasilevsky, or possibly Stalin himself. More generally, the Red Army and the Soviet citizenry of many nationalities bore the lion's share of the struggle against Germany from 1941 to 1945." The question is why it bore the brunt of the war. This itself cannot be a datum in answering the question. "Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make the difference between defeat and victory in 1941-1942; that achievement must be attributed solely to the Soviet people and to the iron nerve of Stalin, Zhukov, Shaposhnikov, Vasilevsky, and their subordinates." Iron Nerve? Its called penal battalions, which are not something talked about proudly so he doesn't mention it except once, as if this did not make a great difference. Glantz does not make an overall thesis, but merely summarizes battles that cost millions of lives as superficially as is possible (as they are usually covered: deaths and troop movements; and only the leader's are discussed... His figures are slanted; by not separating German troops from German allies in the area. ) 5. I myself find expenditures accounts most convincing, for instance those posted without reference to the question at hand and hence unbiased; defensive incompetance of NKVD chosen loyalists does not mean that for over a decade Stalin demonstrated his intentions up to the last day. No country except the USSR was spending money on its military to such an extent until the war! Not even Germany...
I don't know what is your point. I do not see a worthwile argument from you. Why do you keep talking about Soviet military production? That is not and never was in dispute. It is anything but news to me that the Soviet Union was churring out military equipment in prodigal amounts during the 1930s. The point being what? You need to prove not that the Red Army was huge, but that in 1941 Stalin was of the opinion that it could rout the Germans. BTW, the Germans had nowhere near 8,000 tanks. They had less than the French. Taylor is a diplomatic historian so he is allowed an occassional mistake in matters of military (and economy). EDIT: Actually my paper version says 3,500 not 8,500. So it is not even a mistake but a typo.
All economic arguments about history are those of demonstrated preference (see Mises, or Rothbard who coined the term for Mises' use of the idea of action as providing for the immediate future, hence what was done demonstrates speculative preference (expected own preference in the near future).
That's why the 8,500 was strange and why I was unwilling to use it (point 1). But I say even assuming its true; the Soviets were still churning out much more! Demonstrated preference! X produces what X thinks will satisfy his preferences in the immediate future.
Rezun explains it in terms of Marxist-Leninist theory of international revolution, and Stalin's want to get it done in his lifetime by making "Europe safe for Communism" through someon else's rampages from which he "liberates it." Rezun makes his point by showing that most tanks were offensive type. The latest figures show its half purely offensive tank types of BT Rezun claimed, and the other half the slightly better armoured T variants, which are still offensive tanks. Only during the war are defenseive tanks of the higher T varients produced. Again, demonstrated preference.
How do we know Hitler wanted to be an aggressor? By his massive weapons buildup in late 1930's + "bandit ideology". How do we know Stalin wanted to be an aggressor? By his massive weapons buildup continously over time, increasing even prior the Nazi threat + "bandit ideology".
Taylor producing pure propoganda when he claims the Nazis wanted not much more territory and USSR merely wanted peace... (BTW, look at his wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_John_Percivale_Taylor
Taylor a lifelong communist, Lenin his hero. That speaks easily about his intentions and why he follows the party line (in USSR, for instance, in Fall of Berlin, the offical USSR movie, Hitler was portrayed as a moron, not as a dangerous bandit).
If your not convinced, then no economic arguments will convince you, since apparently want Stalin to come out and have said, "I Stalin intend to expand USSR territory at date ___". Nothing else will do, apparently.
If you are looking for this, you won't find it, because in USSR politics words don't matter; and as Gide was told, "It's not a matter of the text; just sign here."
Oh; in the official movie, Stalin also flies to Berlin, dressed in a white suit, and gets kissed by Russian people the Germans took as forced labour to Germany. (In fact, he put many of these people back into concentration camps because being taken prisoner even when civilian means treason; and he certainly never was in Berlin.) Oh, but the official movie is more convincing however than facts. It is, after all, the official movie.
Back to Taylor. The last chapters, pp. 80-81, in the pdf. "[T]he prime motive of Soviet policy....was a desire to be left alone. The Soviets were conscious of their own weakness; they feared a hostile coalition of the capitalist states; and they were anxious to press on with their economic expansion."
This is falsified by secret documents stolen from Poland proving that the US ambassador and Roosevelt committed to supporting the Soviet Union, counting them as a democratic ally, in the event of a war in Europe. In truth, Stalin may well have been assured that the United States would intervene on his behalf even if he had attacked Germany first, because the secret policy of Roosevelt was to provoke Germany even if they did not take initiative against Poland. Roosevelt's Ambassador in Russia, Britain and France, William Bullitt, was married to a Marxist journalist, making it all too obvious what his global agenda was.
How do we know Hitler wanted to be an aggressor? By his massive weapons buildup in late 1930's + "bandit ideology".
That is not true. Germany in the 1930s was not engaged in a massive weapons buildup. Its rearmament programme was no more intense (or only slightly so) than that of UK and France, however Hitler found it expedient for his chosen tactic in the diplomatic arena to overstate the extent of the programme and the readiness of Germany to wage war.
You don't have to tell me that Taylor was a Marxist or point me to his Wikipedia page, I know that. I also know that he was his own man and posessed of a great deal of professional integrity.* The implication that he took his cue from official Moscow is ludicrous, besides his judgement of Hitler is not as a 'moron' but as a shrewd, opportunistic predator that left it to others to do his work for him.
*(In fact as a rule Western Marxist historians, as outsiders and non-comformist, tend to be superior to Western non-Marxist historians, the reverse being true in the East.)
FDR was the one who made it into a World War.
I get weird looks when I try to use WWII history as an icebreaker. :(
Pro Christo et Libertate integre!