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“If there is one place where a start can be made to arouse Europe to revolution, that place is Germany---and victory of the revolution in Germany will guarantee the victory of world revolution.”

Stalin, Sochineniya, Vol.6, p.267.

Stalin brought Hitler to power and maneuvered him into starting World War II. All studies of Communism have shown that the long-range objective of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was world conquest. Lenin made this clear in a speech delivered in 1920:

“[In November 1917] we knew that our victory will be a lasting victory only when our undertaking will conquer the whole world, because we have launched it exclusively counting on world revolution.”

Lenin, Polnoe sobraniesochinenii, vol. 42, 1.

Lenin believed that a World War I devastated Europe was ripe for Communist conquest. Lenin and Stalin always believed Germany was the key to seizing control of Europe. Throughout 1918-1919, Lenin tried to overthrow the tottering German Republic by staging a Bolshevik coup as he had in Russia in 1917. All over Germany there were pitched battles between the troops of the Communist’s Spartakists and the Republic’s Freikorps. The Freikorps was made up largely of veteran “stosstruppen” – specially trained shocktroops who had spearheaded the German 1918 Spring offensive. They trounced the Spartakists; temporarily foiling Lenin’s plans.

However, chaos continued to reign in Germany. Watching the growing Bolshevik strength, Poland feared the rebirth of a strong imperialist Russia that would be a threat to their newly acquired independence. In the Spring of 1920, the Poles allied themselves with the Ukrainian nationalist forces who had revolted against the Bolsheviks and were attempting to break away from Russia and create an independent Ukrainian Republic. Lenin sent the Red Army under the command of Stalin and General Tukhachevsky to put down the Ukrainian revolt and chase out the Poles. The revolt was crushed and the Polish Army retreated toward home with the Red Army in hot pursuit. Lenin saw this as another opportunity to seize control of Germany. Germany was still in political, economic, and social turmoil, and in Lenin’s eyes a prime target for revolutionary takeover. He planned to march the Red Army through Poland, link up with still powerful Bolshevik forces in Germany and seize control directly.

The Poles, however, took umbrage to being used as an access highway to Germany. In a huge battle outside Warsaw, the Polish Army trounced the Red Army, and sent it reeling back to Russia. It was a devastating blow to Stalin’s reputation, and aroused in him an enduring hatred of the Poles, for which they were to later pay a terrible price at places like the Katyn Forest. The Polish debacle convinced Lenin that the most feasible way to seize Germany and Europe would be to bring about another great European war. He figured it would be a rerun of World War I in which the Europeans would eventually bleed each other to death and be helpless to a Bolshevik takeover. This became the Bolshevik master plan, which Stalin relentlessly pursued throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Due to the still fresh memories of the horrors of World War I, during the 1920s and 1930s democratic socialism, pacifism, disarmament, and peace at almost any price were the prevailing sentiments in Europe. Stalin considered European social democrats and pacifists the greatest obstacle to a new European war. In November 1927 he stated:

“It is impossible to finish with capitalism without first finishing with social democratism in the workers’ movement.” (Pravda, No. 255, 6/7 Nov. 1927.) Again, in 1928, Stalin reiterated: “---first of all, the struggle with social democratization along all lines, including and following from this exposure of bourgeois pacifism.”

Stalin, Sochineniya, Vol.II, p.202.

Marx and Engels had predicted a world war that would last “fifteen, twenty, fifty years,” leading to “general exhaustion and creation of conditions for the final victory of the working class.”

Karl Marks and Friedrich Engels, WORKS, Ch. 21, p.351.

In the 1920s, Stalin decided to support Hitler and the Nazis rise to power as the best means to start the war he thought would destroy the entire European political and social structure. The Nazi Party and the German Communist Party hated the Social Democrat Party and often cooperated in hamstringing its programs. In November 1932, they worked together to organize a crippling transport strike in Berlin. In the German parliamentary elections of 1932-1933, Stalin ordered the German Communist Party to actively cooperate with the Nazis against the Social Democrats.(Alan Bullock, HITLER, pp. 210, 230.) The Social Democrats were for peace; the Nazis were hell-bent on avenging “the shame of Versailles.” After Hitler became Kanzler, the new Party line portrayed him as the “icebreaker of the revolution.” Hitler would start the great war that would lead to the revolution. It was fundamental Marxism-Leninism.

As Leon Trotsky said: “Without Stalin there would have been no Hitler, there would have been no Gestapo!” (Bulletin of the Opposition [BO], Nos.52-53, Oct, 1936.) During the 1920s, Hitler and the National Socialists Workers Party, the Nazis, grew in strength as they battled the Communists for control of Germany. In the 1920s and 1930s, they came to view the Communists as their principal long-range enemies and rivals for control of Europe. Thus, in the 1920s, Hitler’s crusade became twofold: (a) to avenge the shameful Treaty of Versailles that had all but destroyed Germany after World War I; (b) to destroy Communism, and to occupy and exploit the great agricultural and industrial resources of the Soviet Union west of the Urals. Stalin saw Hitler’s goals as the perfect vehicle to achieve his own goals. So, during the 1920s and 1930s, Stalin helped Germany rebuild and train the new Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine; the NKVD trained the Gestapo; Germany was supplied with any needed raw materials. Stalin became the “eminence gris” behind Hitler’s rise to power.

To seize and control Europe, the Soviet Union would have to have the most powerful industrial, military, and political apparatus in the world. To achieve this, Stalin set out to build a massive industrial base, to industrialize agriculture, to create the world’s most powerful military machine – the Red Army and Red Air Force. During the 1930s, Stalin built an Army and Air Force that had more tanks and aircraft than the combined forces of Germany, France, Britain, America, and Japan. It was composed of tens of thousands of high-speed tanks and ground-attack aircraft. It was designed for a lightning surprise attack. To control the Soviet Union and a conquered Europe, Stalin built the largest, most pervasive, and tyrannical political and police apparatus in the history of the world – the CPSU and the NKVD. From the first Five-Year Plan in 1929, this program never changed; the Soviet Union became and remained to the end a giant war machine.

At secret meetings in the pre-war years, Stalin had often discussed his plan for “liberating” a war-torn Europe with the Red Army. The plan always involved getting a war started in Europe in which the Soviet Union would remain neutral until the adversaries had exhausted each other. At that point the Red Army would sweep into Europe to “liberate” the masses. Stalin had written:

“A great deal depends upon whether we succeed in delaying the war, which is unavoidable, with the capitalist world, until that moment when the capitalists start fighting among themselves.” I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, Vol.10, p. 228.

Cited by Viktor Suvorov, ICEBREAKER, London, Hamish Hamilton,1990, p. 33.

“The decisive battle can be considered imminent when all the class forces hostile to us become sufficiently entangled with each other, when they are fighting sufficiently with each other, and when they have weakened each other sufficiently for the conflict to be beyond their strength.” I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, Vol. 6, p. 158.

Suvorov, op. cit., p. 33.

“Struggles, conflicts and wars among our enemies are … our greatest ally. If war does break out, we will not sit with folded arms – we will have to take to the field, but we will be the last to do so. And we shall do so in order to throw the decisive load on the scale and tip the balance.” I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, Vol. 7, (Moscow, 1952), pp. 14, 27.

Cited by Richard Pipes, COMMUNISM, New York, The Modern Library, 2001, p.74.

The decision to finally implement this plan was reached at a special session of the Politburo held on August 19, 1939.

“The question of war or peace is entering a phase which for us is critical. If we conclude the Treaty of Mutual Assistance with France and Great Britain, Germany will renounce its claim to Poland and seek a modus vivendi with the Western powers. The war will be set aside, but subsequently events could take on a dangerous character for the USSR. If we accept Germany’s offer for the conclusion of a non-aggression pact, she will naturally attack Poland and the entry of France and Great Britain into the war will become inevitable. Western Europe will be caught up in serious troubles and disorders. In these conditions, we shall have good chances to stay outside the conflict, and we may expect our entry into the war to be favorable for us.”

“The experience of the past twenty years demonstrates that in time of peace the Communist movement in Europe has no chance of being strong enough to seize power. The dictatorship of the Communist Party may be envisaged only as a result of a great war.”

“Thus, our task consists in making sure that Germany should be involved in war as long as possible, so that England and France would be so exhausted that they would no longer be capable of presenting a threat to a Soviet Germany. We shall maintain a position of neutrality, while biding our time; the USSR will grant aid to present-day Germany to provide raw materials and general supplies.”

“For these plans to be realized, it is indispensable to prolong the war as long as possible, and it is in this precise direction that we should guide all the forces with which we shall act in Western Europe and in the Balkans.”

“Comrades! It is in the interest of the USSR - the Fatherland of the Workers - that war should break out between the Reich and the Franco-British capitalist bloc. We must do everything so that the war should last as long as possible with the aim of weakening both sides. It is for these reasons that we must give priority to the approval of the conclusion of the pact proposed by Germany, and to work so that this war, which will be declared within a few days, shall last as long as possible.”

Excerpts from speech of I. V. Stalin to the Plenum of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, 19 August 1939. Cited by Brian Crozier, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SOVIET EMPIRE, Appendix A.

News of the Politburo meeting and what had been decided quickly leaked out to the Western press. The French news agency Havas published a report of the proceedings. This obviously touched a raw nerve in the Kremlin. Stalin quickly and uncharacteristically published a scathing denial in Pravda on November 30, 1939:

“THE FALSE REPORT ISSUED BY THE HAVAS AGENCY”

“The editor of Pravda has put the following question to Comrade Stalin. What is Comrade Stalin’s attitude to the message issued by the Havas agency on ‘Stalin’s speech’, allegedly made by him ‘in the Politburo of 19 August’, at which ideas were supposedly advanced to the effect that ‘the war must be continued for as long as needed to exhaust the belligerent countries’?

Comrade Stalin has sent the following answer:

‘This report issued by the Havas agency, like many more of its messages, is nonsense. I of course cannot know in precisely which nightclub these lies were fabricated. But no matter how many lies the gentlemen of the Havas agency might tell, they cannot deny that:

a) it was not Germany which attacked France and Britain, but France and Britain which attacked Germany, thereby taking upon themselves the responsibility for the present war;

b) after hostilities began, Germany made peace proposals to France and Britain, while the Soviet Union openly supported these German peace proposals, for it considered, and continues to consider, that only as early end to the war as possible can bring relief in a fundamental way to the condition of all countries and all peoples;

c) the ruling circles in Britain and France rejected out of hand both the German peace proposals and the Soviet Union’s efforts to end the war as quickly as possible.

Such are the facts. What can the nightclub politicians of the Havas agency provide to counter these facts?’

J. STALIN, Pravda, 30 November 1939.

Suvorov, op. cit., p. 43.

During a 1940 meeting with Party agitators in Dnepropetrovsk, Leonid Breshnev was questioned about the Nazi - Soviet Non - Aggression Pact:

“Comrade Breshnev, we have to interpret non - aggression and say that it has to be taken seriously, and that anyone who does not believe in it is talking provocation. But people have little faith in it. So what are we to do? Do we go on interpreting it or not?

Breshnev: “You have to go on interpreting it; and we shall go on interpreting it until not one stone of Nazi Germany remains upon another.”

Leonid Breshnev, Malaya Zemlya, Moscow, 1978, p. 16.

Suvorov, op. cit., pp. 34, 35.

On March 13, 1940, the Politburo ordered the People’s Commissariat for Defense to classify and grade the entire nomenklatura (the ruling elite) of the CPSU, and give them appropriate military ranks in the Red Army and Red Navy. Overnight the Party was converted into a para - military organization.

“Officials of Party committees would be obliged systematically to undergo military retraining so that, whenever they might be called into the RKKA (Rabache - Krest’ yanskaya Krasnaya Armiya - the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army) or the RKKF (Rabache - Krest’ yanskii Krasny Flot - the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Navy), they would be able to devote themselves to the duties appropriate to their qualifications.”

Politburo Decree, 13 March 1940, “Military Retraining and Regrading of Party Committee Officials and the Procedure to be Followed on their Mobilization into the RKKA.”

Suvorov, op. cit., p. 52.

Military training of Party personnel proceeded at an accelerated pace. Between May 1940 and February 1941, 99,000 Party workers, including “63,000 senior workers of Party committees,” sat for examinations and appeared before boards. In March 1939, in a statement to the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU, Lev Mekhlis, chief of political administration of the Red Army said:

“… If the edge of the second imperialist war should turn against the first socialist state of the world, we must carry military hostilities into the enemy’s territory, perform our international duty and increase the number of Soviet republics … .”

K. Voroshilov, L. Mekhlis, S. Budyonny, G. Stern, The Red Army Today, Speeches Delivered at the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU (B), March 10-21, 1939 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1939), p. 42.

This is how Red Air Force General Baidukov described future war in Pravda:

“What joy and happiness will shine in the faces of those who will receive here in the Great Kremlin Palace the last republic into the brotherhood of nations of the whole world! I envisage clearly the bomber planes destroying the enemy’s factories, railway junctions, bridges, depots and positions; low-flying assault aircraft attacking columns of troops and artillery positions with a hail of gunfire; and assault landing ships putting their divisions ashore in the heart of the enemy’s dispositions. The powerful and formidable air force of the Land of the Soviets, along with the infantry and tank and artillery troops will do their sacred duty and will help the enslaved peoples to escape from their executioners.”

Pravda, Georgi Baidukov, 18 August 1940.

Suvorov, op. cit., p. 352.

On January 1, 1941, Pravda greeted the new year with the slogan:

“Let us increase the number of republics of the Soviet Union!”

“Our country is large; the globe must revolve for nine hours before the whole of our vast Soviet land can enter the new year of our victories. The time will come when not nine hours, but all twenty-four hours on the clock will be needed for this to happen … Who knows where we shall be greeting the new year in five or ten years’ time – in what latitude, on what new Soviet meridian?”

Pravda, 1 January 1941.

As the date of Stalin’s planned attack drew closer, Pravda became more jingoistic:

“Divide our enemies, meet the demand of each of them temporarily and then destroy them one at a time, giving them no opportunity to unite.’

Pravda, 4 March 1941.

On 5 May 1941, Stalin made a speech in the Kremlin honoring the military academy graduates. The speech lasted forty minutes, which for the taciturn Stalin, was tantamount to a filibuster. The speech was not published at that time, but was frequently referenced; more of it was published later.

“At one time or another we have followed a line based on defense.…But now that our army has been reconstructed and we have become strong, it is necessary to shift from defense to offense. While securing defense in our country, we must act in an offensist (nastupatel’nym) way. Our military policy must change from defense (oborona) to waging offensist actions. We need to instill in our indoctrination, our propaganda and agitation, and in our press an offensist spirit. The Red Army is a modern army. It is an army that is offensist.”

A. N. Yakolev, ed., 1941 god. Dokumenty , Moscow: Mezhdunarodniy Fond “Demokratiya”, 1998, p. 162.

Cited by Albert L. Weeks in Stalin’s Other War, Appendix 1, pp. 84, 94, 167.

“J. V. Stalin, the Secretary-General of the CPSU (b), in the course of a speech he made at a reception for the graduates of military academies on 5 May 1941, gave it clearly to be understood that the German Army was the most probable enemy.”

VIZH No. 4 1978, p. 85.

Suvorov, op. cit., p. 173.

“…to be ready, on the orders of the High Command, to deliver swift blows utterly to destroy the enemy, to carry out combat operations over his territory and seize important positions.”…“the war with Germany will not begin before 1942.”

V. A. Anfilov, Bessermertnyii povig, Moscow Nauka 1971, p. 171.

Suvorov, op. cit., p. 182-183.

By May and June 1941, it was no longer possible to conceal the massive Soviet troop build-up. But it was possible to conceal the date of the planned attack, which is why Stalin permitted the 1942 date to leak out.

On 8 May 1941, three days after Stalin’s secret speech, TASS broadcast an outraged denial of a Japanese news-agency report of a massive build-up of Red Army forces on the western front:

“Japanese newspapers are publishing reports issued by the Domei Tsusin Agency in which it states that the Soviet Union is concentrating strong military forces on its western frontiers….In this connection, passenger traffic along the Trans-Siberian Railway has been stopped, so that troops from the Far East can be transferred mainly to its western frontiers.” TASS is authorized to state that this suspiciously strident Domei Tsusin report…is the fruit of the sick imagination of its authors….

Suvorov, op. cit., p. 188.

On May 15,1941, the People’s Commissar of Defense, Timoshenko and the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, Zhukov sent a memorandum to Stalin titled “Consideration of the Plan for the Strategic Deployment of the Armed Forces in Case of War with Germany and Its Allies.” The following are excerpts from the memorandum:

“Taking into account the fact that at the present time Germany can maintain its army in mobilized readiness together with its deployed forces in the rear, it has the capability of preempting us in deploying and mounting a surprise strike.”

“In order to prevent this from happening while destroying the German army, I consider it necessary that in no way should we yield the initiative for starting hostilities to the German command.”

“We should preempt (upridit’) the enemy by deploying and attacking the German Army at the very moment when it has reached the stage of deploying (in order to wage an attack) but has not yet organized itself into a front or concentrated all units of its armed forces along the front….”

“In order that the above may be carried out in the way indicated, it is necessary in timely fashion to take the following measures without which it will not be possible to deliver a surprise strike against the enemy both from the air as well as from the ground.” (There follows a list of measures relating to the locations along the Western Front for deploying Red Army infantry, tank, etc., divisions and the number of days or weeks the various measures will take to execute the Red Army’s “surprise strike.”)

Yakovlev, op. cit., pp. 215-220.

Weeks, op. cit., Appendix 2, pp. 169-170.

A large number of post-World War II official reports document the massive build-up of Soviet forces on the western frontier during this period. On 26 May 1941, the Trans-Baikal Military District and the Far Eastern Front were ordered to send nine divisions, including three tank divisions, to the west. The 16th Army was on the Trans-Siberian Railway and the 22nd and 24th Armies were headed toward it.

General A. Grylev and Professor V. Khvostov, Kommunist,1968, No.2, p.67.

Suvorov, op. cit., p.191.

Marshal Bagramyan wrote: “we had to prepare all the operational documentation needed for moving five rifle and four mechanized corps out of the areas where they were stationed permanently into the frontier zone.…On 15 June we were ordered to begin moving all five rifle corps to the frontier…They took with them everything necessary for combat operations. For purposes of secrecy, these movements took place only at night.”

Tak Nachinalas Voina, Moscow Voenizdat 1971, pp.54, 77

Suvorov, op. cit., p.203

In the 1930s, during the first two five-year plans, the Soviet Union had built an impregnable line of fortifications, comparable to the Maginot Line, but longer and deeper, that ran from Leningrad to Odessa – it was called the Stalin Line. In the spring of 1941, Stalin began dismantling this powerful line of defense. A defensive line would not be needed if one were planning to launch the greatest offensive operation in history.

“The situation was becoming absurd. When we were faced by weak armies of comparatively small countries, our frontiers were really well and truly safe. When Nazi Germany became our neighbor the defensive installations put up by the engineers along the former frontier were abandoned and even partially dismantled.”

“At the beginning of May 1941, following Stalin’s speech at the reception for military academy graduates, the brake was applied even more strongly to all work that was being done to build engineered defenses and to lay down mines.”

GRU Colonel Ilya Starinov, Miny Zhdut Svoego Chasa, p.186.

Suvorov, op. cit., pp.28, 175.

On 13 June 1941, the greatest mass movement of troops in history began. The First Strategic Echelon had 170 divisions; 56 of these were stationed right up against the western frontier. The remaining 114 divisions were in the western districts, a short distance from the frontier. “Between 12 and 15 June, the western military districts were ordered to move all divisions in the interior of the country into positions close to the state frontiers.”

V. Khvostov, Major-General A. Grylev, Kommunist 1968, No. 12, p.68.

Before May 1941, Soviet newspapers had glorified war in general and happily celebrated Germany’s victories in Europe. Pravda waxed poetic about “modern war in all its terrible beauty!”

Pravda, 19 August 1940.

Suvorov, op. cit., p.176.

The day after Stalin’s secret May 5th speech, everything suddenly changed:

“The fire of the Second Imperialist War blazes beyond the frontiers of our Motherland. The whole weight of its incalculable misfortunes is laid on the shoulders of the workers. The people do not want war. Their gazes are fixed on the countries of socialism which are reaping the fruits of peaceful labor. They see with every justification a solid bastion for peace in the armed forces of our Motherland, in the Red Army and Navy. In the present complex international situation it is necessary to be ready for surprises of all kinds….”

Pravda, 6 May 1941, leading article.

Suvorov, op. cit., p.176.

This same terminology prefaced every Soviet “liberation.” In May 1941, the whole gigantic communist propaganda apparatus suddenly began sounding the alarm “to be ready for unexpected events.” The People’s Commissar for Defense issued order No. 191 to “all companies, batteries, squadrons, air squadrons and on ships”…“to be ready for unexpected events.”

General S. P. Ivanov, Chief of the General Staff Academy of the Armed Forces of the USSR, and a group of leading Soviet historians, produced a comprehensive study entitled The Initial Period of the War (Nachalnye Period Voiny.) The study indicated that Red Army westward troop movements began in February, were increased in March, reached enormous proportions in April and May, and became a flood in June. The full build-up of Soviet forces on the German frontier was planned to be complete by July 10th. The railroads were paralyzed for almost six months by these secret military movements.

There were many indications that the planned launch date for Soviet Operation GROZA (Thunderstorm) was 6 July 1941. Zhukov and Stalin liked to launch surprise attacks on Sunday mornings, and 6 July 1941 was the last Sunday before the concentration of Soviet forces would have been complete. Soviet military doctrine dictated that an offensive should begin before the concentration of troops was completed.

The study not only admitted that Hitler launched a preventive attack, but also put a time to it: “the Nazi command succeeded in forestalling our troops literally in the last two weeks before the war began.”

General of the Army S. P. Ivanov, Nachalnyi Period Voiny, Moscow Voenizdat 1974. pp. 211-212.

Suvorov, op. cit., pp. 206, 327.