German and Soviet contribution to the starting of WW2

A very interesting book is "Icebreaker" by Victor Suvurov.

This post has been edited by Dan Po on July 11, 2006 04:12 pm

so, you ignore the heart of communist/bolshevic/etc ideology: the final objective is a new order established by working class dictatorship. why those 24.000 tanks of Red Army in 1940 ? for motherland defence ? why 6 soviet airborne brigades (18.000 men) established by Stalin in 1938 ? etc, etc

just read the book already indicated.

This post has been edited by Dan Po on July 11, 2006 04:29 pm

How you reach at this proportions ? Can we know that magic procedure ?

That was Southern Banat, part of Yugoslavia, in early 1941.

Gen. Dénes

Antonescu was very clear: he said that he will never accepted any compensations for the Northern Transylvania, neither southern Banat or across the Dniester.

No, it is just mentioned in other posts I made.

I thought that Stalin had given up, or at least drawn back on the World Wide Revolution thing by the 30s, to concentrate on 'building socialism' in the USSR. But I am not sure about this, I will have to find some good books on Soviet foreign policy in the 30s to know better.

I think the Red Army had 20,000 tanks on inventory in 1940 because it had built that many since 1920. I think only a fraction of that number were actually operational.

Following the logic of using such facts as numbers of tanks available as proof of offensive intentions, if Stalin had big offensive intentions to attack Eastern and Western Europe why did he have all the Generals who knew anything about using tanks offensively executed 1937-38?

Did France also not have offensive intentions because it built a lot of tanks in the late 30s?

How you reach at this proportions ? Can we know that magic procedure ?

The answer to that is no, I am not going to tell you the procedure for coming up with these figures, but I will say that it invovles immense amounts of intricate and detailed calculation of variable factors about foreign policy stuff in the 1930s which are so intricate even I can't really understand them.

That's the magic.

Well, I prefer the science instead of the magic. And Im not sure about the scientifical value of your "proportions". No offence !

We have enough arguments to consider that the 22 june 1941 was a "preventive atack". The Red Army was massed at the western borders of Soviet Union. The soviet offensive against the wester Europe was a matter of time.

The western powers had a huge contribution to the start of WW2 because of what they signed in Munich 1938. That signing not only resulted in the collapse of the loose eastern european ententes and agreements, but also nullified the soviet efforts to enter into an alliance with France and those eastern buffer states.
German policy ranks 1st in the contribution, followed by western powers indecision and appeasement, which ranks 2nd, and by the eastern european states' territorial squabbles which rank 3rd.
Whoever wants to place Soviet Union in the top, should find some proof that Hitler would have hesitated or even stopped his war on Poland if the 23rd August Pact with the USSR wouldnt have been signed.

Where would you have expected it to mass? In Siberia, Caucasus, on the border of China?
Historically Russia has always focused on Europe. Most of its wars were in Europe, most of its competitors and opponents were in Europe. Russia's center of gravity was closer to Europe than to Japan, so naturally the bulk of its armies would be massed here, not in the far east.

soviet railcars were also build so that they could be quickly modiefied to run on normal gauge.
this was the case since the mid 30ies, while the OKW decided only in july 1941, well after Barbarossa began, that the entire soviet rail infrastructure should be modified to normal gauge, after it became clear that the quantity of captured rolling stock was grossly insufficient.

Nothing strange, since in the mid 30s the SU signed a treaty of mutual assistance with France. Assitance to Czechoslovakia was also envisioned in case of German attack.

i didn't say it is strange.
the soviet union, in harmony with the CPSU doctrine of the 30ies, did not see an agression as "bad". if a war is "just" or not is decided only by the aim of that war, i.e. a war is "just" if it serves the liberation of the proletarian class from the imperialist subjugations. from there, the conclusion was, that every war waged by the soviet union has a "just" cause because it serves the liberation of the "working class".
with that background offensive actions against western capitalist states, were within the party doctrine and thus preparations were conducted, the railcar "strategy" being one of them.

This post has been edited by dead-cat on July 12, 2006 09:30 am

The SU's foreign policy or military policy was not dominated by ideology. If it were so, the SU would have never signed any pact or treaty with France, Poland, Czechoslovakia and eventually nazi Germany.

I think that this obscures where all the aggression was coming from!

The USSR, the Western Allies, even Hungary, Bulgaria etc. all played a role in ALLOWING World War Two to start, but, they were not the driving force behind it at all.

It would never have come about if the Third Reich was not absolutely commited to waging it.

You can only blame the allies for starting World War Two by saying that they failed in their efforts to restrict German aggression. The main blame aught to lie with the Germans, for having the aggressive aims in the first place.

They weren't obliged or forced to have such aims.

it is not that simple as saying "the soviet union was communist so, they wouldn't ally themselves with capitalists". yes they would because they had a long term strategy which meant surviving long enough until they are strong enough for the world revolution (at least in europe).

since the end of the civil war, the soviet union saw her existence threatened all the time, well knowing that it is impossible to resist a determined combined attack of an alliance of imperialistic nations. that threat dominated soviet strategic thinking throughout the 20ies and 30ies.
it is the main reason for the agressive industrialization program which practically transformed peasents into slaves.
every alliance which bought the soviet union time and security was worth considering and explains why they supported someone with such a an opposed ideology like nazi germany.
having hitler attack france&england was the bestin thing stalin could hope since it would weaken all three. having hitler win in 6 weeks was allmost the worst thing stalin actually hoped for because now, hitler was stronger than ever. and exactly at that point the soviet union started to move away from nazi germany and support the allies (particulary england).