"The Chief Culprit" by Viktor Suvorov, Stalin's Grand Design to Start WWII

Well, I'm reading this book and it turned out to be a very interesting reading. I knew Suvorov's previous works just by fame. He was a GRU agent and deserted to Great Britain in late 70's, after working for several years on Moscow's secret state archives. Suvorov found several documents which showed a very different reality from what the western literature have shown in the last 60 years.

According to his research, Stalin had been for years developing a strategy to start a war in Europe, that would weaken the european powers, thus allowing the Red Army steamroll all over Europe, turning it into a big soviet continent.


The chapter I read today deals with Red Army's occupation of Bessarabia and North Bucovina in 1940.

As a preparation for his invasion of Europe, Stalin was clearing his western borders of buffer states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and defensive positions (the Mannerheim Line in Karelia Isthmus, Finland). He chose to use in Romania the same strategy he used against the finns: occupied only the terrain deemed "defendable" by his neighbors, clearing the way for the Red Army offensive which would happen later as an all-out invasion through all the european frontier.

And indeed, Stalin had put 3000 tanks and 2000 aircraft on the Romanian border - he could have crushed the country and taken Ploiesti without much effort. But he agreed to have just Bessarabia and Bucovina. This, nonetheless, put his tanks at 180 km from Ploiesti - Hitler's most precious lifeline.

The book claims that protecting his vital oil supply and act before the soviets could, was indeed the reasons for Barbarossa; not the Lebensraum theory.

Here's the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Chief-Culprit-Stalin...07812073&sr=8-1

... and here's a review:
http://www.richardsorge.com/literature/boo...ozov_review.pdf

This last paragraph impressed me.

Well it seems a certain Austrian with the WW1 rank of Corporal from the Bavarian Army decided to kick the game off with his Invasion of Poland, even at which point the Red Army was in no ft state to do much of invading (unless you count their non-aggression pact with Hitler and dividing Poland between them).

Kevin in Deva.

NCR, you forgot to mention the moustache...
On the "not-so-funny" cathegory: the Red Army was NOT unprepared, at least on the Japanese front: google "halhin-gol" or "khalkhin-gol" and then say your oppinion re: unfit! The 17-days delay of Stalin was perhaps the best move of 1939: everybody blamed Hitler for starting the conflict, whereas Stalin was seen as a mere opportunist or something like that.
@Julio: the "gratitude to Hitler" part seems a little far-fetched: it's as if Isaac Newton should've been grateful to the anecdotic apple that fell on his head! (Of course, the apple hadn't kill dozens of millions of people)

This post has been edited by MMM on October 11, 2011 03:34 pm