Icebreaker (Suvorov)


Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War? is a military history book by Viktor Suvorov, first published in Russian in 1987. Suvorov argued that Stalin planned a conquest of Europe for many years and was preparing to launch a surprise attack of Nazi Germany at the end of summer of 1941 to begin that plan. He says that Operation Barbarossa was a pre-emptive strike by Hitler, which the Nazi leader had argued. Since the 1990s and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this theory has received some support among historians in some post-Soviet and Central European states, but Western scholars have criticized his conclusions for lack of evidence and documentation.

Content

Suvorov first wrote about the theory in a short 1985 article. He expanded on it in his book Icebreaker and in subsequent books, ending with the 2008 monograph, The Chief Culprit: Stalin’l's Grand Design to Start World War II. He says that in 1930s, Stalin was planning a conquest of Europe, had been working toward this objective for many years, and directed his military to plan for it.
Suvorov argues that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was engineered by Stalin to provoke Hitler to start a conflict with Western powers, which would have led to mutual exhaustion of "capitalist powers". Then, Stalin planned to seize an opportune moment to attack Germany from the east, overrun Europe, and establish Soviet control.. Suvorov considers Operation Barbarossa to have been a pre-emptive strike by Hitler, an act of self-defence in an attempt to prevent imminent Red Army assault.
He argued that Soviet ground forces were well-organized and mobilized en masse along the German–Soviet frontier for a Soviet invasion of Europe slated for Sunday, July 6, 1941, but they were unprepared to defend their own territory.
He claimed that maps and phrasebooks issued to Soviet troops supported that theory. Military topographic maps, unlike other military supplies, are strictly local and cannot be used elsewhere than in the intended operational area. Suvorov claims that Soviet units were issued with maps of Germany and German-occupied territory and phrasebooks including questions about SA offices, which were found only in German territory proper. In contrast, maps of Soviet territory were scarce. Notably, after the German attack, the officer responsible for maps, Lieutenant General MK Kudryavtsev, was not punished by Stalin, who was known for extreme punishments after failures to obey his orders. According to Suvorov, that demonstrates that Kudryavtsev was obeying the orders of Stalin, who simply did not expect a German attack.
Suvorov offers as another piece of evidence the extensive effort Stalin took to conceal general mobilization by manipulating the laws setting the conscription age. That allowed Stalin to provide the expansive buildup of the Red Army. Since there was no universal military draft in the Soviet Union until 1939, by enacting the universal military draft on 1 September 1939 and by changing the minimum age for joining the Red Army from 21 to 18, Stalin triggered a mechanism to achieve a dramatic increase in the military strength of the Red Army.
This specific law on mobilization allowed the Red Army to increase its army of 1,871,600 men in 1939 to 5,081,000 in the spring of 1941 under secrecy to avoid alarming the rest of the world. Also, 18,000,000 reservists were drafted for a duration of service of 2 years. Thus, according to supporters of thag theory, the Red Army had to enter a war by 1 September 1941, or the drafted soldiers would have to be released from service.

Points

Suvorov's main points include the following:
The book is based on an analysis of Soviet military investments, diplomatic maneuvers, Politburo speeches and other circumstantial evidences.

Reception

Icebreaker and subsequent books by Suvorov had sparkled what is currently known as "Suvorov's debates". Suvorov's concept had not survived scrutiny, and only few authors now take the main Suvorov's thesis about prewar Soviet plans for Europe conquest. It is currently believed that whereas the war against "capitalist powers" was seen as potentially inevitable by Soviet leadership and the Soviet Union was making some preparations for war, the Soviet pursuit for collective security system in Europe, or "Litvinov's line", was sincere in late 1930s, and the event that marked active Soviet war preparations was the rapid collapse of the Anglo-French alliance in 1940.

"Suvorov's debates"

The Suvorov's thesis has been strongly criticised by many scholars. The book is seen as an "anti-Soviet tract" in Western countries and is generally discredited.
Most historians believe that Stalin was seeking to avoid war in 1941, as he believed that his military was not ready to fight the German forces.
Many historians have written in response to Suvorov's views. Gabriel Gorodetsky and David Glantz authored books debunking his claims. Suvorov received some support from Valeri Danilov, Joachim Hoffmann, Mikhail Meltyukhov and Vladimir Nevezhin.
Glantz argues that Soviet Union simply was not ready for the war in summer 1941 Robin Edmonds said 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 said that recently-published pre-1941 German analysis of Soviet military readiness came to conclusion that Soviet preparations were assessed to be "defensive" by German intelligence.

Public reception

The book was enthusiastically accepted by a fraction of a German society that hoped to reintroduce Hitler as a legitimate part of the patriotic historical discourse. In post-Soviet Russia, whose collapse of communist ideology coincided with the wave of criticism of Stalin's rule, the Icebreaker thesis about Stalin's responsibility for World War II outbreak and about Soviet plans for world conquest found a considerable support in many of society who wanted to disassociate themselves with the uncomfortable past.