USSR

National Socialism was, to a considerable extent, a counter-movement to the international communism sponsored by Russian Bolshevism. Hence, both systems were deeply antagonistic, and had been engaged in a cold war since the end of the First World War, presaging the later Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. Indeed, Germany and Russia were to fight a proxy war, each taking opposing sides in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Mutual threats of extermination were commonplace. Therefore, in the absence of any deterrent, it seemed inevitable that a military conflict would break out at some point.

Stalin's War: A Radical New Theory of the Origins of the Second World War, by Ernst Topitsch. Translated by A. and B.E. Taylor. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987, 160 pages, $19.95, ISBN: 0-312-0989-5. Can there be any real doubt who was the prime mover in the tumultuous events of …

Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?, by Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun). London: Hamish Hamilton, 1990. Hardcover. Maps. Photos. Source references. Index. Joseph Bishop studied history and German at a South African university. Currently employed in a professional field, he resides in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and three …

It has often been said that Hitler's greatest mistakes were his decisions to go to war against the Soviet Union and the United States. Whatever the truth may be, it's worth noting his own detailed justifications for these grave decisions. On Thursday afternoon, 11 December 1941, four days after the …

Viktor Suworow, Marschall Schukow – Lebensweg über Leichen, Pour-le-Mérite, Selent, Germany, 2002, 350 pp., €25.80 Prologue Every war produces genuine military strategists and heroes, many of whom die on the battlefield or whose exploits go unrecognized. Decorated "Hero of the Soviet Union" four times, Marshal Georgi Zhukov was indisputably the …

Viktor Suvorov is a former member of the Soviet General Staff who now lives in the West. He is the author of three authoritative works on the Soviet armed forces. Writing in the June 1985 issue of the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, Suvorov assembles …

Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Knopf, New York, 2004, 785 pp. The British Book Awards’ History Book of the Year has been awarded to the distinguished Anglo-Jewish journalist/novelist Simon Sebag Montefiore for his Stalin: the Court of the Red Star.[1] Montefiore’s special writing interest …

Yuri Rubtsov, Alter Ego Stalina (Based on declassified archival documents), Svonnitsa-MG, Moscow, 1999, 302 pp. Yuri Rubtsov, Iz-za spiny vozhdya: poli ticheskaya i voyennaya deyatel’nost L. Z. Mekhlisa (Behind the Leader’s Back; The Political and Military Activities of L. Z. Mekhlis), Kompaniya Ritm, Moscow, 2003, 253 pp. Until the appearance …

Constantine Pleshakov. Stalin’s Folly: The Tragic First Ten Days of World War II on the Eastern Front. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 2005, 312 pp. As the title of Constantine Pleshakov’s book implies, the author, a Russian historian,[1] holds Stalin personally responsible for the debacle that befell …

Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia by Gabriel Gorodetsky. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. 408 pages. Samoubiystvo (Suicide) by Viktor Suvorov. Moscow: AST, 2000. 380 pages. Illustrations. Upushchennyy shans Stalina (Stalin’s Lost Opportunity) by Mikhail Meltiukhov. Moscow: Veche, 2000. 605 pages. Illustrations, maps. Stalin’s War of …

On the evening of May 10, 1941, the Deputy Führer of the Third Reich set out on a secret mission that was to be his last and most important. Under cover of darkness, Rudolf Hess took off in an unarmed Messerschmidt 110 fighter-bomber from an Augsburg airfield and headed across …

Poslednyaya Respublika ("The Last Republic"), by Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun). Moscow: TKO ACT, 1996. 470 pages. Hardcover. Photographs. For several years now, a former Soviet military intelligence officer named Vladimir Rezun has provoked heated discussion in Russia for his startling view that Hitler attacked Soviet Russia in June 1941 just …

(Presented by videotape at the Eleventh IHR Conference, 1992) Wolf Rüdiger Hess studied at the Technical University in Munich, from where he graduated as a government-certified engineer in 1964. He is chairman of the Rudolf Hess Society (Postfach 1122, 8033 Planegg, Germany). He and his wife live in Bavaria. [He …

The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II, By Viktor Suvorov Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2008, 328pp., illustrated, with notes, bibliography, indexed. The post-1945 war crimes trials in Nuremberg are underway and the international press excitedly covers the proceedings. The tribunal itself consists of justices not from …

On the morning of June 22, 1941, Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels announced to the world the startling news that German forces, together with Finnish and Romanian troops, had struck against the vast Soviet Union. On German radio he read Adolf Hitler’s historic proclamation justifying the attack. Among other things, he …

Unternehmen Barbarossa und der russische Historikerstreit (“Operation Barbarossa and the Russian Historians’ Dispute”), by Wolfgang Strauss. Munich: Herbig, 1998. Hardcover. 199 pages. Illustrations. Source references. Bibliography. Index. No two peoples suffered more during the Second World War than the Russians and the Germans. In the carnage of that great global …

Czechoslovakia's Role in Soviet Strategy, by Josef Kalvoda, University Press of America, Pb, 382pp, $9.75. The author, a professional historian, was born in Czechoslovakia in 1923, left the CSR in 1948, has been living in the USA since 1951 and presently teaches at St. Joseph's College in West Hartford, Conn. …

Stalin's Secret War by Nikolai Tolstoy. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981, 463pp, $18.50, ISBN 0-03-047266-0. Pawns of Yalta: Soviet Refugees and America's Role in Their Repatriation by Mark R. Elliott. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982, 287pp, $17.95, ISBN 0-252-00897-9. Our "present" has to a large degree been …