New Insights into the Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry

1.5 Million Jewish Emigrants to Overseas from the “Area of Jewish Misery in Europe” (1925-1939)

More than thirty years ago my Dissolution was published in Germany and the United States. In the meantime, new sources have come to light and unforeseeable developments have occurred that confirm my thesis. To aid in understanding of this update, the tables are shown in the same categories that were used in Dissolution.

Poland, Germany, Romania and the Baltics – where almost five million Jews lived at the outset of the 1930s – pursued explicitly anti-Semitic policies, particularly the first two; on top of that came the Great Depression. The result was an economic immiseration of the Jewish population, particularly in Poland.

Emigration seemed the only solution: between 1931 and 1939 over 500,000, possibly 600,000 left Poland, over 400,000 left Greater Germany (including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia), 100,000 left Romania and about 25,000 Jews left the Baltics; but there was also Jewish emigration from Hungary (and presumably also Slovakia). The Zionist-leaning Institute of Contemporary History of Munich has confirmed this since 1958[1] By the end of 1939 Poland as well as the General Gouvernement, Germany (including the Protectorate) Romania, the Baltics, Hungary and Slovakia had lost three million Jews to emigration, border changes, flight and declining birth rates. (see Table 1).

US Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long in November 1943 stated that the US had admitted 580,000 immigrating “victims of oppression) in the past ten years; most of these were Jews (only 100,000 were German Jews). Palestine had almost 300,000 Jewish immigrants. Other countries too (e.g. Latin America; Western Europe) reported a heavy immigration of Jews. This according to the Dissolution.

taken place from the mid-1920s to the end of the ’30s, as follows:[2]

“With the passage of the 1924 Immigration Quota Law by Congress and the necessity of exploring the possibilities for immigration to other of the world, HIAS sought to strengthen and enlarge its activities abroad. In 1927, it entered into an agreement with the Jewish Colonization Association (ICA) of Paris, France, for the purpose of forming what has since become known as HICEM, the abbreviated name for the HIASICA Emigration Association. This association with headquarters in Paris, and branch offices in thirty-two countries of emigration, transit and immigration became the European arm for a world-wide immigrant and refugee service. In the period between 1925 and 1939, an average of 100,000 Jewish men, women and children emigrated from the area of Jewish misery in Europe each year. In consequence of this effort, hundreds of thousands of Jews had been helped to settle not only in the United States, but in the dominions of the British Empire, in the Far East, in South and Central America, and in Palestine.”

In all the time since then this statement of the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia has never been challenged by the Zionists. [“Area of Jewish Misery in Europe”: Central and Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, but also National-Socialist Germany including the Protectorate, Romania, the Baltics, Hungary and Slovakia; the Institute for Contemporary History sees it exactly this way. The Western European immigration and transit countries and the Soviet Union (officially Jewish-friendly) were exceptions.] So, the emigration of 1.5 million eastern Jews from Central and Eastern Europe from 1925 to 1939 took place in the shape of an organized emigration in Poland, Germany, Romania, in the Baltic countries, etc.  Therefore the Jewish population numbers of the early 1930s in the emigration countries in Central and Eastern Europe [not including the USSR) and in the immigration countries such as the USA, South America, Palestine, etc. are only of historical interest; they bear no resemblance to the realities of 1939, let alone 1940/1941 or 1945! The Polish census of 1931 already revealed a sudden decline in the birth rate among eastern Jews; the  declines were too large to be explained by reduced family formation or a switch in claimed religious affiliation: the number of births simply fell too fast and too far. No wonder that the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia lamented:[3]

“[…] even in Eastern Europe the birth rate was falling, and began to approach that of Western Europe.”

and this was already below the death rate. The massive emigration entailed a Jewish population decline in Poland of 20% from 1931 to 1939 and must have had a directly overwhelming effect on the number of births, because the young, fertile segments of the population are always the first to leave home.

A further indication of a fertility crisis is the “Child/Woman ratio.”[4] This ratio in 1931 was 455(!) for eastern Jews in Poland; the minimum ratio required for population replacement is 500.  In view of the huge wave of emigration of eastern Jews in the 1930s, driven by the ever-mounting economic immiseration and an anti-Semitic government, one must infer that this “Child/Woman ratio” must have been far below 455 (perhaps 200-300) and that there must have been a birth-rate deficit throughout the 1930s among the eastern-Jewish population of Poland.[5]

The content of the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia is entirely consonant with the Dissolution that was published 30 years ago; the Jewish population in the parts of Europe occupied first by Germany and later by the Soviet Union fell from over nine million in the 1930s to about eight million by 1939 (see Table 1 under A.).

Jews Missing in the Second World War

Shortly after the Second World War over half a million Jews entered German territory,[6] chiefly in the American zone of occupation. But what was their nationality? No one knows. Where did they come from? To this very day what is known is as good as nothing. British General Sir Frederick E. Morgan, head of the UNRRA Operations in Germany, said in a press conference in Frankfurt am Main on January 2, 1946 that an unknown Jewish organization must be funneling great masses of Jews from the east into Germany. The journalist Dr. Raul Hilberg also said:[7]

“In Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary many Jews chose to not wait; they decided to embark upon their journey […] From Poland the exodus began through Czechoslovakia to the American zone in Germany. From Hungary and even Roumania, the Jews began to arrive in Austria. By November 1945, the flow was beginning to thicken, and thousands of refugees were spilling over into Italy.”

Indeed, Dissolution indicated 400,000 Jewish DPs (Displaced Persons) in 1947; this number came from the New York Times.[8] This according to the Dissolution.

How large was this flood from 1945 to 1947 really? New numbers from eminent Jewish personalities and organizations on the flood go far beyond these numbers. Dr. Nahum Goldmann, longtime president of the Jewish World Congress, should know the facts of the Jewish drama very well; he wrote in his book Das Jüdische Paradox (The Jewish Paradox) in 1978(!), that[9]

“… 1945 on [were] the six-hundred thousand Jewish concentration-camp survivors, whom no country would take in; this is a historical fact”

But even before that the American Jewish Year Book (AJYB) 1946-1947 reported,

“By the end of January, the flow of refugees into the American zone reached such proportions that it was estimated more than 600,000 persons would be interned in displaced-person camps by March.”[10] 

Further to these were the Jewish DPs in the British and Russian zones (numbers unknown), 35,000 in Austria and 30,000 in Italy.[11] That amounts to 700,000 Jewish DPs.

Jon und David Kimche reported in their book The Secret Roads (1954) on

“[…], some 800,000 homeless [Jewish] refugees rotting in the grey slum-camps of Europe, […]“[12] [1945/46],

whose only wish was: “Get us out of Europe!”[13] The difference between 600,000 (Goldmann 1945) and 800,000 (Kimche 1945/46) would appear to be the returnees from the Soviet Union (157,000).

David Kimche isn’t just anybody; this Israeli secret agent was a leading member of the Mossad. Since the Mossad was a major factor in bringing Jews out of the German sphere of influence, he is certainly informed as to the details of the Jewish refugee saga.

The Israeli Mossad secret service was responsible among other things for the emigration of Jews to Israel from countries in which official Aliyah agencies were illegal, and in general for the protection of Jewish communities all over the world. The Mossad was founded on December 13, 1949, but it had been created unofficially long before in 1937 in Tel Aviv as Mossad le Aliyah Bet, Committee for Illegal Immigration, by labor leaders and the Haganah (underground resistance fighters).

Mossad agents were everywhere in Europe and the Middle East, and they succeeded in illegally transporting fully 100,000 Jews to Palestine. The Jewish refugees came from Holland, Sweden, France, Yugoslavia and so on, but especially from Romania: ships left there regularly for the Levant. The ships Amiram, Assipa, Astir, Atlantic, Bulbul, Dalin, Dora, Enzo Sereni, Exodus, Fede, Fenice, Haim Arlosoroff, Hannah Senes, Hatikva, Henrietta Szold, Hilda, Josiah Wedgwood, Karbeh, Katriel Yaffe, Maria, Maritza, Max Nordau, Mefkure (sunk), Melavim, Meret Hagettaot, Milka, Milos, Pacific, Pan Crescent, Pan York, Patria (gesunken), Petro, Salvador (sunk), Shaar Yishuv, Shabbtai Lujinski, Struma (sunk), Tel Hai, Tiger Hili, Torus, Yagur, and many others besides transported tens of thousands of Jews from Europe to Palestine.[14] Besides that, the Institute of Jewish Affairs (IJA) (1943) reported that 180,000 Jews escaped the German sphere of influence between the beginning of the war to mid-1043.[15] Extrapolating for the entire year 1943 one must therefore conclude that another 20,000 Jews escaped. Let’s say 225,000 from 1941-1943.

The War Refugee Board (WRB) established by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt brought 200,000 Jews out of the German sphere of influence by 1945.[16] Among these would certainly have been some of the western European Jews and/or Soviet citizens not evacuated before German occupation.  Likewise Jon and David Kimche indeed reported that 300,000 Jews left Europe during the war despite vigorous efforts on the part of Germans to prevent it.[17] Further still there was the HICEM (1927-1940 Paris; 1940 Lisbon). With their help 90,000 Jews left aboard neutral Portuguese ships by 1945.[18] I assume some portion of these are counted twice. Regardless, around half a million Jews (IJA, WRB, HICEM) escaped by means of an organized flight from the German sphere of influence; together with the 600,000 “Holocaust survivors” of the “gray camps of misery” this yields one million previously missing Jews (see Table 2 under B). Beside the hundreds of thousands of Jewish dead the question of the extra survivors, particularly the Polish, German and western European Jews might be answered for the most part. It is not known from what countries the over one million Jewish DPs “in the gray camps of misery of Europe” and the Jews escaped from the German sphere of influence come, exactly how many there were, from which concentration camps or ghettos, etc. they came, of whom the Institute of Jewish Affairs (1943), the War Refugee Board (1945), the AJYB (1948), David Kimche (1954), HICEM and Nahum Goldmann (1978) report: from Poland, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands or even from the part of the Soviet Union occupied by German troops from 1941 to 1944… !? Today no one speaks of the matter; but after the war most were here, for the most part in the American zone of occupation in Germany (Kimche, Morgan, Hilberg, Goldmann, American Jewish Year Book) or fled to other countries during the war (Kimche, Institute of Jewish Affairs, War Refugee Board, HICEM). They are for the most part uncounted in the survivor statistics!

Jewish Survivors in the Soviet Union

In World War II the Soviets deported an estimated over 30 million people from their own population to Siberia and the Urals, including the overwhelming majority of the Jews – one hears of over 80%; I suspect it is more. The secretary of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Shachne Epstein, confirmed in autumn 1944(!) that the Soviets had deported 3.5 million Jews from the occupied areas;[19] one million eastern Jews were therefore outside the control of German forces.  After the war western Jewish historians and other authors reported about deportations to Siberia and the Urals. The historian Dr. Alexander Dallin (Stanford University) wrote in 1957[20] that the number of civilians left behind amounted to only 65 million persons; therefore about 35 million persons were deported by the Soviets.

Gerald Reitlinger reported in his book The Final Solution 1961:[21]

“The Russians evacuated essentially the working-age population, […]“

and

“In most of the cities involved, less than half the population remained behind.”

90% of the Jews lived in the cities. Historian Joshua Rothenberg (Brandeis University) noted in 1970:[22]

“The bulk of the Jewish population left […] in flight from the defeated [German] armies”

Above all, the Soviets deported first the Jews who had technical and academic credentials. The Institute of Jewish Affairs wrote:[23]

“In many cities and towns, especially in the Ukraine and Byelorussia, the Jews were among the first who were evacuated.”

and

” […] there was enough time to evacuate the civilian population.”

Effectively all (75-100%) Jews were deported/evacuated from cities such as Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Mariupol, Melitopol, Minsk, Nikolayevsk, Novohrad-Volynskyi, Poltava, Zhytomyr, Smolensk, Taganrog and Chernigov – with certainty also Kalinin – and from the rest that we have information about (Berdychiv, Kiev, Kropyvnytskyi, Odessa, Uman, Vinnytsia, Vitebsk), perhaps somewhat fewer. This according to the Dissolution.

Reinhard Gehlen, first president of the Federal News Service under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, wrote in 1972 that about one third of the population was deported or recruited by the Soviets.[24] During the war he was head of the Wehrmacht Department of Foreign Armies East (FHO); his brief was precisely to evaluate enemy capabilities. Who could have known these things better than he?

Thus over 30 million persons were deported by the Soviets, as also Dallin (Jewish-American historian) and Carter (Russian War Relief) confirm. The deported consisted primarily of recruitable men, specialists of every stripe, eastern Jews and Russians (at the time a quarter of the population) as well as workers in general; one look at the recruitable men makes it clear that Russian and eastern Jewish city dwellers were especially affected by the deportation measures and that the Belorussian and Ukrainian (indigenous) population was significantly less disturbed.

When the horrific effects, particularly on the Russians or eastern Jews, of the Soviet deportations are discussed by Jewish-Soviet (autumn 1944), Jewish-American, Jewish-English and even federal German authorities among others, it is incomprehensible that this is forever disputed, as well as the fact that it was so, simply dismissed out of hand. The Dissolution reckoned on the strength of innumerable proofs the number of surviving Soviet eastern Jews at 4.3 million (see Table 3, under C.);[25] since then tremendous forces have convulsed the vast empire: the Soviet Union collapsed. The Zionist assertion  – not an analysis of any sort – that only 2 million Jews lived in the USSR past 1945[26] remained in force, although neither the Soviets nor the Zionists offered any proofs of it whatsoever (see Table 3, under C.). Who is right? Professor Frank Lorimer (Princeton University) examined the natural fertility of the Soviet peoples in 1946 for the League of Nations and thereby came to the conclusion that the Jews had the lowest fertility in 1926; it was just sufficient to maintain the population. Fertility for the years 1959 and 1989 calculated on the same basis is (500 is required for a constant population level):

The Soviet-Jewish censuses of the postwar generation disclose not even half of the counts of their parents’ generation. This drastic fall-off in the birth rate and assimilation in the local population had led to the inability of the Jewry of eastern Europe to assert itself.

The first Soviet census after World War II (1959) counted 2,268,000 self-identified Jews; the last was in 1989 with only 1,451,000 Jews. The decline of 817,000 reflects a deficit of births leading to a natural decrease of 518,000 as well as the emigration of 299,000 Jews.

But the collapse of the Soviet Union caused something unexpected: the eastern Jews in the successor states of the Soviet Union could emigrate en masse. Between 1989 and 2007 1,630,000 Jews emigrated,[29] mostly young people; the number of births plummeted. A birth deficit of (let’s say) 400,000 was the result. Altogether fully 2 million (9+174+116+1.630) eastern Jewish emigrants moved mostly to Israel and the USA, fewer to Germany, Canada and elsewhere in the years from 1959 to 2007![30] That is more than would have figured into the total expulsion of all Jews from the successor states of the Soviet Union – if the Soviet figures were consistent (see Table 4 ­– left side).

But something’s wrong! Despite the initially larger by 82,000 starting number (1945) and the negative final number of 600,000 (2007) the number of Jews in the successor states are still based on the “self-identified” number of 357,000.[31] At the same time, Putin’s friend, Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar,[32] asserts that the number of Jews in Russia still comes to 1 or 2 million (might he mean in the successor states?) and die National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ),[33] an association for Russian-speaking Jews based in the USA, speaks of 400,000 to 700,000 in Russia, and those in the successor states altogether of 1 to 1.5 million. The numbers given by Lazar and the NCSJ are probably exaggerated (at least I think so).

The particulars of the Soviet censuses do not admit of reliably arriving at the numerical strength of the Jewish people in the former Soviet Union: a portion of the Jews was no longer willing to face the alienation that open statement of their ethnicity brought with it and claimed other nationalities. I see no reason why the demographic characteristics of the two groups – those who identified themselves with their people, and those that gave out some other nationality – should have been distinguished in any way.

Therefore, I have assumed the same demographic characteristics for the surviving Soviet eastern Jews (1945) of 4.3 million between the “self-identified” Jews and the “underground” Jews, therefore proportional declines in birth rate and absolute emigration numbers (see Table 4).

And note: after the emigration wave in the 1970s and ’80s and especially in the ’90s of 2 million Jews (as above) and the calculated birth deficits of over 1.5 million  (150+199+304+468+550) in the postwar period there still remain in 2007 700,000 Jews in the successor states of the Soviet Union: 357,000 ‘self-identified’ and, theoretically, 343,000 ‘underground’ Jews.

I have no idea how many there really are (50,000, 500,000 or 750,000). The numbers however make it clear: the figure of 2 million Jews (1945) in the Soviet Union lacks any semblance of reality; in other words: it is risibly low, simply impossible; there must in reality have been at least double the number. It appears as though the estimated number of Soviet Jews of 4.3 million in the Dissolution comes closer to the truth.

Russia still owes the world an explanation of what happened during World War II to the rougly thirty million deported soldiers/recruits and civilians – among these over 3.5 million Jews – in the parts of the USSR not conquered by the Germans (non-occupied Russia, Siberia and the Urals).

Conclusion

There is no longer any doubt that the eastern Jewish population in the subsequently former German- and then Soviet-occupied Europe fell during the 1930s from over nine million to about eight million by 1939. (Institute for Contemporary History, Universal Jewish Encyclopedia). How otherwise can the hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants to North and South America, western Europe, Palestine, etc. before the war (US Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, Dr. Markus Wischnitzer, American Jewish Year Book)?

Just as undeniable are – next to the hundreds of thousands of Jewish dead – the rediscovered, roughly one million concentration-camp inmates and escapees in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc., that is, the apparently missing. The world continues to wait for an answer from the Zionists, what countries they come from, how many there were and from which concentration camps or ghettos they come (the head of the UNRRA of Germany Sir Frederick Morgan, the Israeli Mossad agent David Kimche, the year-long president of the Jewish World Congress Dr. Nahum Goldmann, the American Jewish Year Book, also the U.S. War Refugee Board, the Institute of Jewish Affairs, as well as the HICEM-Jewish Colonization Association). Instead, a stubborn silence!

In any case the Zionists’ purported number of eastern Jewish survivors in the Soviet Union (2,032,000) must be corrected upward by a couple of million. The Soviet evacuations of people and material attested to by countless Zionist and German witness testimonies can no longer be denied (i.a., Dallin, Epstein, Gehlen, Reitlinger, Rothenberg).[34] And finally, all indications point to an overwhelming natural population drop of eastern Jews since 1945 in the Soviet Union. [35] – presaged by much-too-low birth rates and assimilation and not least by the emigration surge from the successor states of the Soviet Union. These have brought about a tragic end to the Jews of eastern Europe. Sadly, I have not been able to come up with new numbers for the Polish, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Russian, Baltic and Romanian Jews deported by the Soviets. The horrific losses of eastern Jews on the front, in the Urals and in Siberia (military and civilian) simply must have taken great numbers  – I estimate very roughly a million on the basis of Zionist information. The Soviets employed every measure to deny survival and took no notice of the lives of a million persons as described in the Dissolution! But concealment is not erasure!

Scorched Earth: The Soviet Concentration of Troops

Viktor Suvorov (pseudonym) elaborated on the Soviet concentration of troops at the border to Germany: He used to work for the Joint Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces. As a high-ranking officer of the Soviet military secret service GRU, he was active as a Soviet diplomat in  Western Europe. In 1978, he asked for political asylum in Great Britain. He called Hitler a rabied dog, a cannibale and a criminal. (I mention this only to show what his mindset is.)

Still, he is the author of the article “Who was Planning to Attack Whom in June 1941, Hitler or Stalin?,” Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI), London, June 1985, pp. 50-55,[36] and the book Ice-Breaker: Who Started the Second World War?. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1990 (russ: LEDOKOI: Istorija tak nazyvaemoj «velikoj otečestvennoj vojny» Kratij kurs.)

Excerpts from “Who was Planning to Attack Whom in June 1941, Hitler or Stalin?”:

p. 52: “‘There were in fact 170 divisions in the 1st Strategic Echelon. Of these 56 were already deployed directly on the frontier,’[37] 114 were deployed further back in the frontier zone, but: ‘On 12-15 June the order was given to the western military districts: all divisions stationed in the interior [of those military districts] are to be moved nearer to the state frontier’.[38] The entire 1st Strategic Echelon now began its concentration directly in the border belt. To these 114 must be added the 69 divisions of 2nd Strategic Echelon which had either moved already or were preparing to do so. Thus, on the day of the famous TASS communique, the movement of 183 divisions was in train; the biggest troop movement by a single state in the history of civilisation; a movement right to the frontier itself and conducted with maximum secrecy and concealment.”

p. 53: “But this explanation is not borne out by the facts. Troops preparing for defence bury themselves in the ground, dig trenches and anti-tank ditches, construct cover and barbed wire barricades. In the first instance this is done in the most likely avenues of enemy advance, across roads and behind river lines. But the Red Army did nothing of the kind. As has been recorded earlier, divisions were hidden in woods near the frontier in exactly the same way as were the German divisions before they made their surprise attack. ‘The rifle troops could have occupied and completed defensive installations, but this was not done’.”[39]

“This failure to erect defensive works is all the more curious since, with the signing of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Treaty and the subsequent “partition” of Poland between the two states, Soviet and German forces now confronted each other across a common frontier with no “buffer state” between them. Moreover, while common prudence might have dictated the strengthening or at least the retention of the Stalin Line fortification along the old frontier, the opposite was happening. This powerful protective system was dismantled and, in many places blown up or earthed over; minefields were disarmed and over a distance of thousands of kilometres ‘the barbed wire had been removed’.[40] Partisan detachments which had been created in case these lands were occupied by the enemy, were disbanded;[41] explosive charges were removed from thousands of bridges, railway stations and industrial complexes which had been prepared for destruction in case of invasion. In short, colossal efforts were made to destroy everything connected with defence.[42] At the same time, while prior to the treaty’s signature only divisions and corps had existed in the Soviet frontier districts, formed armies now began to assemble in the newly-extended border zone. Between August 1939 and April 1941, the number of armies on the Soviet Western border increased from zero to 11. Three more joined them during May together with five airborne corps. If Hitler had not attacked first, Stalin would have had 23 armies and more than 20 independent corps, facing him. This took place before general mobilisation.”

p. 54: “The 1st Strategic Echelon which was forming up on the Soviet border in June 1941 was, by virtue of its organisational structure, deployment and military preparedness, clearly offensive in nature. So too was the 2nd Strategic Echelon which began its secret movement towards the German frontier on 13 June 194 1. Many Soviet marshals and generals do not acknowledge these facts directly and, of course, both echelons were overwhelmed in the German surprise attack and had perforce to fight defensively.”

“It seems certain that the Soviet concentration on the frontier was due to be completed by 10 July.[43] Thus, the German blow which fell just 19 days earlier found the Red Army in a most unfavourable situation – in railway wagons […and] stuck helpless in open fields.”

“The more closely one studies Stalin’s actions during this critical period the more apparent it becomes that they were not a reaction to Hitler’s moves.[44] Stalin acted according to his own plans, and these foresaw a full concentration of Soviet troops on the frontier by 10 July.”

“Certain conclusions are incontrovertible. First, the mobilised divisions could not have returned to the distant districts from whence they came. Such a move again would have absorbed the entire resources of the rail network for many months and would have resulted in economic catastrophe. Secondly, these gigantic forces could not have been left to spend the winter where they were hidden. So many new divisions had been created and assembled in the frontal belt that many of them had already had to spend the winter of 1940-41 in dugouts.[45] As early as 1940 there had been insufficient training centres and artillery and rifle ranges in the newly-acquired western frontier zone even for the existing divisions.[46] Troops who cannot train rapidly lose the capacity to fight.”

“In every major human complex endeavour there exist a critical moment at which events reach a point of no return. This moment for the Soviet Union fell 13 June 1941. After that day, masses of Soviet troops were secretly but inexorably moving towards the German border. Once 13 June had passed the Soviet leadership could no longer turn these troops back nor even halt them, for economic and military reasons. War became inevitable for the Soviet Union, irrespective of how Hitler might have acted. Finally, the composition and disposition of the forces in the frontier zone did not indicate that they were intended to remain there. Such features as the airborne corps in the first crust of the ‘defences,’ artillery units in the forward locations, the dismantling of the Stalin Line and the absence of any defence in depth or effort to construct one, do not point to the intention of maintaining any permanent defensive position along the border. If all this is viewed in the context of the Zhukov doctrinal framework outlined earlier, then it becomes clear that the only credible military intention which Stalin could have had was to begin the war himself in the summer of 1941.”

Notes