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Suvorov's Icebreaker

© Ralph Zuljan

In the last decade, a number of writers have produced radical interpretations of World War II events. Few have managed to write anything as controversial -- and questionable -- as Viktor Rezun (under the pen name Viktor Suvorov). According to him, Stalin masterminded the outbreak of World War II and intended to attack Nazi Germany, probably on July 6, 1941. These are the central themes provocatively articulated in the book, Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?. Based mostly on publicly available materials, the case Suvorov makes is not convincing but it has achieved sufficient popular attention that respected historians have felt compelled to respond.

A prominent feature of the story is the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939. Suvorov claims that Stalin knew the British and French were prepared to go to war over Poland and agreed to the pact with Hitler because this would draw the Third Reich into war with France and the UK. Now, even if Stalin was not privy to the deliberations of these governments, their joint guarantee to Poland was indicative of British and French intentions. Stalin had every reason to believe the Nazi-Soviet division of Poland would lead to a war between the Franco-British alliance and Nazi Germany.

Suvorov notes that Stalin took great satisfaction from the results of the pact -- as well he should. Germany invaded Poland, occupying two-thirds of it and ended up at war with Britain and France. In the meantime, the USSR occupied the eastern third of prewar Poland as well as Estonia, Latvia and most of Lithuania without incurring any retribution. Then, war with Finland during the winter of 1939-40 garnered further territory for the Soviet Union yet no international intervention. Ultimately, Rumania ceded Bessarabia to the Soviet Union while the Battle of France was being fought. Stalin, indeed, had good reason to be satisfied with the results of the Nazi-Soviet Pact but this does not mean, as Suvorov suggests, that Stalin had any control over how these events turned out.

Stalin expected to gain all of Europe for Communism as a consequence of the Anglo-French war with Germany. At the time, everyone -- including Hitler and Stalin -- expected a repetition of the Great War on the western front. Even the quick victory of German arms in Poland did not alter this perception -- it was Poland after all. France was the greatest military power on the continent in 1939-40. No one thought it could be easily defeated, not even the German General Staff. Widely held expectations were of a long and bloody war of attrition. From Stalin's perspective, it would lead to the same revolutionary sentiments among the masses in Britain, France and Germany that had nearly brought about Communist revolutions in 1918-1920. This time, however, the might of an unbloodied Soviet Union would be ready to militarily support the revolutionaries, unlike at the end of the Great War. That is how Stalin intended to realize his long-term ideological objectives.

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