• To my Russian reader
• Who started the Second World War?
• Chapter 1. The path to happiness
• Chapter 2. The main enemy
• Chapter 3. Why communists need weapons
• Chapter 4. Why Stalin divided Poland
• Chapter 5. The pact and its results
• Chapter 6. When the Soviet Union entered World War II
• Chapter 7. “Expanding the basis of the war”
• Chapter 8. Why the Chekists need howitzer artillery
• Chapter 9. Why the security zone was destroyed on the eve of war
• Chapter 10. Why Stalin destroyed the “Stalin Line”
• Chapter 11. Partisans or saboteurs?
• Chapter 12. Why Stalin needed ten airborne corps
• Chapter 13. About the winged tank
• Chapter 14. Right up to Berlin!
• Chapter 15. Naval infantry in the forests of Belarus
• Chapter 16. What are cover armies
• Chapter 17. Mountain divisions in the steppes of Ukraine
• Chapter 18. For what purpose was the first strategic echelon intended
• Chapter 19. Stalin in May
• Chapter 20. Word and deed
• Chapter 21. Toothed peacefulness
• Chapter 22. Once again about the TASS communiqué
• Chapter 23. About the abandoned military districts
• Chapter 24. About the black divisions
• Chapter 25. About Kombrigs and Komdivs
• Chapter 26. Why was the second strategic echelon created
• Chapter 27. The undeclared war
• Chapter 28. Why Stalin deployed fronts
• Chapter 29. Why Stalin did not believe Churchill
• Chapter 30. Why Stalin did not believe Richard Sorge
• Chapter 31. How Hitler frustrated the war
• Chapter 32. Did Stalin have a war plan
• Chapter 33. The war that was not
• Vladimir Bukovsky A monument to human blindness
TO MY RUSSIAN READER
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire
“Viktor Suvorov’s opinion in the field of defense is becoming public opinion. He shapes it.”
International Defense Review, Geneva, September 1989
“This book is written by a professional intelligence officer, not a historian, and this sharply increases its value. Soviet comrades and their Western friends will be furiously enraged. They will not surrender the last ‘blank spot’ in their history without a fight. Don’t listen to them, read Icebreaker! It is an honest book.”
Die Welt, March 23, 1989
“Suvorov argues with every book, every article, every film, every NATO directive, every assumption of the British government, every Pentagon official, every academic, every communist and every anti-communist, every neoconservative intellectual, with every Soviet song, poem, novel, and every melody that has been heard, written, sung, released, performed over the last 60 years. For this alone, Icebreaker should be considered the most original work in modern history.”
The Times, May 5, 1990
Forgive me.
If you are not ready to forgive, do not read beyond these lines, curse me and my book—without reading it. Many do that.
I have challenged the most sacred thing our people possess, I have challenged the only sanctuary the people have left—the memory of the War, the so-called “Great Patriotic War.” I put this term in quotation marks and write it with a lowercase letter.
Forgive me.
World War II is a term that the Communists accustomed us to writing with a lowercase letter. But I write this term with a capital letter and prove that the Soviet Union is its chief culprit and main instigator. The Soviet Union has been a participant in World War II since 1939, from its very first day. The Communists concocted the legend that we were attacked and that from that moment, the “great patriotic war” began.
I kick this legend out from under their feet, just as an executioner kicks away a stool. One must have a cruel heart or no heart at all to work as an executioner, especially an executioner who murders the national sanctuaries of his own great people. There is nothing more terrifying than fulfilling the role of an executioner… I have taken on this role voluntarily. And it drives me to suicide.
I know that in millions of our homes and apartments, photographs hang on the walls of those who did not return from the war. Such photographs hang in my home too. I do not want to offend the memory of the millions who perished, but by tearing the halo of sanctity from the war that the Communists started to our common misfortune, I inadvertently insult the memory of those who did not return from the war.
Forgive me.
Now Russia has been deprived of the ideology forcibly instilled in it, and therefore the memory of a just war remains, as it were, the only support of society. I am destroying it. Forgive me, and let us search for another support.
But do not think that by destroying and insulting sanctuaries, I find satisfaction in this. Icebreaker has not brought me joy. On the contrary. The work on the book has emptied me. My soul is empty, and my brain is overflowing with division numbers. I could not carry such a book in my mind for long. It HAD to be written. But to do that, I had to flee the country. To do that, I had to become a traitor. I became one.
This book has brought so much grief to my home! My father—Rezun Bogdan Vasilyevich—went through the war from the very first day to the very last, he was wounded several times, severely, almost fatally. I have made him the father of a traitor. How does he live with this? I do not know—I don’t have the courage to imagine it… Above all, I have destroyed his perception of the war as a great, liberating, patriotic war. My father was my first victim. I asked him for forgiveness. He did not forgive me. And I ask my father for forgiveness again. Before all of Russia. On my knees.
This book brought grief to everyone near me. To write Icebreaker, I sacrificed everything I had: for the sake of the book of my life, which gives me nothing but sleepless nights and furious attacks from critics. Now Icebreaker is recognized in many countries. But it was not always so…
My sentences are entirely deserved by me. I do not ask for forgiveness for my betrayal and I do not desire forgiveness for it. Forgive me for the book. My death sentences are just to the last point. And let those who are prescribed to carry them out not bother: I will punish myself.
I am not afraid of death. It was terrifying to die without having written this book, without having expressed what was revealed to me. It was terrifying when all Russian book publishers in the West rudely or politely refused me. The book has been published in eleven languages already. It has endured eight editions in Germany, and three editions in Poland in May 1992 alone. But since 1980, not a single publisher in the Russian language had dared to publish its full text. That was terrifying. Now the first of the three volumes is finally being released in Russian, and therefore, I am no longer afraid of anything. Curse the book, curse me. Curse me.
But—while cursing—try to understand and—forgive.
Many have forgiven my daring book, my challenge to society. There were no brave souls among foreign publishers of Russian books, but chapters from Icebreaker were published by free Russian newspapers and magazines. I was immediately and completely supported by human rights activists Vladimir Bukovsky, Eduard Kuznetsov, Irina Ratushinskaya, Igor Gerashchenko. Arina and Alexander Ginzburg, Irina Alexeevna Ilovayskaya, the editor-in-chief of the Russian Thought newspaper, which published chapters from my book for seven years, and the glorious triumvirate from the Russian service of the BBC—Leonid Vladimirov, Vsevolod Novgorodtsev, Alexey Leonidov. During the difficult years of my life, many people supported me, and I am grateful to each of them. I had to push Icebreaker through, prove and insist, and I had to take time and nerves from many people. Defending my idea, I was forced to snap back, offend and insult opponents and critics, and sometimes—tear throats. I once again ask everyone I inadvertently offended: forgive me.
I am a traitor, a defector… Such people are not forgiven, but I still ask:
FORGIVE ME.
Viktor SUVOROV, October 21, 1992, Bristol.
WHO STARTED THE SECOND WORLD WAR?
…The West with its imperialist cannibals has turned into a hotbed of darkness and slavery. The task is to smash this hotbed to the joy and comfort of the working people of all countries.
I. Stalin, 1918.
There are different answers to this question. There is no single opinion. The Soviet government, for example, changed its opinion on this issue many times.
On September 18, 1939, the Soviet government announced in an official note that Poland was responsible for the war.
On November 30, 1939, Stalin, in the newspaper Pravda, named more “culprits”: “England and France attacked Germany, taking responsibility for the current war.”
On May 5, 1941, in a secret speech to graduates of military academies, Stalin named yet another culprit—Germany.
After the end of the war, the circle of “culprits” expanded. Stalin declared that all capitalist countries of the world started World War II. Before World War II, all sovereign states in the world, except the USSR, were considered capitalist according to Stalin’s division. If one is to believe Stalin, the bloodiest war in human history was started by the governments of all countries, including Sweden and Switzerland, but excluding the Soviet Union.
Stalin’s point of view that everyone was to blame, with the exception of the USSR, stabilized for a long time in Communist mythology. During the times of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, accusations against the entire world were repeatedly voiced. During the time of Gorbachev, much changed in the Soviet Union, but not Stalin’s point of view on the perpetrators of wars. Thus, during the Gorbachev era, the chief historian of the Soviet Army, Lieutenant General P.A. Zhilin, reiterated: “The perpetrators of the war were not only the ‘imperialists of Germany but also of the whole world'” (Krasnaya Zvezda, September 24, 1985).
I have the courage to state that Soviet Communists accuse all countries of the world of unleashing World War II only to hide their shameful role as arsonists.
Let us remember that after World War I, Germany lost the right to have a powerful army and offensive weapons, including tanks, heavy artillery, and military aircraft. On their own territory, German commanders were deprived of the opportunity to prepare for aggressive wars. German commanders did not violate the prohibitions for a certain time and did not prepare for aggressive wars on their training grounds; they did so… on the territory of the Soviet Union. Stalin provided German commanders with everything they were not allowed to have: tanks, heavy artillery, and military aircraft. Stalin allocated training classes, firing ranges, and training grounds to German commanders. Stalin opened access for German commanders to the world’s most powerful Soviet tank factories: watch, memorize, adopt.
If Stalin had wanted peace, he should have hindered the revival of the strike power of German militarism in every possible way: after all, Germany would have then remained a militarily weak country. Besides militarily weak Germany, there would have been Britain in Europe, which did not have a powerful ground army; France, which spent almost its entire military budget on strictly defensive programs, erecting a kind of Great Wall of China along its borders, and other militarily and economically weaker countries. In such a situation, Europe would not have been so combustible at all… But Stalin, for some purpose, spared no expense, effort, or time in reviving German strike power. Why? Against whom? Certainly not against himself! Then against whom? The answer is only one: against the rest of Europe.
But reviving a powerful army in Germany and an equally powerful military industry is only half the battle. Even the most aggressive army does not start wars itself. Besides everything else, a fanatic, insane leader is needed, ready to start a war. And Stalin did a lot to ensure that exactly such a leader was at the head of Germany. How Stalin created Hitler, how he helped him seize power and gain strength—that is a separate big topic. I am preparing a book on this subject. But this is for later; for now, we only recall that Stalin persistently and insistently pushed the Nazis who came to power towards war. The culmination of these efforts is the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. With this pact, Stalin guaranteed Hitler freedom of action in Europe and essentially opened the floodgates of World War II. When we remember the dog that bit half of Europe with unkind words, let’s not forget Stalin, who raised the dog and then unleashed it. Even before he came to power, Soviet leaders bestowed the secret title of the Icebreaker of the Revolution upon Hitler. The name is precise and capacious. Stalin understood that Europe was vulnerable only in the event of war and that the Icebreaker of the Revolution could make Europe vulnerable. Adolf Hitler, without realizing it, was clearing the way for world Communism. With lightning wars, Hitler crushed Western democracies, while scattering and spreading his forces from Norway to Libya. The Icebreaker of the Revolution committed the greatest atrocities against peace and humanity, and his actions gave Stalin the moral right to declare himself the Liberator of Europe at any moment, replacing the brown concentration camps with red ones. Stalin understood that the one who wins the war is not the one who enters it first, but the one who enters last, and he graciously ceded the shameful right to be the instigator of the war to Hitler, while he himself patiently waited for the moment “when the capitalists would tear each other apart” (Stalin, speech, December 3, 1927).
I consider Hitler a criminal and a villain. I consider him a cannibal on a European scale. But if Hitler was a cannibal, it does not follow at all that Stalin was a vegetarian. Much has been done to expose the crimes of Nazism and find the executioners who committed grave atrocities under its flag. This work must be continued and strengthened. But while exposing the Fascists, we are obliged to expose the Soviet Communists, who encouraged the Nazis to commit crimes and intended to profit from the results of their crimes.
The archives in the Soviet Union have been thoroughly and meticulously cleaned, and what remains is almost inaccessible to researchers. I was lucky to work in the archives of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR for a short time, but I consciously almost never use archival materials. I have a lot of material from German military archives, but I practically do not use them either. My main source is open Soviet publications. Even this is quite enough to put the Soviet Communists against the wall of shame and seat them on the dock next to the German Fascists, or even ahead of them.
My main witnesses are Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, all Soviet Marshals during the war, and many leading generals. The Communists themselves admit that they used Hitler’s hands to unleash war in Europe and were preparing a surprise attack on Hitler himself to seize the Europe he had destroyed. The value of my sources lies precisely in the fact that the criminals themselves speak of their crimes.
I know that the Communists will have many defenders. Gentlemen, I have caught the Communists in their own words, and allow them to defend themselves independently.
Viktor SUVOROV, December 1987, Bristol
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