Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia

by Gabriel Gorodetsky

Release Date: 01 April, 2001

Edition: Paperback

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Solid Post-Cold War history

The Cold War gave birth to a myth that the Soviet Union was cunningly planning a strike against Germany in July 1941. As a result, some historians had been calling for justification of the invasion to Russia, which Nazi Germany started on June 22, 1941. The logic goes if Stalin was planning an aggression against Germany, Hitler had a right to a preemptive strike against Russia. The creators of the myth use a testimony of a defector from the Russian military intelligence by the name of V. Resun. Under a pen name "Suvorov" he wrote a book called "Icebreaker" where he presented a theory that Stalin in 1939-1941 was meticulously preparing a war against Germany. Therefore according to this theory Russia was an aggressor rather than the victim in 1941.

In "Grand Delusion" Israeli professor Gabriel Gorodetsky shows beyond reasonable doubt that Suvorov's arguments are ridiculous. He presents evidence that Stalin was not contemplating attack on Germany; but in fact was trying to avoid any confrontation with Germany while playing a compacted diplomatic game to limit Germany's political influence on the Balkans, particularly in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. He shows Stalin's obsessions with the Turkish Straits and Bulgaria, which wasn't new, but was an old Imperial policy of Russia for many years. I was surprised to learn how much "tsarist" Stalin's foreign policy really was - there was very little in it related to the communist ideology or "class struggle" theory of Karl Marx.

The failure to understand Hitler's bellicose plans was a result of Stalin's misjudgment of power structure and decision-making process in Berlin. As an extremely suspicious person, Stalin mistrusted everyone, but looks like he believed misleading information presented to him by opponents of Hitler's policy such as Count Werner Von Schulenburg (German ambassador to Moscow, who became later a leading figure of anti-Hitler failed coup) and Ribbentrop. Stalin mistrusted equally both Churchill and Hitler and attributed all warning signals to England's efforts to drag Russia into war with Germany. Also Stalin didn't believe that Hitler would allow Wehrmacht to fight on two fronts. German double agents "Litseist" encouraged this false believe. The Germans succeeded in their sophisticated disinformation campaign, which coupled with Stalin's wishful thinking, led Russians to believe that Germany was not planning to invade Russia at least in the near future.

Gorodetsky points out that the idea of a preventive war was embedded in the German (from Frederick the Great to Moltke) rather than the Russian military tradition. "Barbarossa" plan was devised to quickly crash Russia in quick 10-week war and to free Hitler's hands to complete his "mastery of Europe". Then he would take care of England without any distractions from the "Soviet Empire". It looked like everything was working just wonderful for Nazi Germany until June 22, 1941 - the beginning of the German invasion to Russia (which by the way started suddenly without any declaration or ultimatum). But it turned out that the Germans seriously underrated the opponent and seriously miscalculated the amount of the effort they would need to crush Russia. Sure, the German might was incredible, but so was German overconfidence. Hitler's disparaging attitude towards Russian "vermin" makes ridiculous the theory of preemptive strike. Gorodetsky shows that this attitude was widespread in the West - Sir Winston Churchill himself was prone to disparaging attitude towards Stalin and the Red Army.

But just before his attack on Russia Hitler was beating Stalin at his own game. Stalin's failure to prepare for the German onslaught, which cost many Russian lives, was a result of his own self-deception and wishful thinking. Although Stalin was very wily, I feel that he lacked formal education to think abstractly and deal with issues like, for example, proverbial German concept of "Drang nach Osten" or draw analogies from history. Although as a Georgian, he was obsessed with history of the Black sea and repercussions of potential German capture of the Turkish Straits. 150 years earlier the Grand Army of Napoleon stood looking across the English Channel - but there was nowhere for it to go - except to Russia. It seems to me again in June 1941 the same gravitational force was pulling 200 idle German divisions to the endless Russian steppes. Where else would these "drunk with success" armies go?

I really liked the book. This scholarly and dry book was not an easy read. But the amount of information looked at is enormous and the quality of analysis is good. Also for the first time the reliance is not only on the German and British sources, but also on the declassified Russian archives. The book de-romanticizes many myths and accounts, including well-known Churchill's history of WWII, which is "persuasive but excessively self-centered and therefore occasionally misleading interpretation of events". I highly recommend this book to everybody interested in reading a non-Disney history of WWII.

Bizarre interpretation of documents

The latest book by Gorodetsky is nearly useless.
The way in which G. interprets for example diary-entries of Dimitroff is absurd and completely misleading. Luckily these diaries have now been published in german language (Aufbau Verlag) so that everyone can read for himself what Dimitroff really wrote - in full - and not just the selective parts Gorodetsky presents.
Also, the way in which Gorodetsky presents the clearly offensive soviet force disposition in 1941 is a bit of remarkable absurdity.

Gorodetsky claims in one sentence to have corrected Suvorov's claims that Stalin was preparing an offensive against Germany. But how? Where is Gorodetsky showing that the numerous arguments of Suvorov are actually wrong?
The next bit of absurdity is that Gorodetsky writes that soviet doctrine was clearly offensive - but of course not in reality.
Another proof of Gorodetsky's fear to provide full documentation is that he doesen't provide the full text of the "Considerations..." from May 15th, 1941 where a preemtive strike against Germany was advocated by the General Staff. Gorodetsky claims that this document was written behind Stalin's back and that it has never been approved. Anyone who knows only a fraction about the great purges of Stalin in the Red Army can clearly see the bizarre absurdity of such a claim. Vassilievsky, Zhukov and Timoshenko would have ended in the hands of the NKVD and would have been executed had they written such a proposal against Stalin's intentions!

Gorodetsky knows that would he provide such important documents with their full text, the reader would reach quite different conclusions than claimed in the book. That's why Gorodetsky most of the time quotes documents that can't be checked by the readers.
One should rather read Joachim Hoffmann's "Stalin's war of extermination" or Albert Weeks forthcoming "Stalin's other war. Soviet Grand Strategy 1939-1941" because there one can find proper documentation and learn about Stalin's real intentions.