Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanona Show.
Thomas is back and we're still taking a break from
the Continental Philosophy series. We'll be getting back into that soon.
But I asked Thomas to cover a topic that I've
been wanting to cover for a while, and yeah, I
told them he can take as many episodes as he
wants to cover this because I think this is real
important for from the revisionist perspective when World War according
to World War Two, and it's also from podcasts I've
heard in the past talking about it. It's quite controversial
and maybe I'll ask you some questions about that at
the end, Thomas even controversial amongst our guys, and I
have a reason why I think it is. But why
don't you tell us what we're going to talk about today?
Speaker 2: Well, in broad causal terms, we're going to talk about
the role of the Soviet Union in the Second World War.
That's an issue that's mischaracterized. The main minority viewpoint is
presented by Victor Suvarov's Icebreaker. Suvarov is a pseudonym for
the Soviet defector who was deeply insinuated in the gru
which was the military's the Red Armies counterpart to KGB.
KGB was technically a branch of the Soviet military, but
gru was literally army intelligence because it may insisted well
most people in addressing Suverov, they've got to discrete narrow focus. Essentially,
when they begin their analysis is on the eve of
Operation Barbarossa, and they get bogged down in the minutia
of what were Soviet deployments, how are they arrayed? Were
they offensively arrayed? What were the comparative force levels and
capabilities of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. Now these
things are relevant, and I'll address those things, but that's
not an adequate analysis, and Suvarov didn't begin as analysis
there either. Suvarov's claim is that the Soviet Union literally
started World War Two, and I accept that, and it's
not strictly military analysis. Everything about the Second World War
was a dialogue with Soviet power and the Soviet Union.
The entire twentieth century was in dialogue with the Soviet
Union and its existence and the ideology that animated its structure, activity,
decision making, and you know, every imperative related to power,
political activity, they're in so other people there's a subset
of people just don't really understand the issues presented, and
they essentially accept what court historians claim. But then they
diverge or they think that the question is should there
you know, should there be a deeper analysis at this
key juncture in the summer of nineteen forty one, they're
looking at it the wrong way, you know, either out
of ignorance or because they're powed by what they do
as a political consensus among academ and they don't want
to be availed a kind of punitive scrutiny. And I'll
get into what I mean by that, you know, I
if you if you accept the if you accept Suvarov's perspective,
which was also shared by Jakam Hoffman. Jackham Hoffman was
a military historian. He was when he was alive. He
died in middle age in the nineteen nineties early two thousands.
But he wrote this exhaustive book called Stalin's War of Extermination,
and he was essentially uh bundesevel archivist. And he wrote
this exhaustive book about the origins of the Second World War.
And you know, about half of it is dedicated to
the political conditions that gave rise the conflict, and about
half of it deals with kind of hard and fast
military subject matter. But I think that's the best book
written on the topic, and he agreed very much with
with Suvras analysis, but also myself, especially being somebody who
favors direct evidence and the testimony of parties to the
events in question. You know, if you look at what
Stalin said, and if you examine the sort of ontological
aspects the pedigonology of Marxist Leninism, there should be something
of a no brainer. You know, this idea that the
Soviet Union didn't have ambitions of an imperialistic nature, that
it had no interest in exporting its ideology to the
rest of the developed world, that it wasn't possessed of
an expansionist sensibility, that's laughable. I mean, it's laughable because
the only thing that sustains the revolutionary political cultures such
as that that was characteristic of the Soviet Union is
this kind of dynamic revolutionary violence that's got to be
exported once the revolution is consolidated within. But also, you know,
the Soviet Union between nineteen twenty two in nineteen thirty nine,
it conquered a land mass of that was equivalent to
the size of the German Reich in nineteen nineteen something
like four hundred thousand square kilometers. This was a massively aggressive, expansionist,
burgaining superpower. You know, that's indisputable. And this idea that
the world where you're talking about the United Kingdom, which
had conquered twenty three percent of the planet and lorded
over five hundred million people. You got the Soviet Union,
which constitutes one sixth of this planet, and it's animated
by this revolutionary imperative that it calls for the the
bolshivization of the entire developed world. You have the United States,
which is in control as a nineteen thirty nine of
fully half of this planet remaining resources. The idea that
the world was terrified of this comparatively tiny country in Germany,
that's a laughful you know, I mean, that's that's ridiculous.
I don't know how else to characterize it. And the
fact that you know, people suggest that is you know,
is is insane. I'd say it's comical, but there's nothing
funny about it, because this kind of garbage inform's decision making,
and it you know, it's constantly it was a kind
of mass delusion of in the public mind. But you know,
first and foremost it often makes his point really at
the beginning of his study, you know, the the imperialistic
I don't imperialist in the sense Latin has talked about it.
I mean, the Soviet Union was an empire in the
ideological sense make a mistake, and this sort of violent
imperialistic power, political sensibility. It was. It was. It was
this kind of relatory practice. It was baked into every
aspect of the Soviet political system, even even the heraldic
standard of the Soviet Union, which endured until the final
days in nineteen ninety one. It was literally the globe
with the overlaid on the planet Earth is this giant
hammer and sickle, you know. That was That was the
Soviet coat of arms. The symbolism is obvious, you know,
Communism will encircle the whole world, you know, and the
motto of the Soviet Union similarly until the end translates
to proletarians of all countries unite. Yeah, it can't really
be more on the nose than that, you know. But
again intrinsic to in termsic to the Marxist Leninist ethos
as a globalist perspective, that's one of the reasons why
the twentieth century belong so much to the communists because
it was uniquely it was an ideology that was uniquely
suited to the then present, and it was fundamentally ford looking.
They can't be denied, you know, it's it's obsolescence. Oh
do you know the fact that it became a staid
the form of of organization, and it was it was,
it became an obsolescent psychological artifact. But at Zena that
it was very much astride the Zeit guys, and they
can't be denied. And even it was animated by a
uniquely expansionist sensibility. But even hit it not then everybody was.
It was everybody who was, you know, participating in velt
politique at scale had a global perspective. I mean, that
was the reality. The twentieth century was decided what configuration
globalism would take. Okay, it's just this idea of a
kind of insular communism that was narrowly status that in
inward looking, I mean, that's that's ridiculous. And beyond that
Stalin Stalin himself came to characterize the ideological culture of
Marsis Leninism for an entire generation it's not accidentally. You know,
he reigned for over thirty years, and I believe he
was the single most powerful man on earth, and that
is incredible for all kinds of reasons. But you know,
he very much set the tenor of, you know, the
revolutionary culture characteristic of the socialist community and nations as
it was called. And he he was a confidant of Lenin,
and Lenin said repeatedly and often, but most notably Lenin's
famous December sixth, nineteen twenty speech, which was dedicated to
communist practice and the vision for a velt Politique, a
Soviet Velt's politique. He said that to incite the capitalist
states against each other is the main stratagem of communism.
In his words, he said, quote of using the knives
of scoundrels like the capitalist thieves against each other, on
grounds that when quote when two thieves fall out and fight,
the honest man laughs. As soon as we are strong
enough to overthrow capitalism completely, we will grab him by
the throat. Victory of the communist revolution in all countries
is inevitable, and that encapsulates Marxist learness of els polity,
and that defined it until the very end. This was Uh,
this was still the ambition when even amiss the strategic
nuclear stalemate. You know, in the late eighties, they were
still challenging in Latin America to try and rectify the
strategic imbalance, owing the you know, the advantage conferred the
United States and they're uh and its allies, you know,
by the inner German border.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Again, the shouldn't be this shouldn't be mysterious or controversial. Rather,
now what I think of is literally the Stalin doctrine.
This was presented and articulated during a speech Stalin made
to the Central Committee of the All Communist Party in
July nineteen twenty five. And for the Soviets denied that
this speech happened for decades and it was authenticated that
the speech was made. And I'll get into how this
came about as we continue, but we're not there yet.
But what Stalin declared at this speech was quote, should
the war begin, we will not stand by inactively. We
will enter the war, but we will enter as the
last belligerent. We will throw a weight on the scales
that should be decisive. The historian named Alexander Neckridge, he's
he he characterized this as the Stalin doctrine, you know,
and he insisted that this was never abandoned. And that's true.
And subsequent events and Stalin's decision making in the command
role as well as his you know, in Warren peace terms,
as well as in his role as General secretary, bear
that out. You know, Stalin's last parapolitical act was you know,
giving a MAO and Kimmel Sung a green light to
assault on the Korean peninsula, okay, and this this led
to a crisis on order of the Cuba crisis, you know,
less than a decade later. It's a tangent, but I
about every decade subsequent nineteen fifty, nineteen sixty two, nineteen
seventy three, nineteen eighty three, there was a general crisis
wrought by the traversing of a conflict diad in what
was UH a peripheral theater, but that you know, nonetheless
had the potential for escalation to it's a general nuclear war.
And but my point being that it's it's not as if,
you know, Stalin literally at the end of his life
was still making decisions pursuant to this sort of doctrinaire
you know program the UH. And it's that just became
a fixation of Stalin's as the uh as a situation
in Europe became characterized by punctually crises, you know, for
the next decade and a half, subsequent climbating obviously, in
nineteen thirty nine and throughout the nineteen thirties, Stalin undertook
a massive armaments program that was unprecedented, you know, and
based on his rhetoric not just too you know, the
poet Borrow and to the assembled nomenclature of the All
Communist Party, but also these public speeches that he made
for the consumption not just of the Soviet people, but
you know, as a way of signaling to the rest
of the world. It was clear that he was convinced
that a general crisis of had had arrived, you know,
in global capitalism, was was on its way out, you know,
And it was in nineteen thirty nine, early one thirty
nine the British ambassador to the Soviet Union, Stafford Cripps,
and the American ambassador, Lawrence F. Steinhardt, they both were
adamant that Stalin intended to bring about a war not
only in Europe but in East Asia, and that this
was a great threat facing the British Empire in the
United States of America. And this is important, especially the
fact of Stalin's attention to the developing situation in the
Far East. I'd argue that this was an essential aspect
of what became his strategic vision. And we'll get into
what I mean by that in a moment. When around
between about nineteen ninety one and nineteen ninety five, a
lot of documents briefly became available from the Soviet archives.
That's how David Irving got Gebels the microfilm the Gerbels diaries.
That wouldn't be possible anymore obviously today and now if
you even even if they're watching, government viewed you as
basically friendly your view to as a dissident from the
United States, they're not going to give you access to
anything the FSB has, and I mean even something of
exclusively historical interest, you know, from the warriors. They're they're
not gonna let anybody see that, you know from without it.
There's this brief period of openness in the nineteen nineties,
and during that period a bunch of documents that have
been corralled by the People's Commissariate for Foreign Affairs, you know,
that in the form of internal memorandum as well as
literally directives from you know, the desk of Stalin. You know,
obviously it's it's not indicated as such, but reading between
the lines, you know, these are obviously these are obviously
statements from the General Secretary, most notably the People's Commissaria
delegation to Japan, the telegram from Moscow that suggests that
the Soviet diplomatic mission in Japan should agree to any
treaty that tends to bring about hostility between Japan and
the United States. You know, it's very undisguised, all of
these communications are you know, throughout the nineteen thirties that
anything that brings about a Japanese American war should be cultivated.
And this is this is imperative to Soviet ambitions, you know,
the way it was described by one of the archivists
who was involved in this NNGO, which I think still exists.
There's this NGO that was corralled or incorporated rather in
January nineteen eighty nine, you know, this month before the
enduring Border fell like low, less than a year that
was dedicated to documenting human rights abuses as they called it,
and other things. During the Stalin era, and there's interesting
data relating to the power political situation, you know, in
the years prior to nineteen thirty nine that they corralled
as well, and of particular significance, there's this transcribed memo
from years subsequent by a man who served in the
the Chinese or Japanese diplomatic mis Soviet diplomatic mission in
the nineteen thirties, and he said, quote the Soviet Union,
for its part, was interested in distracting British and American
attention from European problems and in Japanese neutrality during the
period of the destruction of Germany and the liberation of
Europe from capitalism. And then, of course it became clear
that Japan was not going to remain neutral or America
was not going to allow it to strike a position
in neutrality. You know, it became imperative to do everything
possible to bring the United States and Japan into collision,
which once it became clear what the you know, the
New Dealer's ambitions were, that sort of resolved itself from
the Soviet perspective. But nevertheless, Japan was at the top
of Stalin's mind, and we're gonna know what I mean
by that in a minute. Now, this is really what's
critical to sub hypothesis and mine own as well as
what Suvarov posited. And again I echo this sentiment. I
the Soviet Union started World War Two in August nineteen
thirty nine when they launched a massive surprise attack at
calcin Gole and knocked out the Japanese Imperial Army okay,
and that changed everything, and that also was literally the
start of World War two. If you look at hostilities
with nineteen thirty nine in nineteen forty five is a
singular conflict, which I think, in broad conceptual terms is
is useful, you know, especially because that's court history claims
that War two began, you know, in September of nineteen
thirty nine, and bizarrely they claim that, you know, Polish
borders were somehow inviolable and any any any traversing of
them was an act of global war. But if we
examined the ambitions and strategic orientatings and objectives of why
the Soviet Union assaulted Japan, it becomes clear that this
was the start of the Second World War, and what
this the reasons why they did that, what this set
in motion it was truly and respect of a global
campaign of revolutionary conquest. But in the days before that,
and this is important too, because, like the nineteen twenty
five speech, the Soviet Union later claimed this never happened,
and it's interesting how the Allies dealt with it in
subsequent years. But on August nineteenth, nineteen thirty nine, Stalin
called a surprise secret meeting of the Central Committee of
the Poet Buro. During the meeting, Stalin announced that the
time had now come to quote apply the torch of
war to European powder kid. Now, of course, this was
also as the non Aggression Pact was being, you know,
negotiated with the German Reich. What Stalin said to the
assembled Central Committee, quote, if we accept the German proposal,
if the conclusion of a non aggression pact with them,
they would naturally attack Poland, and the intervention of France
and England in this war would be inevitable. The resulting
unrest and disorder will lead to a destabilization of Western
Europe without US, us being the Soviet Union being initially
drawn into the conflict. And again, you know, since nineteen
twenty five, this had been what the Soviet Union was
waiting for, according to the Stalin doctrine, as a catalyst
for you know, exporting the revolution to Western Europe, you know,
and Stalin continued saying, quote, we can hope for an
advantageous entry into the war, and a typical Stalin euphimistic language,
you said, quote a broad field of activity, A broad
field of activity was now opening for the development of
the World Revolution, in other words, for the accomplishments which
had never you know, been abandoned, for the sovietization of
Europe and Communist domination. He concluded this speech by saying, comrades,
in the interest of the Soviet Union, the homeland of
the worlds get busy and work so warm me break
out between the Reich and the capitalistic Anglo French bloc.
Now this was the first stage of the plan for
Bolshevik domination, and you know it then the non aggression
pack the chorus was finalized four days subsequent, and it
becomes clear, you know, I don't want to take us
down another tangent. But it was really Gearing who pushed
really hard for a firm alliance with the Japanese. I mean,
Hitler was already sort of disposed that way. Anyway, Garing
respected the Japanese a lot, and Geary was something of
a terrible snob, and he thought that Japan was like
a high culture, I mean, which is true, but beyond
the aesthetical attraction, you know, the understanding was that Japan
was a great power in its own right, and they'd
smashed the Imperial Russian Navy in nineteen oh five, and
you know, Japan was just you know, the ideal hedge
they have against the Soviet Union the East. So when
the Red Army launched this blitz assault of the Japanese
Army in the Far East and utterly annihilated them, this
terrified people. And it also it really meant that, you know,
the Reich had no choice but sue for temporary peace
with the Soviet Union because then they had no hedge,
you know. And it was clear that and he moved westward,
you know, and uh Hitler was confident that the war,
a war with France, wouldn't be a quagmire. But just
the same, you know, he knew there weren't the forces
in being to fight off as Soviet assault through Poland,
as uh the Reich was you know, fighting Uh in France.
So this was a. This was very much a conspiratorial
master stroke of Stalin. I mean, I'm gonna be wrong.
Stalin wanted to conquer the Far East anyway, but that
timing was ideal, you know, and uh, there's the forces
in being arrayed such that it was a sort of
a perfect opportunity not just to humiliate the Japanese Imperial Army,
but to telegraph a message of the world about Soviet
military might, you know. And it was highly effective in
that regard. Now, the speech that Stalin made where he
outlined his plan for the conquest of Europe in the
midst of you know, a Western European civil war. The
French national news agency HAVAS, they obtained a copy of
this by way of Geneva, presumably from you know, their
own spies are from a friendly intelligence service, and it
was published in early nineteen five thirty nine throughout France
and uh Moscow claimed it was fake and it was
a forgery, and right up to the present day, incredibly
you'll find these dummy court historians and they're apologists claiming
that this this this was somehow a forgery by the
French Havas agency and French intelligence by by by anti communists.
I mean, it's ridiculous. In the official party paper UH
Pravda November thirty, ninety thirty nine, Stalin himself finally came
out and officially denied UH that the speech was UH
was made and and and reiterated this preposterous claim that
it was some forgery by ant by by fascists. You know,
this was demonstrated. It was confirmed to have been a
real speech by Stalin's official biographer, who died only around
nineteen ninety five. Even in nineteen ninety three he gave
an interview where he confirmed for all time that this
speech happened. The language of it was in fact transcribed
perfectly in the you know, a document that was rendered
by French of us, and that should have settled it
for all time. But like I said, regime historians, UH
will will simply argue by assertion and repeat lies over
and over and over and over again, and they'll simply
deny the evidence in rebuttal. But that's UH. This is
important because it became a major This is there was
a major stumbling block for the New Dealers obviously as
well as UH the War Party in the UK. You know,
it was beyond an embarrassment that it stood. The represent
a real crisis with regards to their mandate. But it
goes to show you what kind of bully pulpit had
been devised and erected in uh, you know, the US
and the UK. I mean, part of it was because
it was the it was it was a French news release.
But even so it the ability to lock out and
discredit conflicting information and facts that had a tended to
impeach official narratives is pretty remarkable. And in the case
of the in the case of the focus in the
UK and the new Deal in America. But you know, uh,
and super Off, to his credit, took up the issue
of the August nineteenth speech. But it was a Vokoganov.
Vokoganov was the biographer in question who attested at the
end of his life to the voracity of the speech.
But you know, the it was on January sixteenth, nineteen
ninety three. And again this this was that period of
approximately summer fall nineteen ninety one until probably very early
nineteen ninety six where there was open access to Stalin
era archives in data in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Can we address something right there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, go ahead, Yeah.
Speaker 1: A lot of people will say that, like the Goebbels
draw diaries or forgeries. So you know, why isn't all
of this forgeries as well?
Speaker 2: Because it's a non argument. It's like saying who forged
the Gerbel diaries? What the Soviets did was they went
to Berlin, they forged a bunch of documents. They put
it in a Berlin bank vault, they pretended to discover it.
They took it back to the Soviet Union, the NKVD,
later the KGB. They continued to pretend that Gerbels had
written reams of diary material for fifty years. They lied
about this for no reason. Then David Irving also lied
about this so that he could capture clouts. Like what,
there's there's this kind of stock in trade of simpletons
and idiots to just go around saying things are fake.
You know, Hitler's second book is fake. General Patten's personal
diaries are fake, Gerbel's diaries are fake. Everything is fake, Okay.
I mean, I it's like me saying Donald Trump is
actually of Jewish parentage. I can't prove that. There's no
evidence to that, there's no reason to believe that, but
I'm just gonna keep saying that over and over again.
See Donald Donald Trump is Jewish. Oh you don't think so, Yeah,
well you don't know anything he's Jewish, I say so.
I mean I can do that too. Okay, you know,
the onus is on the declarant you know. And again
I so the Soviets are in the business of just
pretending that Durbles wrote these diaries. I you know, I
don't accept that because it's stupid. But look, Kalganov, he
was Stalin's official biographer. He confirmed in is Vest, which
was an organ of that constellation of NGOs as I
indicated a moment ago dedicated to, you know, kind of
truth and reconciliation about the Stalin era. He went public
in Russian and European media, and he was adamant that
the minutes of the August nineteen, nineteen thirty nine speech
that have been published in France were legitimate, that speech happened,
you know. And again, I'm sure, I'm sure these same
defectors are gonna claim, well that's fake. Okay, fine, everything
is fake. I'm an adult and I'm a white person.
I'm not. I'm not I'm not I'm not a white
in murder like developmently disabled. So I don't entertain that
kind of stuff. But you know, the uh, And there's
a historian, this lady historian, Russian historian ts Busueva. She
undertook this broad scholarly evaluation of Suvarov's books, not just Icebreaker,
kind of his entire body of work. And her account
of his work product was mixed. She was somewhat critical
in acutive way. She praised other stuff, but she was
adamant that the August nineteenth, ninety thirty nine speech was legitimate,
and she claimed that copies of the speech were known
to exist in the special archives of the Central Committee
and the USSR, and she made excerpts of it available
to the public in December nineteen ninety four. And there
was this big deal. The publication was a big deal,
and it was unveiled at this conference of the Quote
Memorial Society. That's the need, that's the umbrella name of
that constellation of NGOs I was talking about. And this
was on August sixteenth, nineteen ninety five. That was this
kind of grand unveiling, you know. But they they and
this might seem silly to make such a big deal
about the release of historical documents. But if you know
about the Soviet system, I mean that it's it was
this is a special case, you know, it's it wasn't
an ordinary political system. And this this document changed everything,
or it should have in the public mind, you know,
because it's essentially uh a standing rebuttal to the entire
court narrative of the war and its origins, you know.
So there's that too. So I mean again, I where
where where's where's the evidence that all this is being faked?
Like I guarantee you the Russian government wasn't happy about this,
you know, I mean and that they still aren't any
anybody who is fluent in Russian and I they're they're
welcome to proper evidence that this is all lected me
and and it's fake. But obviously that won't be forthcoming,
you know. And though it's getting to the kind of
meat of the honset of hostilities, you know, again, suber
Os the core of his theory, you know. Again, it's
it's not just a matter of a discreet revisionist analysis
of Operation Barbarossa and which party combatant their combatants were,
you know, the aggressor. It's far more of a broad
spectrum analysis and that and yak and Hoffman agreed with
this perspective, and I agree with it. Two, Not only
was Stalin the progenitor of World War two, but World
War two began on August nineteenth, nineteen thirty nine, because
that's the date when Stalin ordered the assault on Chalcan Goal.
Japanese sixth Army was deployed there. Stalin ordered a massive assault.
The Japanese were soundly defeated and routed. Marshall Zukoff stated
on August twenty third, nineteen thirty nine, you know, in
a reference to the Chalcan Gol assault as well as
the non aggression packed with the Reich which had just
been you know, signed Zukov said. Quote Stalin was convinced
that the non aggression pack would enable him to rap
Hitler around his little finger. Quote we have tricked Hitler
for the moment end quote with Stalin's opinion. According to
Nikita Krushchev, Suvarov's take, which should be obvious to those
familiar with the historical record, the non aggression packed on
the heels of Japan being crushed on land in the
Far East. Hitler believed then that he had to attack
at Poland to protect the frontier of the German Reich.
He would not have acted without a guarantee of non
aggression because Germany wasn't in a position to go to
war with the Soviet Union at that moment. People were
terrified of the Soviet Union after it had just crushed
the mighty Japanese Army. So again, I mean, this is laughable,
this idea that this idea that Stalin, who had just
crushed the Japanese Army, who was sitting on the throne
of a burgening superpower that concuted one six of this planet.
The idea that Stalin was terrified of Hitler in comparatively
tiny Germany, that's preposterous. You know. Molotov, you know, obviously
was you know, chief diplomat uh his official title was
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. Molotov spoke for
the Supreme Soviet on October thirty first, nineteen thirty nine.
He said, quote a single blow against Poland, first by
the Germans and then by the Red Army, and nothing
will remain of this misbegotten little child of the Versailles Treaty,
which owed its existence to the repression of non Polish nationalities.
You know. So again to the Soviet nomencladur and especially Stalin,
they wanted to they wanted to crush Poland. You know,
among other things the polls were at the Polish Munta
was ethically cleansing Russians, you know, the Russians hated the polls.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Interestingly, you know again, this this this supposedly sacro saanic
Polish democracy, It didn't bother the UK when when when
the Soviets assaulted That's interesting, isn't it. But so and
then of course two within months, the Soviet Union assaulted Finland,
you know, so uh the uh if if Stalin was
this uh isolationist. Oh. And of course meanwhile too, uh,
you know, they the Soviet Union was funding, equipping, arming,
and facilitating the Communist revolution in Spain, which obviously had profound, you,
strategic significance. You know, in the same period the Soviets
had assaulted and conquered Poland, you know, Uh, They'd assaulted
Finland and conquered uh Archangel you know, and through the UH,
the the waging of these aggressive wars against Poland and Finland,
and then essentially the extortionate annexation of the Baltic you know,
and threatening to assault Romania, which all of which gained
territorial concessions out of shopping fire. Because again, every the
Soviet Union's neighbors were in capable of standing up to
its might, you know. So by this time, by uh
the eve of Barbarossa, the Soviet Union had expanded its
territory by four hundred and twenty six thousand square kilometers.
That was equivalent to the service of the entire German
War in nineteen nineteen. And in so doing, as the
Alcaholfen points out, Stalin had ripped away and you know,
buffer states on Germany's frontier. So I mean Europe was defenseless,
you know, in the east, you know, and obviously the
time was nigh for a for an assault on Europe
and where Germany was as of nineteen forty. Despite Germany's
initial military successes, you know, there wasn't anything Germany had
done that Moscow considered particularly impressive or critical, you know,
that would have changed or altered Stalin's ambition. And it's
quite the contrary. There was no longer a chance a
decisive victory against the UK because you know, Sea Lion
was a strategic ruse, the purpose of which was to
deceive Stalin, by the way, not not that, not Churchill,
which I mean, that's that's interesting in its own right,
but the uh, you know, and as Stalin, who was
already by that time had hundreds of spies in the
rows of elements strations, and he knew exactly what America
was thinking, and he knew that the United States was
going to stand behind the UK. German forces were scattered
piece meal all over Europe. The German army was uh
still dependent on uh, you know, on horse drawn transportation.
Germany wasn't even close to being able to realize a
full mobilization on the order of you know, nineteen fourteen,
nineteen fifteen, even if there'd been the political will to
do so. You know, the minute Germany was cut off
from Romania, they their army would stop in his tracks
because that was, you know, their only source of vital petroleum.
I mean, what would would even a layman, looking at
all relevant criteria and variables as of you know, nineteen
forty nineteen forty one, sees Germany and his position a
catastrophic vulnerability. So I mean the idea that the idea
that you know again, the idea that Stalin was afraid
of Germany and afraid of its armed forces. I mean,
that's that's preposterous, beyond belief, you know, and just for
just for comparative purposes. Between November nineteen forty, in the
day of Barbarossa June twenty second, nineteen forty one, there've
been a massive arms build up underway since nineteen twenty five,
but this year and a half or this half the year,
I mean, between you know, the winner in nineteen forty
and summer forty one, this was an unprecedented military build
up in terms of scale, scope and rapidity. On June
twenty second, nineteen forty one, the Soviet Army possessed twenty
four thousand tanks, almost two thousand of which were T
thirty four's, which were technically classed as a medium tank,
but they were probably the best overall tank of the
entire war. The Air force of the Red Army since
nineteen thirty eight had acquired twenty three thousand, two hundred
and forty five military aircraft, including three thousand, seven hundred
that were of the most recent design. The Red Army
had one hundred and forty eight thousand artillery pieces and
mortars the inventory of the Royal Navy. In addition to
its surface fleet, it had two hundred and ninety one submarines,
which were an exclusively offensive platform. This meant that the
Soviet Union had more submarines than any other country on
this planet, had more than four times the number of
submarines that the Royal Navy did, which was the world's
leading maritime state. I mean, this is utterly insane, you know,
and it's unprecedent on it like that, nothing approaching this
sort of scope, scale and character of mobilization had ever
been contemplated, let alone implemented. So, you know, again Germany,
which is over committed, overstretched, outnumbered, engaged in a quagmire,
not mobilized for war. Like the idea that the Soviet Union,
which again had just succeeded in stripping away Germany's buffer
states in the East, and that successfully conquered Poland, and
you know, the territory had covetated in the Arctic after
you know, an unprovoked assault on Finland. This idea that
the Soviet Union was afraid of Hitler, I mean, like it,
it's so stupid it almost doesn't warn't rebuttal because it
you know, it's it's it's an exclusively bad faith argument.
But what a time we got. Yeah, I'm gonna wrap
up there because I was about to get into the
some of the testimony you send the commiss ours about
the ideological culture of the Red Army. It's but yeah,
I hope this was instructive to people.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, I can't wait for part two. Uh. One
thing that I would say is I think one of
the reasons that the narrative on Spain had to be
controlled after the war is because if the Republicans would
have won, Spain belonged to the Soviet Union, and you know,
you could you can make the argument Germany should have
never left after victory, but the Soviet Union, in no way,
shape or form, would have left. That would have been
a Soviet satellite state, and they would have had Gibraltzer.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, it's just like the It's just like
when the ideological descendants of these of the traders who
fought for the Communists in Spain, it's like when they
support Islamic it's like when they support al Qaeda and Syria,
they're like, oh, that's not al Kaido. That's these other
guys who don't actually exist or are democrats. It's like
this level of it's like this infantile level of delusion.
I don't even think they actually believe that there's insulting
the intelligence of everybody else, like you know, the Oh
those weren't the communists. There was these imaginary other guys
in Spain who like, what are you talking about? There
was this there was this unusual coalition of syndicolas, fascists, Filangis, Carloss, Uh,
you know, reactionary monarchist types. I'm kind of secular nationalists,
you know that wash who are you know, referred to
with the nationalist side. I mean in anchor as that
may be. This is kind of the umbrella term that's favored.
And uh, there was the common Turn and and and
the Soviet Union and and their proxies. Like there wasn't
this other element there that were uh like gay feminist
liberals or like Ernest Hemingway's buddies who just love freedom
or whatever whatever delusion normis have. You know, it was
a bunch of it was a bunch of communists like
Eric Milke who were busy shooting priests and nuns in
the face and torturing fascists to death, and you know,
preparing to categorically exterminate anybody who wasn't editable, just like
they'd done in the Soviet Union, and just like Bellacoon's
brief tyranny did in Hungary, and and just like the
Communists did everywhere that you know, they were victorious in theater.
Speaker 1: All right, I'll do your plugs for you. Go to
Thomas's substack gets real Thomas seven seven seven dot com
dot substack dot com. Go to his website. That's Thomas
uh Thomas seven seven seven dot com. But the T
is A seven, right, the first T is A and yeah,
you can you can find him sometimes on x under
under his government name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can link all that stuff from my you
can read all those links are on my website.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and I'll have the links in the in
the show notes as well. So thank you. Until part two.
I really appreciate you doing this. This is I think
this is important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, likewise, thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the
Pekingana Show. This is gonna be part two of Thomas
talking about Victor Suveroff and hiking Hoffman's work, So Thomas,
I hand it over to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for hosting me. I think I remember where
we left off. But forgive me if this is redundant.
It's something that's fundamentally important as the data Barbarosa Commencement
June twenty second, nineteen forty one. It's important to understand
the strategic situated in as of Stalin and the Soviet Union.
Key was the waging of aggressive war against Poland and Finland. Obviously,
Stalin's plan and this was confirmed by Khrushcheff, was, you know,
in the immediate aftermath of the assault and the Japanese
at Chalcan goal, which, in the opinion of Hoffman and
I agree with this, that's what started World War two,
and the Suvarov without saying it abides that perspective. The
Molotov Ribbentrop packed, which Stalin confided to the polit Burrow
as well as the Kruz Jeff, was that that would
embolden the Hitler to sue for war with pol which
he wouldn't have done had there been the risk of
a two front war. Yet Germany's position was precarious, overextended.
Stalin didn't think that you know Germany could truly stand
up to the UK and France. He grossly underestimated the
Wehrmacht's offensive power. But even in the event of a
German victory, his reasoning was that, you know, the French
army would have its back broken. Germany would be on
this footing a permanent hostility capture, the United Kingdom and
Europe would be the Communists for the taking. You know,
this was, in Stalin's words, to cruise Jeff Hitler was
now wrapped around our little finger. And one of the
reasons for this confidence or overconfidence, you know, and I
think I mentioned before as a barbarossa Stone had increased
expanded the territory of the Soviet Union by four hundred
and twenty six thousand square kilometers. That's equivalent to the
service area of the German right because it stood in
nineteen nineteen, and especially a petular significance the aggressive war
the Soviets waged against Poland and Finland and what amounted
to the extortionate annexation of the Baltics, you know, with
waiting Estonia pressuring Romania into further territorial concessions. You know,
the Soviet Union really on September third, nineteen thirty nine,
it was in the strongest position out of all major powers,
and the Soviet Union became a combatant, you know, on
September seventeenth, when the Soviets also assaulted Poland, and of
course there was a deafening silence eminent from emanating from
London in the wake of that deployment, which is telling
in and of itself. But you know, this myth that
Stalin was somehow afraid of Hitler's preposterous. For the reasons
just enumerated, and it's essential to understand, I mean, demonster
of this is the posture of the Soviet Union diplomatically
and militarily towards the German Reich. And secondly, the pattern
of military deployment. And I'll get into that in a moment,
But in terms of the former November twelfth and thirteenth,
nineteen forty, you know, the view from Moscow was that
the war was going very badly for Germany. Italy was
not performing well in the relevant battle theaters, which was
compromising Germany's position in the Mediterranean, which Hitler had counted
on as a hedge, you know, against the British Empire.
There was no indication of a resolution of the war
with the United Kingdom. You know, Germany's fear of influence
was totally static. You know, Operation Sea Lion was a
strategic ruse, and even were it not, it would have
been a bloodbath. You know. So November twelfth and thirteenth,
Stalin directed Molotov in Berlin to transmit to Hitler through
ribentraup a demand for the expansion of the Soviets fear
of influence. Basically, Stalin said that he demanded freedom to
deploy in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Greece, as well
as Finland. And he also said that, you know, the
Soviet Union had a right to deploy on the Swedish frontier.
This is incredibly belligerent. Essentially all of southeastern Europe plus
Finland and a piece of scanning Avia proper. Stalin just
declared that this is now my sphere of influence. And
if you meet this challenge with the hostile deployment, its war.
I mean, does that sound like a man who's afraid
of Eatolf Hitler and the German Reich. You know, in
Stalin's mind, there was absolutely no possibility of the Wehrmacht
assaulting the Soviet Union even on terms of parody, let
alone from a position of strategic superiority, which is somewhat
fascinating because this idea that oh, the Germans underestimated the
Soviet Union, they didn't at all, and stowfully gets into
that Holder's report on the eve of Barbarossa, and Holder
had actually written he'd written an assessment in nineteen thirty
seven of Soviet forces and being and capabilities. It was
remarkably accurate, and von Mannstein and good Darien their assessments
quite literally in the month before Barbarossa. The Soviet forces
and being were exactly what they estimated them to be.
In reality, it was Stalin who was looking west and
saying that, you know, Germany has no meaningful offensive capability
in the mighty Soviet Union, has nothing to fear, and
this is the key to why the Soviets took such
horrific attrition during barbaros Further relevant to context here, I
can't remember if I got into this or not. There
was a discreete mobilization phase throughout the Soviet Union Befe
November nineteen forty when this demand that I just the
numeraid was issued to Ribbon traup to deliver to Hitler
by way of Malotov on order of Stalin. Between November
ninety forty and the day of Barbaros, a massive and
unprecedented arms build up took place in the Soviet Union.
This included, as of the onset of hostilities, the Rhetorican
possess no less than twenty four thousand tanks, including close
to two thousand T thirty fours, which were technically a
medium tank, but they were the all around best tank
in the Second World War. I don't think that's arguable,
you know, the the air forces of the Red Army
had over twenty three thousand aircraft, or thirty seven hundred
of which were considered to be cutting edge fighters. The
Red Army had close to one hundred and fifty thousand
artillery pieces. The Red Navy, including a substantial fleet of
surface ships of varying types. They had close to three
hundred submarines, and submarines are expressly offensive. There are no
defensive submarines and this man as Hoffman raises in his book,
the Soviets not only a larger fleet of submarines than
any other country in the world. But they outnumbered the
Royal Navy more than fourfold in terms of their number
of subs. I mean, this is the most powerful offensive
military element the world has ever seen, you know. So
Stalin was essentially fearless and viewed himself as the imminent
master of this planet in geostrategic terms, as of barbaros
as well as of ideological ones. And we're going to
get into that too. Something essential to understand about the
Soviet culture. Stalin was keenly aware of what had befallen
the Jacobin Revolution. He was also keenly aware of the
changing dynamics of of ideological cultures within great powers. You know.
He realized that, for example, Japan was on the ascendency.
He realized that the German Reich had intense energies that
it was drawing from, even though he viewed them as
geostrategically weak and compromised. He understood that the United Kingdom
was undergoing a terrible existential crisis and that their empire
is structured was essentially obsolescent. And this is one of
the reasons why there've been a series of revolts, you know,
nascent as well as well developed and realized. You know,
in the years before the Great War and then in
the Inner War years up to the then president, you know,
and socialism in one country that that was something of
that was something of a propaganda cliche. Down invoked the
sort of give a branding to you know, the kind
of punctuated disturbances of this mass and megacytal restructuring of
Russian society and the Soviet state which was becoming a superpower,
as well as to you know, assuage the Western powers
which were very much doing his bidding at that moment.
Stalin was very much engaged with the common tern that
had not changed and in the planning for what was
to be the assault on Europe. In the aftermath of
the Icebreaker conflict, Stalin he called back the Russian delegation
to the Common Turn and he called the common Terns
representatives to Moscow to advise them of what was imminently
going to happen. You know, the Soviet Union needed to
realize the World Revolution, to survive, as well as to
consolidate its superpower status which was not just burgaining but
was being actively realized also. And I realized I've probably
got a bias for testimonial evidence, especially they're not exclusively
in discerning the motives of men in command roles. But
there's not, there's not. The direct testimony is more reliable
than circumstantial evidence unless it contradicts the manifest weight of
extrinsic material facts outside the parameters those declarations and what
Stalin said his biographer, Colonel General Wolcagano of he word
for word by Lakouv reproduced the speech that Stalin issued
fourth on May fifth, nineteen forty one, And according to Volkoganov,
the leader made it quote. The Leader made it unmistakably clear.
War is inevitable in the future. We must be ready
for the unconditional destruction of German fascism. The worl will
be fought on enemy territory, and victory will be achieved
with a few casualties. And as we got into last week,
and as I think we've raised before in discussion of
World War Two, it was a matter of formal doctrine
that the Red Army was an offensive, perurpsed element. Its
primary mission orientation was as the standard bearer of the revolution,
and it never struck a defensive posture. As a matter
of doctrine, by choice, you know, and I've made the
point before. I believe Stalin is probably the single most
powerful man who ever lived, and the momentum that the
Communist International had at this moment was at zenith. I'd
argue Stalin had to abide that role or he would
have been replaced by a man who would have you know,
it was a convergence of ideological, imperative and geostrategic realities
in a way that is very rare, but was sort
of inextricably and splendidly bound up at this juncture. And
I think we talked before about the secret real I'm
jumping around a bit, but I'm trying to corral the
evidence in categorical capacities. The secret meeting with the polic Bureau,
and this is when the common Tern delegation was also
present in August nineteenth, nineteen thirty nine, you know, in
the concominant with the assault on the Japanese Imperial Army
at calcum Goal. This meeting that Shtalin called the Poet
Borough and the Russian section of the common Tern, Stalin
declared that the time had come to quote apply the
torch of war to the European powder keg. This is
when Stalin declared, if we accept the German proposal for
the non aggression picked, you know, Hitler will naturally attack Poland.
The intervention of France and England will be inevitable. The resulting,
in Shalin's words, serious and arrest and disorder would lead
to a punctuate a destabilization of Western Europe, yet without
the Soviet Union being drawn into the conflict until they
permissively opted do and Stalin referred to what he declared
in nineteen twenty five with respect to the international strategy.
You know, the moment is nigh that we we we
can pursue the bultimization of Europe by way of an
advantageous entry into the war, through a broad spectrum field
of activity which had now the potential of which had
now opened up for their realization of the World Revolution.
And of course, when uh minutes from this meeting and
the speech were smuggled out and were obtained by the
French news agency Havas by way of Geneva, you know,
and it went, it was, it was, it was published,
and then the Moscow immediately wanted to damage control and
Stalin apologists and propagandas, particularly in London, but also in
the United States, you know, they they started immediately claiming
that this, this is fascist propaganda, and this, this isn't
this isn't true, you know, So I mean this is important. Also,
like when you read books by guys Chris Bellamy comes
to mind. But they're legion these historians who claim, oh
Stuvarov is a liar, there's no evidence for these things.
They're redacting a huge amount of evidence, or they're just
not including it and would question they say, oh that
that's just propaganda. They're just not addressing it. And that's incredible,
you know. I mean, it'd be like, like imagine somewhat
more approximately, like let's say I was writing a history
of the American War in Iraq from two thousand and
three eleven, and it'd be like if I was categorically
redacting things that President Bush and Rumsfeld said in conversations
they had and just declaring that, well, it's not important,
or that that's just something liberals say or allege. I mean,
people would laugh at me, they'd say that's ridiculous. But
in the case of you know, Barbarossa and you know,
the Icebreaker hypothesis, that's exactly what they do you know,
and you're just supposed to accept it. This is this
is very abnormal, even accounting for the fact that research
standards and things are often compromised for ideological and political reasons.
But this seems tangential, but it's essential to understanding Suberov's
and Hoffmann's points. We've got to ask why Barbarossa was
so tactically successful for the Wehrmacht and what that means,
because this is sort of the key, in my opinion,
the Soviet It's we're planning an assault on Romania in
the autumn nineteen forty one, and if you know how
to interpret military deployments, this should be clear. But also,
if you're going to assault Germany from then extant frontiers,
you're gonna do so from the Baltic and you're gonna
do so through Romania. And of course Germany was totally
dependent on Romanian petroleum. That's one of the reasons Hitler
cultivated the friendship of Antoniscu so closely. Antonescu held the
Knights Cross. There was very good offices between him and
Germany anyway, for cultural reasons, for ideological reasons, other things.
But he and Hitler, despite the linguistic barrier. They were
very close friends too, and Antonescu was Hitler's strongest alla,
I believe, you know, and close to a quarter million
Romanians fought, you know, for the Axis cause in the East,
which for a country the size of Romania, that's remarkable.
But army groups South deployed from Romania. And this, if
this was a very delicate issue because Soviet intelligence, which
was actually very good, this the deployment to Romania. The
way Hitler, the ruse Hitler was able to pull off
was that the unstable situation in Yugoslavia was what was
drawing German forces at scale to be deployed there. But
also obviously, through Ledgered Maine and other things, OKW was
effectively able to hide the scale at which forces were
being a mass there. But you know, not only was
it a staging ground for Barbarosa, but Hitler was reacted
with anxiety that the Soviets were in with salt Romania
because they were so these forces down there at a
dual role. They were purposed for an offensive mission, but
they were also there to as a bulwark against amy assault,
you know, at least so that they you know, there'd
be enough time to reinforce and and not just you know,
endure collapse of a critical front, which on top of
the geostrategic menace that also to deprive Germany really of it,
it's only a source of petroleum and represente quantities to
feel the war machine. But what this led to was
there was massive Soviet deployments in the Baltic and in
Ukraine through the Romanian frontier. So when the Wehrmacht assaulted,
the road to Moscow was basically undefended. Okay, that's one
of the reasons why Holder and uh Manstein they were
beside themselves because they were telling Hitler, we need to
move on Moscow now. We can't wait, you know, we
can't wait for the weather to turn, and we can't
wait for the Soviets to reconstitute and affect a deployment
in depth on the path to Moscow, you know. And
as the deployment schema in Ukraine, the jur Oury Group
South was exponentially outnumbered, but the so the Red Army
elements there they were deployed in an offensive pattern. And
if you know anything about the way the Soviet Union
fought and the way the armforce in the Russian Federation
fights and they very much scaled down way to they
obviously and with very different localized combined arms platforms. Deep
battle is its it's dependent upon a fixed deployment schema
for it to work, okay. And the way the Red
Army deployed offensively, and this is what they did when
the tide turned and after Kursk, this is how they
assaulted Berlin. The offensive deployment schema is by heavy use
of shock armies, a Soviet shock army. They were larded
with firepower and totally front loaded. Okay. So when Army
Group South engaged the Red Army through the ky Of Corridor,
they were engaging this forward element that was loaded down
with firepower that was supposed to break through the mainline
of resistance, but that had a limited operational capacity, often
of only a few days. Then they were to be
rapidly reinforced by fresh elements who would continually assault in waves,
and then when that shock element was was re equipped
and refitted, they would smash through again. But obviously, if
the Wehrmacht assaults with mass armored columns, when you're deployed
offensively with your front loaded shock army, as the sharp
punk they're gonna smash that shock army, and then they're
gonna cut through your reinforcement elements like butter, you know.
And as they break through wave after wave, that frontload
of element is going to be fighting on reversed fronts
and they're going to get cut to pieces, which is
exactly what happened. Okay, So the Soviets were taking catastrophic
casualties in the North and in the South. Meanwhile, Army
Group Center was racing to Moscow quite literally, and Hitler
didn't know quite what to make of this because there
were sort of two Hitlers. And Stofally makes this point.
When Hitler felt confident politically and when he had a
what he believed was a firm conceptual grasp of the battlespace,
Hitler was hyper aggressive. When fog of war questions or
political uncertainty clouded that perspective, Hitler developed a siege mentality,
and that's exactly what happened. And Hitler viewed Stalin as
incredibly dangerous as he should have. So Hitler essentially halted
Army Groups Center well Army Group South, surrounded this massive
element plus the reserves that the Kremlin had ordered, like
rushed to the front immediately, and Hitler was afraid to
push the attack for a decisive victory at Moscow until
this element was neutralized. And it was neutralized. The only
casualties the Soviets endured is utterly castrophic and unprecedented. And
the Germans took something like three quarters of a million
prisoners alone. Okay, but by the time, by the time
the FU ordered the attack to be pushed on Moscow
was too late. Okay, that's what happened. People misunderstand that.
It says, you know, oh, the Germans were plotting to
attack all along because the Soviets were weak in some ways.
But then Stalin got it together, and you know, because
the Germans underestimated Soviet capabilities. You know, Hitler lost the war.
That's not true at all. That doesn't make any sense.
And you know, if Stalin was like, look at it
like this. Okay, the Germans were halted at Moscow, but
they reached the gates of Moscow, they reached Leningrad and
lated it to siege, they reached Stalingrad. The German the
very much reached all of its objectives in months. How
long did it take the Red Army to march on Berlin.
It took them almost four years. So while was there
this plotting, grinding blood bath. If the Soviets were this
grossly underestimated force, you know, and the Germans didn't know
what they were doing like this, the Germans killed the
Red Army, you know. Obviously the Russians still had enough
to hold Moscow and they did, and that was incredibly valiant.
And Russians are incredibly tough. And there's a simplicity to
the way the Ivans fight, but it's a simplicity that works,
you know. I think it's misguided when people suggest otherwise,
and especially today because people are you know, they've adopted
prejudices and stuff in this regard. There's really really stupid
things that come out of the Pentagon in terms of
their assessment of Russian capabilities and things. And incidentally, Eric VA.
Einstein's the book it's called Loss of Victories. It's for
I think it's fascinating, but it's kind of for military
hounds only. It's you know, not like light Sunday reading.
But what that book was the US War Department back
when there was a war department. There's not anymore, no
matter what, like special needs Hegseth says, but in the
last months of the Department of War they debriefed Manstein
on basically on you know, his experience over four years
of fighting the Soviet Union in the general officer's role.
And the War Department is soon to be the Defense Department.
They took this very seriously, and early NATO force structure
wasn't a substantial on the infantry side, ground on the
imagery on our side. It was substantially based around what
von Mannstein had. It's said, Okay, so this book was
sometime in the fifties, the first edition, it was edited
and make it more readable, and it's it's literally Managelin
is debriefing with some added stuff, you know. So and
that that was one of his core premises is that
fighting the Russians on Russian territory, they're they're they're they're
unbelievably and savagely tough, you know, and that that's a
force multiplier, and it also makes up for some of their shortcomings.
And the Russians also they they know what they know
the limits of their capabilities, you know. And on the
one hand, and super off of his book Inside the
Red Army, which is very much worth reading too, especially
if you got an interest in the late Cold War stuff,
because it's very much a breakdown of you know, the
the Brison of era the Soviet Army. You know, he
makes the point, uh, And Harold Coyle made this point
too that Doctoran in the Soviet Army was almost like regulation.
There was there were no mission oriented tactics, and the
whole ethos of the Soviet Army's general staff was to
eliminate uncertainty wherever and whenever and however possible, so they
didn't tolerate deviation from the battle plan as emerged from
you know, superior orders. But nevertheless, the Russian, the Soviets
and the Russians do very well with what they're good at,
you know, and deep battle is what they were good at.
Heavy reliance on on combined arms in a shock element
capacity went on the offensive. That tended towards the kind
of inflexibility which I think they later remedied somewhat during
the Cold War. But the ability to rapidly shift from
an offensive posture to defending the Behrmacht was very very
good at that, and the British are pretty good at
that too. The Soviets were catastrophically bad at it, and
the French were bad at it. But part of it too, though,
is that Stalin had every reason to believe that the
Behmont wasn't capable of what it was capable of as
of June nineteen forty one. I mean, that was a
blind spot. But at the same time, you know, the
Germans tend to surprise people on matters of military affairs.
But that's key because it's not as internet guys and
armchair goofballs who claimed, well, Suber was an idiot who's
a liar like looking out bad the Soviets got mall.
That's the whole, the whole point, Like that makes his
point not the opposite. So that's that's key. You know,
I'm not I'm not just dwelling on minutia to play
cake the the you know, the the military hounds among
us or something. But you know it's also you know,
it was you know the point too that I think
a lot of lay people don't understand these days. You know,
modern war resolves rapidly. You know, you don't you know,
you don't plan for quagmires because then you're planning to
lose a war. So you know, within ideally in about
ten weeks in the outer temporal limits six months, you know,
Moscow had to fall to the Hrmont and Stalin was
over confident, absolutely, But it stands the reason his kind
of poor view of the Wehrmacht, not in terms of
its quality of men or firepower, but the geo strategic
situation and what he viewed as it's over extended commitments
and things. You know, he reasoned that, you know, even
in the very unlikely event of an assault, you know,
we can hold him at bay long enough to reinforce
and by then, you know, victory conditions will no longer
be realizable. You know, this all kind of falls into place,
is the totality of circumstances. You've got to look at
this the ssoudieological culture. You gotta take Stalin's own statements,
you gotta look at the statements of his underlings, including Khrushchev.
You've got to look at the pattern of deployment. You've
got to take in if you know what to look for.
But even I mean it's even more persuasive, or are
more obvious or other, But you know, taking in totality,
I mean, it's clear that Suvarov was telling the truth,
you know, but also mean, well it's not it's not
clear what what the alternative was. I mean it this
unprecedented military build up coupled with the transformative, globally transformative
aspects of the Bolshrirek Revolution, the heart and lungs of
which paverbially were in the Soviet Union. I mean, what
what's the alternative Stalin was? He ordered this build up
for purely defensive purposes, to which would inevitably at some
point provoke the West into attacking him. I mean, it
doesn't that that doesn't make any sense. And generally, when
you're talking about conditions of approximate parody with conventional combined
arms at scale, or when you're talking about near peer
strategic planning, you don't wait to be attacked. You always
push the assault, you know. Then that's I mean, this,
this this is very basic stuff.
Speaker 1: Well it also also it doesn't make sense to say
Stalin was this interested in this social national version of
socialism that that would emerge out of the Bolsheviks. When
you send troops and you send advisors and you send
tanks to Spain, Yeah, I mean you don't, Yeah, you
don't care about Spain. You don't care what's happening in Spain.
If if this is supposed to be for Russia only, well.
Speaker 2: It's also the Soviet Union. Like, don't get me wrong.
You know, one of the one of the one of
the living believing people who I I really find common
ground with and in terms of political theory is in
an historical subject matter is Krrie Bolton. Like he's just great.
I don't know the guy. Unfortunately, he doesn't leave New
Zealand much these days because he's elderly, you know. And uh,
I think most people know of him because he wrote
this really great exhaustive biography of Francis Yackey. But he
wrote a book on Stalin called Stalin the Enduring Legacy,
and people who haven't read the book, they they they
panted as some sort of oh he's some Eurasianist. That's like,
that's not what he's saying at all. He's saying Stalin's
legacy was complicated. He basically abides the same viewpoint that
Paul Godfrey does, although for some of different reasons about
a substantial aspect of the Cold War deriving from the
Stalin versus Trotsky paradigm. You know, but that doesn't mean
that Stalin was somehow not an internationalist. And even you know,
the Soviet Union can name dozens of ethnicities, you know,
a huge Moslim population, you know, a huge Asiatic population,
you know, a huge number of Near Eastern people. You know,
it spanned one fifth or one six of this planets,
like the Soviet Union was the ultimate international superpower, you know,
and the only way the Soviet Union survives. And one
of the reasons why the later Cold War was so
dangerous as human you know, for technological reasons in historical
ones and the sidelining of human decision makers and misconditions
of strategic nucleator parody and things. But the reason why
I drop of who was a fascinating guy. And I mean,
like I've said, I believe I'm not a sovietologist and
I'm not a Russia expert at all, but I do
know something and it's clear to me that post Khrush
chief there was a shadow trifecta of and drop of
Ustanov and Gramigo with a real Soviet executive. Brezhnev was
a frontman, which made sense because before he became kind
of do we compromised people liked Breshnev, and he resonated
with with the people even today, like he's fondly remembered,
you know, like uh as as as you know, uh,
it's like a man who was like a like a
great steward of other Russian people and the nationalities. But
you know, and drop of I mean Bridsenev was very
much a Stalinist, you know, and as was in drop
of but and drop off seminal speech right in eighty two,
right after he became a general secretary. You know, he
this is when uh project Rion, which a lot of
people attribute as contributing substantially to the war Scare of
eighty three in the able Archer era. I think people
still misunderstand that aspect of it. But because it may
there isn't one of the subject of the speech to
the Presidium he said, we're going to lose the Cold
War if we don't take drastic measures to countermeasures against Rima,
you know, the revolution of military affairs. He was being
specifically of computing power and command and control aspects, which
was true. There's there's something, there's something insane. There's only
like five thousand computers in the entire Soviet Union in
ninety too. It was something that it was some insanely
primitive state of affairs or regards high tech, you know,
and you know, it's oh point was basically the risk
of war based on the strategic paradigm as it's evolving,
is well as these command and control aspects and and
the sideline of human decision makers, that the risk of
war is probably greater than it's ever been since you know,
the forties. But also so we're going to lose that
war if we don't find a way to develop meaningful
countermeasures that you know, are our technologies of parody, or
unless we find a way out of the Cold War,
you know. And that was Gorbachev's whole notion, because Gorbachev
wasn'tna drop off protege. He wasn't some big liberal chevid
narsee I think was subverting things. But point being, you know,
Gorbachev was very much the anti Yeltsin quite literally, and
Yelson was the neocons guy. You know. Gorbachev's notion was,
you know, to reform the command economy with certain qualifications,
you know, and and and basically do it with gods
plan and favor of something else that could abide innovation
in the high tech sector and to bring about peace
with the United States. But surrendering to the United States
or dismantling the Soviet Union that was not at all
within the cars and one of the reasons why Gorbachev
was head rapport with Bush and Baker. Bush and Baker
assured him, we're not gonna try and dismantle the Soviet Union,
and they weren't for a very specific reason. Bush said,
where you know, until there's full nuclear disarmament, we're not
even gonna talk about, you know, a post Soviet future,
you know. And obviously the Neo count perspective and their
shoehorning of Yeltsen was, you know, break the Soviet Union
to piece is now their notion was, and one of
the reasons for the why this crusading aast Moscow's proceeding
from Ukraine. Their notion was to break the Soviet Union
into essentially three discrete like client regimes, you know, like
the former Soviet Far East. And in those days especially too,
because the Pentagon was still looking at China as essentially
friendly and obviously like you know, seed some of that
territory to the to Pig King, but you know, base
they'll be like a Ukraine like commissariat. They'll be like,
you know, the Moscow kind of central Commissariat, and then
they'll be this like former like Russian Far East that
can you know, just that's just kind of like, uh,
this sort of like hyper exploited you know, hinterland for
the United States and and and the adjacent finance capital and stuff.
And you know, uh, Bush and Baker realize like, no,
we're not We're not gonna grind these people's faces into
the concrete, and we're not going to destabilize the whole region.
And you know, we're certainly not gonna do anything until
there's full nuclear disarmament. You know that that was a
tangential discussion. Should give me. But Baker was a great man,
and I've got a lot of respect for him and
Bush forty one, it was not a particularly likable guy,
leaven It dead, but he had a very serious and
sophisticated view of geopolitics and political affairs. So that administration
looks better and better in my opinion. And I mean
I felt that way at the time. As a teenager,
I realized his country, I realized something really, really really
bad was underway. When when when when Clinton was elected.
I mean, it would have been one thing if it
was like a twenty twenty steel but the body politically
excited about this pig, and that was insane, you know.
And it's not just because he was crushing our people.
I mean I knew guys who got indicted and with
the prison under Clinton reno for when they hadn't done anything.
You know, I'm not just speaking, I mean as a
matter of law as well as a matter of fact
or ethics or whatever. But as it may the to
bring it back a bit, you know, there there's a
brief moment really from about ninety two to ninety six,
and that's when that's when these these historians, first another
David Irving, you know, he got access to the FSB
archives and there was all this incredible stuff that came
to like that, you know, the old Soviet system had
suppressed and kept from probably eyes. But then, I mean
very quickly the things became even more opaque than in
some much than they had during the Soviet e because
the regime will never tell the truth about what's going
on with Russia, I mean, or with Europe. But this
is an issue with peculiar sensitivity for reasons that I
don't think need to be elaborately explicated. But I realized
I talk more about Hoffman as well as the knowledge
of Barbara Rose, and I did specifically suber Of. If
you going to a part three, I'll remedy that and
i'll speak specifically to suber Off, and I'll include some
aspects of inside the Red Army. I've got a paperback
of that. I'm going to take it on the road
with me.
Speaker 1: Now that sounds good to me, getting into the ye.
The thing about reading subar Off is it's just this
fire hose of just this date, that what was dismantled
on this date, what was put in this place on
this date, And it's just like just running down this
whole list of things, just chapter after chat, where it's
it's mind boggling. The the mountain of circumstantial evidence he
is able to provide for his UH, for his thesis,
which they took.
Speaker 2: He took a like a lot of Russians, the particularly
guys who were in intelligence roles for military roles. He
was a prolific documentary and he wrote down a huge
amount of things. But also you know, obviously English wasn't
his first language, and it's written kind of like a debriefing,
but with like added extensit camery, I mean, which makes sense.
I mean he was a defector and he he he
spent literally years being debriefed by American and NATO military people.
You know, I mean, I get it. That's not that's
not a fun right, Like the defector actually sucks.
Speaker 1: What's your take on defectors. I interviewed one once and
and he was a defector from Soviet Union, like in
early nineteen eighty nine, And I mean I just caught
him not exactly lying, just I caught him in not
being willing to have certain conversations that would just seem like,
you know, it's like, oh, you know, well, tell me
what Carl Marx got right. It's one of the things
I asked him. I said, tell me what Carl Marks
got right. He's like nothing, absolutely nothing. And I'm like,
I see these defectors come out of like North Korea,
and like immediately they get debrief by the State Department,
and then they get boob jobs and they're driving brand
new cars and they're in frigging condos. And I'm like, yeah,
I think I think defectors were a lot different back
then than they are.
Speaker 2: To say, Okay, some guy, some DDR guy or some
Soviet Union like GRU officer who defected in like May
nineteen eighty nine, totally different than a guy who defected
in nineteen seventy nine or nineteen sixty nine, night and day,
because the former is just like some dickhead like looking
to get paid and like looking for a way out
of his life in a failing system. Guys like super
off first of all, they were taking a huge risk,
you know. And secondly, for regular people man like it
it pete cold War, you know. Uh, life wasn't that
different than the Soviet Union or in America. It really wasn't. So.
I mean, it's not like you're some GRU big shot.
It's not like you're gonna get great stuff in America.
You can't back home. I mean, yeah you can. You
might be able to get like blue jeans for your
mistress and like good scotch, but there's not some like
there was some like huge difference in quality of life
or something. Guys like Stuber defected because they they had
ethical reasons for it, and they developed a moral contempt
for the system. I really liked the book, The Hunt
for at October. It's just like an awesome book, and
I reread it lately because I I I've forgotten how
good it was. But you know, the uh, the Captain
of the Red October, the whole deal. I mean it's
in parts of character. I mean it's not. It's a
brilliant meditation on on late Cold War strategic nuclear platforms
and the deep parodies they're in, but it's under a
character study. Like the Soviet naval officer, you know, he's uh,
he's this guy from the He's this Lithuanian guy. He
doesn't really relate to the Russian culture. His wife needed
an operation and uh, the doctor who operated on or
was drunk when he poured in the surgery, so he
boxed it and she died. But the doctor was the
sun of some polit baro big shots. They're like, you know,
you can't stop demanding like vengeance against this man. So
so this navel off series just like what the hell
am I doing? You know, like I and also too
in it he's like deeply religious. He's like, so there's
like this atheist, uh chauvinistic Russian government that killed my wife,
and I am I'm supposed to I'm supposed to kill
fifty million people and event a wharl like on behalf
of it. Like, no, I'm not doing that. I mean
there there's there's a deeper moral quag mari too, because
the Red October it's a Typhoon class sub but it's
got what's called a caterpillar drive, so it's invisible to
SOSIS and passive sonar. So basically it's a splendid first
strike weapon. So he realizes, like the Soviet Union can
all this strategic balance and basically, uh bring America to
terms through the threat of through the threat of nuclear assault,
and like, I mean he've used that as morally fucked. Also,
you know, like if we're gonna win, like let's win
the Cold War clean, you know, not not do it
basically by like holding America hostage with the nuclear trigger.
I mean that's kind of moralistic. But at the same time,
I mean, I I don't know, man, like if it's
no being uh being the captain of a of a
typhoon class sub that that there was a counter value
like mega death machine, you know, it's it's it's it's
role was to assault counter value targets and and kill
millions of people if you don't believe in the system
you serve. That's a pretty horrible role to be in.
You know, you've got to be a true believer to
do that job. It's not like any other job in
the military, and it it's not like any other role
in any era, you know, I commanding it can be
commanding a first strike platform that that can that can
kill millions of people, you know. So I obviously that's
like a fictional example, but what clans he was drawing
upon was the real ethos of defectors in the Cold War.
And on the other side, Yeah, guys like the Cambridge five,
but I think we're pretty disturbed guys. But they were
true believers. That's totally different than these days. Like some
I think Snowden is a is a sincere guy. Whatever
problems he might have, you know, he's basically yeah, I mean,
he could never leave Russia now, Like it's not a
happy life, you know. I I think, uh, you can argue,
I mean, Snowden, I don't want to get into a
deep meditation on the ethics of what Snouding did, but
I my point is, like I whatever is motives, I
don't think if we can say he did that for clout.
But you know, these people who come the other way,
like some of these Chinese or North Koreans, they're they're
just not going to get paid, it's obvious, but they
think they're not being respected like they should be in,
you know, whatever role they're in. You know, but the
Cold War was a Cold War is a different world,
I mean literally, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well we'll pick this up on episode
three when you uh, when you get back from the
travels of Thomas on the Road and everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, everybody about thirty six hours ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, remind everybody where they can find your work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you should check out my substick. It's real Thomas
seven seven seven substack dot com. Alternatively, go to the website.
It's number seven h on me s seven seven seven
dot com. But that stuff on the show notes so
people can find it easy. But uh, my website is
a good one stop and my substick is where the
podcast and other good stuff is at. And I've I
just got off the road from DC. Then we had
the Halloween All Saints Say Cemetery walk. I'm trying to
make progress. I gotta make substantial progress on this manuscript.
By December, things have been very hectic, so in good ways,
and then I injured myself like a fucking idiot. But
it's uh, the mind Phaser pod. Uh, it's gonna be
another couple of weeks before a fresh episode drops, so
forgive me for day. But Jake burd and I will
continue to drop fresh stuff on his platforms and on
radio for Chicago. So just bear with me. I promise
we'll be back to regular uploads when I get back
from the road.
Speaker 1: All right until episode three. Thank you, Thomas, Yeah, thank you, man.
I want to welcome everyone back to the show. We
had a little bit of a hiatus because you know,
we did a little traveling and everything. But Thomas is
back and we're going to finish up the series on
who started World War Two? Who's responsible? And yeah, so
take it away, Thomas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for hosting me again. There's there's two issues here,
and if memory serves, in the first episode of this
little series, we addressed the issue of one exactly the
Second World War started, which seems pedantic, but it's not.
It's this is a real matter of contention for anybody
who's seriously engaged with the subject matter. There's a reason
why court historians claim the opposite of hostilities was September third,
nineteen thirty nine, because that represents a discreetly ideologically coded perspective.
And obviously the intention is to present the global strategic
and geopolitical situation as being one of relative peace until
the German Reich violated that peace through make it aggression
against the Polish state. Okay, that's a problematic perspective for
all kinds of reasons, you know, some of which are political,
some of which are purely historical in nature and factual.
But what I think is irrebuttable. Even if one accepts,
you know, the mainstream view of a the onset of
hostility between the German Reich and Poland and the subsequent
war declaration on the German Reich by France and the
United Kingdom, the fact of the matter is that weeks prior,
the Soviet Union assaulted the Japanese Imperial Army at Chalkan Goal.
This was a massive engagement. This is a massive clash
of forces, you know, and obviously it represented the onset
of a state of general hostility. Is between two great powers,
the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan. So I
don't really see how anybody who looks like to be
taken seriously it can claim that this was some sort
of insignificant event or somehow not related to the broader
nexus of causation that you know, also precipitated the agin
hostilities in Europe. You know, either the Soviet Union going
to war with Japan in a scale capacity represented the
onset of general hostilities on a planetary scale, or it didn't. Okay,
So there's that related to that, but more discreetly political
in terms of the significance of the subject matter vis
a vis court history, narratives, and the way that official
authorities in the United States and the United Kingdom and
the Buddhist Republic continue to present, you know, and characterize
the Second World War is the issue of Soviet intentions
and what exactly the state of power political relations was
between Moscow and Berlin as of you know, June twenty second,
nineteen forty one. And it's pretty clear to me, you know,
and I I draw a lot in substantial measure on
the laate Yakam Hoffman's exhaustive study of Barbarossa. It's pretty
clear to me that the Soviet Union was eminently going
to assault Europe and the German Reich, not just the
FURE but OKW as well as you know, various command
elements within the party apparatus, the military and the secular
state of apparatus recognized this reality, as did myriad heads
of state who found themselves allied with the German Reich
for various reasons. You know, this included Croatia, Slovakia, Italy
and you know France. You know, again there was no
VSI France. There was the Government of France and it
it was absolutely on the side of the Axis Powers.
You know, there were volunteers from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland
throughout uh this Central Asian Islamic countries. You know, Romania.
Romania contributed a quarter million men, which is a massive
contribution for a country the size of Romania. You know, Hungary, Bulgaria,
the Netherlands, you know, Belgium, Luxembourg. You know, the list
goes on and on and on. You know, and obviously
the Spaniards that Leningrad fought incredibly valiantly. But you know,
there's there's this This wasn't just a matter of zeitgeist,
some sort of mass hysteria or some sort of desire
to sacrifice one's life, or some sort of epemeral glory.
The Soviet Union, UH had a time of the fact
that it was animated by a revolutionary ideology that was
truly global in character. It The Soviet Union had built
a military juggernaut the likes of which the world had
never seen. It was almost unfathomable, and it was only
growing larger and more powerful, you know, and the like
I said to me, this is obvious. Hoffman and Victor
Suvarov and a few other military historians, all right, Astofe
is another one. They brought unique insight to the table.
And Hoffman in particular, his data points were and are exhaustive.
And Hoffman too he not that I mean, obviously, I
don't have any prejudice against independent scholars. I am one,
but such that people are prone to dismissing historians who
don't have what they view as adequate credential affiliation with
reputable institutions. Well, Hoffman, when he was alive, he was
in the employee of the official Historical Records division of
the Bundespan, you know, and he was considered to be
probably the seminal German historian on Barbarossa in terms of
the military aspects. Okay, you can't say that he was
a crank or that he was some Greek the guy
who was outside of the establishment of the bundes Republic.
He was very much insinuated into it. Okay, not that
that have to make a difference, but such that it does.
You know, I don't see how people can impeach his credibility,
you know. And one of the issues that Hoffman takes up,
because again Hoffman was very focused on the quantitative military
aspects of Barbarossa. One of the things that he addressed
was a lot of lay people as well as historians
and military analysts who know better. But for cynical reasons,
vand Wagon on this argument, they claim that, well, if
the Soviet Union was so deeply mobilized and had to
raise such a massively scaled war machine, why did they
absorb catastrophic casualties. Well, that's exactly why they did, because
they were deployed offensively. And when you're talking about combined arms,
even to this day, I mean, drones and localized autonomous
firepower are definitely changing things most strategically and tactically and
nowhere is that more on display than in than in
various aspects of tactical deployment and depth. But even to
this day, this remains constant. If we're talking about combined
arms modern warfare, we're not. You can't just call it
a proverbial audible in the midst of hostilities, if your
forces are a rayed to assault and switch to a
defensive paradigm, so coming under assault when not prepared to
defend in depth, it can lead to catastrophe, particularly when
one's opponent is the Wehrmacht. And we're gonna get into
how exactly that plays out. But not only again, does
the attrition rate and specifically the skewed nature of that
attrition rate. Not only does that not tend to rebut
the claim before us, it actually tends to substantiate it.
Now I'll get into some of these data points, said,
you know, to clarify what we're talking about here. I
can't remember if I got into this or not in
the first episode. And please tell me if I'm repeating
myself and know what has need to correct me. I'm
not gonna be offended. Quite the contrary, You'll be quite gracious.
Between November nineteen forty and literally the eve of Barbarossa
in June nineteen forty one, the Soviets undertook a massive
arms build up. It Now, don't get me wrong, By
the autumn of nineteen forty the Soviets enjoyed numeric and
arguably technological superiority pretty much across the entire spectrum of
combined arms. But this punctuated build up of November nineteen
forty to June nineteen forty one can really only be
interpreted as mobilization and anticipation of offensive operations. On the
outbreak of hostilities in June twenty second, nineteen forty one,
the Soviet Union had deployed no less than twenty four
thousand tanks, close to two thousand of which were T
thirty fours, which you know, in those days there weren't
main battle tanks. There was light, medium, and heavy tanks
then arguably super heavy tanks. But the T thirty four
was I think of it as kind of like the
the zero of of of armored forces. You know, it
was probably the most effective armored platform of the entire war.
And and all are out in terms Okay, yeah, obviously,
you know, the Tiger was a superior machine. That's not
what we're talking about, you know, in the the the
ability of T thirty four is to be rolled off
the assembly line rapidly, you know, almost like model T
Fords or something odin that that itself as a force multiplier,
you know it. Between ninety and thirty eight and June
twenty second, nineteen forty one, the Red Air Force had
acquired over twenty three thousand military aircraft, around thirty seven
one hundred of which could be considered cutting edge. Probably
about half of those had night fighting capability. The Red
Army had close to one hundred and fifty thousand field
artillery pieces and heavy mortars. The Red Navy had over
two hundred submarines, which I can't remember if I mentioned
or not, but obviously the submarines are prest league offensive.
There aren't defensive submarines, you know. And to be clear,
this alone, I mean, the Soviet Union wasn't known as
any kind of maritime power. I mean, if anything, you know,
the the Tsars Navy had been sank by the Japanese
in nineteen oh five, and that it further compromised the
prestige actual potential of you know, the Russian Navy is
a real force. But by June twenty second, nineteen forty one,
the Soviet Union by far had the largest submarine fleet
in the world, more than four times that of the
Royal Navy, you know, in the UK was viewed as
the foremost naval power on this planet, you know. I mean,
these data points speak for themselves, you know. And on
the political side, I know I've gotten into this in
previous series that we've done. I put a lot of
emphasis on direct testimony owing I'm sure in part to
the fact that my background in part is at least
is that of a lawyer, you know. But also if
we're talking about intent, particularly of wartime executives, there's a
tendency to be able to rely upon the statements of
a wartime executive or an executive who is preparing for war,
there's a there's insteadive is at telling the truth when
the chief executives so situated, is talking to his cabinet
or as a general staff officers, Okay, because what incentive
or there be to lie number one, and there's there's
there's active disincentives to lie because that compromises the ability
of subordinate command elements to effectively execute orders and wage
war towards victory conditions, you know. And so I put
a lot of stock in what Stalin said, and a
lot of this testimony from Stalin himself, you know, that
which isn't independently documented by you know, the minutes of
his speeches or by audio recording. You know, A lot
of Stalin's intimates were the sources of these statements, including
Colonel Volkaganov, who was Stalin's official biographer, you know. And
Stalin gave a series of speeches in this in the
year preceding Barbarossa, but particularly the six to eight months
immediately proceeding onset of hostilities, which approximately reflects the final
phase of mobilization that we talked about just now, from
November nineteen forty to June nineteen forty one. And Volkoganov
makes the point that that Stalin was very taciturn, but
he became quite candid and quite open within the cloisters
of you know, these command element corridors in his discussion
of you know, what was to be military doctrine in
the next war, which he increasingly discussed as if it
was an imminent possibility. In Volkoganov's own words. In describing
the speech Stalin made on May fifth, nineteen forty one,
he says, quote, the Leader made it unmistakably, unmistakably clear.
War is inevitable in the future. One must be ready
for the quote unconditional destruction of German fascism. The world
will be fought on enemy territory and victory will be
achieved with few casualties. And again, this wasn't something that
Stalin merely devised as a polemical device to embolden forces
under his command or to overcome any potential or actual
crises and confidences among the general staff by appeal to
revolutionary fervor. Lenin made clear in identifying the core doctrinal
elements of the Red Army, you know, back in nineteen twenty,
nineteen twenty one, nineteen twenty two, that the Red Army
was an instrumentality of revolutionary imperatives. It wasn't a defensive element,
you know, and it was to be deployed offensively at
all times, you know, because the only rational for its
existence within the paradigm of Mercist historiography and Leninist revolutionary
doctrine was to facilitate the advance of history and the
victory of the proletariat against the class enemy. So there's
really no there's really no way to interpret Soviet battle
doctrine as anything other than discreetly ideologically coded and axiomatically offensive,
you know, And this is this is going on, or
this is relying upon the strictures of Marxist Leninist ontology
and the distinct Marxist view of military power and its
utility and its ethical functions. And the Marxist Leninism was
in fact a total philosophical and political system, impoverished as
it may have been intellectually in various capacities, and to
be fair at what's sophisticated in others, what's irrebuttable or indisputable,
is that it was a total theory of political and
social and thus historical antology. So the idea that the
party state, which to be clear, by nineteen forty one,
had categorically annihilated millions of people within the Soviet Union
owing to what was identified as their ineducability, you know,
the idea that Stalin or the Presidium or the Politburo
Standing Committee or these surviving command elements in the Red army.
The idea that they would somehow hesitate to see through
these doctrinal imperatives is somewhat laughable, you know. And we're
not in the court of law, so it shouldn't be
a problem to invoke subsequent as well as prior precedent
to demonstrate persuasively what the doctrinal character was of Marxist
Leninist revolutionary military elements. I invoked the case of Cambodia
a lot, you know, from nineteen seventy five to ninety
seventy nine. And I know for a fact, because I
got to hate me all it's affecting things. People suspect
I only do that for the sake of polemical uh expediency,
But that's not why. Paul Pott was not some simple
minded brute. He was actually a very sophisticated political soldier.
He had a very deep understanding of Marcis Leninism, far
more than Mao and Democratic Tempuccia. As Paul Pott and
his cadre branded the country during their brief tenure, was
a very pure Marcis Leninist stayed in some ways, and
there was nothing there. There was nothing heterodox an idiot
logical terms about the way they implemented class warfare adjusting
for the discrete conditions on the ground in Southeast Asia
as in nineteen seventy five. So what I'm getting at,
and I'll move on here in a moment I don't
quite understand. Are the same people who acknowledge that the
Soviet Union was this outlier country and that that was
unusual in every conceivable sense, you know, in terms of
practice and policy and theoretical foundations and everything else. Yet
they insist that this this didn't somehow impact military decision
making or that revolutionary ontology somehow, somehow stopped at the
at the point of executive decisionism when it came to
the decision to you know, spread the revolutionary cause to
Europe and specifically to annihilate the dialectical enemy in the
German Reich. But you know, the Stalin had spoken again
and again as well to the Central Committee, most notably
on January eighth, nineteen forty one, and there was two
high ranking Air Force officers in attendance, and Stalin apparently
spoke directly of the ratio and algorithm that was necessary
to defeat the German Reich. According to the General Staff,
as well as his own calculations as had been explicated
to him by authorities that he trusted. He spoke on
this particular day to quote twofold superiority. He said that,
as had been explained to him, twofold superiority is a
law of military science, meaning the two to one ratio
contra the enemy and offensive operations. You know, whether you're
talking about raw numbers or you know, force multipliers and
variables tending to act as force multipliers that magnify the
effectiveness of offensive elements, you know. And Stalin stated openly
that quote, this is not a game. The time is
approaching for military operations, twofold superiority is essential, but greater
supurity is even better. And he said that he spoke
specifically of the difficulty of traversing the Carpathians and the
need to designate at least five thousand attack aircraft in
order to neutralize defensive positions that infantry and armor aren't
going to be able to reddle traverse going to the terrain. Now,
this is hugely important for reasons I'm gonna get into
in a moment, Okay, But from January of forty one,
specifically January eighth, until May, you know, only weeks before Barbarossa.
Stalin talks again and again about waging military operations in
the Balkans, specifically across the Romanian frontier, and discrete exigencies
that are presented by waging war in that theater. Okay.
In a lecture given in the spring, I believe in
March of forty one, but somehow neglected to sign an
exec date, he addressed the Soviet Planopotentiary representative in Belgrade,
which at that time was under the rule briefly of
a Chetnik junta, which in turn led to the German
intervention and ultimately the you know, bifurcation of the Kingdom
of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes. But in addressing the Planopotentiary
Representative in Belgrade and select members of the Pullet Buro,
he said, quote, the USSOR will only react at the
proper time. The powers are scattering their forces more and more.
The USSR is therefore waiting to act unexpectedly against Germany,
and doing so, the USSR will cross the Carpathias, which
will lead to the signal for the revolution in Hungary.
Soviet troops will penetrate Yugoslavia from Hungary, advance the Adriatic Sea,
and cut Germany off from the Balkans in the Middle East. Okay,
so what does this mean in both immedia tactical terms
and how this impacted the battlefield situation in Operation Barbarossa
as well as in broader strategic terms. Well, I'll take
it away better question first, the latter aspect. First, the
Soviet Union plan to assault Europe through Romania. By capturing Romania,
it could deprive Germany of essential access to petroleum reserves.
And also that's commensurate with Soviet deep battle doctrine, which
presuming forces and being ratios that Stalin described as being
you know, at least a twofold advantage and preferably double
or triple that Stalin basically was planning a deep battle
like pincer flanking maneuver across the entirety of the continent
in the north through Sweden and then down to assault
Germany from the north and in the south. The main
stap punks would be through Romania. And I'll get into
in a moment. This is why the Army Group Center,
Army Group South faced savage resistance and Barbarossa Army Group
Center was moving so fast it was basically like face
with no more than token opposition on the road to Moscow,
which doesn't make any sense unless you understand the deployment
schema of the Red Army, which was totally offensive and
concentrated in the south in a way that wouldn't be
rationally in a in a defensive oriented schema. It's uh
most uh, most significant everyone, I'm jumping around a bit,
but so please stop me if I'm not being clear.
Most significant the suber of hypothesis in terms of Stalin's
declared intentions was probably what's going to be known as
the secret meeting with the polit Burrow and the Soviet
representatives of the Common Tern who had been called back
presumably to be availed for the specific person being availed
to this speech on August nineteenth, nineteen thirty nine, which
obviously coincided with the assault on the Japanese a Kalkin goal.
But this was a surprise secret meeting, and it was
unprecedented for the Russian delegation of the Common Turn to
be called back. Among other things, Stalin didn't have a
lot of he didn't have a lot of respect for
the Common turn. I mean in part because the his
UH rigid command doctrine. He didn't I mean, he wasn't
comfortable with UH an ideologically coded cadre structure, whereby independent
of Moscow, just going to the fact of distance and
you know, remoteness. You know, he didn't want some cadre
making decisions even superficially on behalf of the Soviet Union
without his direct oversight. Okay, but nonetheless, you know, the
common tern still had tremendous clout in ninety thirty nine,
and especially coming off of the defeat in Spain, there
was a real danger of a fracturing of a you know,
the broad international front red front. So this is highly significant.
You know, I guess what I'm getting at is that
Stalin wouldn't have called the Russian delegation backed for you know,
for the sake of putting on airs or to stand
on ceremony or something. And this is when I think,
I excuse me, I think I briefly addressed this last episode.
It was in this it was in this secret meeting
or secret speech that Stalin declared that uh, you know,
getting the Germans, to getting the right foreign ministry to
agree to a non aggression pact, you know, that would
embolden them to act against Poland, you know, because there
too for the Berlin and specifically Hitler felt that his
hands were tied in resolving the Polish issue because an
assault on Poland, even in the wake of a gross
provocation or violation at Germany's territorial integrity on the frontier,
you know, what, would lead to a Soviet counter strike
that would be devastating. So Stalin's reasoning was, you know,
we will, uh will lull Germany with this non aggression pact,
which you know absolutely guarantees that they will assault Poland,
which will then you know, lead to a war declaration
by the UK and France. Germany, you'll uh will probably
be victorious on the Western front, but only at pure
it cost, you know, and then uh you know and
that this thus this is the icebreaker that uh will
uh soften uh what would be Europe's defensive cordon and
allow the Red Army to you know, just bowl over
and annihilate resistance in the West and you know, thus
reverse the reverse the defeat handed to them and Iberia
and you know, conquer the continent in a rapid and
devastating operation. And I mean Stalin this is remarkably consistent
as far back as nineteen twenty five, you know, when
he was less than three years into his formal ascendancy
as General Secretary, he spoke openly about the need to
act militarily against Europe as soon as possible, but not
until the political climate and the you know, the myriad
it ever sort of changing alliance structure in the West
was such that what Don called the quote broad field
of activity would be realizable in order to you know,
pursue the imperative of world revolution. And to be clear,
you know, not only was a Europe along with America
and Japan, you know, the kind of productive core of
this planet, but you know, the understanding was that Europe
was still the inconceptual terms, you know, the political center
of human affairs. You know, conceptually, you know, every every
every ideological schema you know, came from Europe, and even
even things like the anti colonial movement were fully locked
into dialectical uh engagement you know, with with with European thought.
So Stalin's notion was that, you know, first last and
always your Europe needs to be overrun and annihilated, and
the revolution has to has to be implemented there. You know,
it's a waste of time and it's self defeating them pursue. Uh,
there's such imperatives on the periphery. But make no mistake,
you know where ever revolutionary activity jumped off that had
historical momentum and forced it in being Stalin absolutely was
in favor of supporting that and seeing that through. But
the uh, but but the but the core orientation of
the Soviet Union had to be you know, the the
you know, the implementing the World Revolution in Europe, you know,
first and foremost. And and that's also why the Spanish
War was so important. You know, it wasn't just uh.
I've read some court historians claim that Shalin was somehow
like reluctantly forced into the Spanish War just for the
sake of appeasing the common term. I mean, that's that's
that's laughable for all kinds of reasons. But it also
you know, Shalin wasn't as heterodox of a of a
Marxist Leninist as he's often portrayed. I mean, Stalin was complicated,
you know, Like I said, I it's a lean value,
but it's a great book. Carry Bolton's book stalin the
enduring legacy. You know, Shalin was a complicated figure, and
there were heterodox aspects to his worldview and his his
own Velt politique. But it wasn't a radical divergence or something,
you know, And that's important, especially because these days even
even some fairly heterodox political fearis and even some revisionists
seem to abide that fiction. But yeah, the you can't
and in other words, this you can't you can't extricate
the ambition of the Sovietization of Europe from the existence
of the Soviet Union itself. You know, these these these
ambitions were synonymous, and that's that's also why the Cold
War developed the way they did in in raw geo
strategic terms. But you know, and I think I can't
remember I mentioned or not this speech and question. You know,
the August nineteen, nineteen thirty nine speech. It was obtained
by the French news agency have us and uh, the
French were kind of notorious for getting a hold of
these kinds of documents and records, you know, And when
when the Havas agency by way of Geneva, when when?
When when they went public with it? It was published
in ah, some international journal and then in many of
the major French language newspapers. But Moscow's propagandas immediately went
into overdrive, you know, and claiming, you know, this is
a this is a forgery. You know, this, this is
confabulated by the the enemies of Russia and the Soviet Union.
You know, it's fascist propaganda. And uh it did not
make as nearly as big of an impact as one
might think, you know, which is really interesting because it
goes to show you too, how you know, And a
lot of that too had to do with, uh, this
kind of deafening silence from American news agencies, you know,
and other than all the major papers in America, I mean,
other than those brands held by McCormick were basically uh,
mouthpieces for the New Deal regime, you know. But it's
still I mean obviously too, I mean this there's a
kind of nascent, low tech globalism emerging at least between
America and Europe by way of you know, the UK,
but even you know, I mean, it's it's, it's it's
stormans remarkable that there is basically no impact in terms
of global opinion. And uh I've looked too to see
if this pops up in any America first literature, and
I haven't found anything this positive on that question. But
that again goes to show you to the degree to
which the psychological environment was being actively manipulated, you know,
long before the onset of formal hostilities, which might seem
like an obvious point to you or myself, but people
are inundated in this country with this idea that you know,
somehow the New Dealers had no interest in these goings
on and the European War and the intries from the
Soviet Union, the German Reich, you know, until Pearl Harbor,
when America was attacked. Then that changed everything. I mean
that that could not be more false, from the first
h to the New Deal regime, which again coincided almost
precisely with the National Socialist Revolution, which was a totally
legal revolution again, you know, and Roosevelt from the first
days of his administration was pursuing an an absolutely radical
anti fascist imperative as the core mandate of an ambition
of his administration, you know, And that can't they can't
be denied, you know, in the I don't want to
spin this off to tangentially, and I know that a
lot of people criticize me for my sources, well, yet
they have yet to directly rebut any of these data
points that have derived from these sources, namely Robert Conquests
and Ernst Nolty, and as well as the Black Book
of Communism, which is a great resource. I'm gonna add,
but it's indisputable if the Soviet Union exterminated millions of
people between nineteen seventeen and nineteen forty one, and there
was a massive series of death camps, actual death camps
that were employed towards this incredibly gruesome task, and the
degree to which there was an information blackout about this
reality can't be overstated, you know. And people who raised
this issue, you know, not just not just America Firsters,
but Joseph Schumpeter's wife. Interestingly, she spoke Japanese and and
she was a big advocate for Japanese people. She was
kind of a human rights type, but of a genuine sort,
not like the twenty first century sort. And uh, she
raised the issue of Soviet annihilation therapy as an ULTI
called it, and she was she and Schumper were her
hassled by the FBI. Both were you know, sympathies for
the Axis vis a vis her, you know, dealings with
with these people and stuff, and particularly Japanese people are
being persecuted by the New Dealers, but also you know,
propagandizing against the Soviet Union, in their view, was this
big subversive act, you know, which seems kind of an
incredible I'd imagine that people today, but they don't. I mean,
but I mean, it only seems incredible if one doesn't
accept the true nature of a of that regime. But
that aside, it's remarkable that agree to which these things
could in fact be could in fact be hidden, you know,
But that also raised I mean, there's also and obliquely
and conversely it it also begs the question, you know,
if there was this mass murder conspiracy hatched in the
German Reich at Vance in ninety forty two, like why
wasn't anybody you know, publicizing that? I mean that one
would think that would be a godsend to the New
Dealers and a perfect way to portray the Germans as
these horrific villains, and especially became imperative you know by
ninety forty four, as the UIs Army was quite literally
near mutiny, you know, which we've talked about that was
the real catalyst for the execution of Poort Eddie Slavic.
You know, it's people so uh, you know, the Walter
Winschel and uh, the Office of War Information and all
these myriad anglophone news agencies. They just decided not to
report on the fact that the German Reich only existed
to exterminate Jewish people just because they didn't think it
was important, you know, they did, they didn't think it
was a useful way to code propaganda. I mean, that's
like a bit tangential. But moving on real quick, so
I realize we're running out of time. I mentioned a
moment ago. Something that's often raised is okay, So why
why was Barbarossa so tactically so tactically successful? And why
was the Attrition eight so algorithmically skewed against the Soviet
Union if in fact the Soviet Union was mobilized for
war and planning to attack. But that that's exactly why
these things did develop that way. The Soviets were planning
to assault Romania by autumn of forty one, and that's
exactly why, like I said, army groups South encountered comparatively
savage resistance and that's also why that's also why there
was a there was powerful reserve elements in Ukraine because
essentially they were there to rapidly reinforce the shock element
that was going to assault the Balkans. So there was
this awkwardly unbalanced deployment scheme of Soviet field armies where
Soviet forces blocking the corridor to the Moscow Leningrad deployment
space they were exponentially weaker than those deployed to Ukraine,
which doesn't make any sense unless you account for the
fact that they were deployed in offensive posture, the fair
punk of which was you know, in the south to
assault Romania through the Carpathians. Now, don't get me wrong,
the Soviets were sensitive to the fact that Moscow was
being left relatively undefended. But uh, you know, it doesn't like,
it doesn't track any other way other than accept what
I just acknowledged. And it's also you know, again this
idea that's endlessly banned to this day, that that Stalin
was afraid of Hitler, or that the Soviet Union was
afraid of the Vermach. That it's like, well, I mean, okay,
that's preposterous anyway, But so Stalin was so afraid of
the Vermach that he he there They're basically was a
token deployment on the UH path to Moscow. You know,
I mean, how how is amply does that work? Any uh?
I mean, any interpretation is uh he can only result
in a conclusion that the Soviets were poised for exclusively
offensive operations. I mean, unless you can it's a tortured
kind of logic. I mean, I guess you could claim
that the Soviets wanted to draw the Germans in and
funnel the main line of the funnel under the to
the main line of resistance at the gates of Moscow
and stop them their tracks, but that Moscow practically felt
you know, that doesn't make any sense. I've read people
who try to make some variation of that argument, but
it's it's so preposterous. I don't really think it warrants
to kind of blow by blow rebuttal but that's really,
you know, an example of extent conditions. Speaking of herself
and the resistance that IRA Group Center did encounter. To
be clear, they weren't defensively deployed either. There wasn't any
depth to their deployment schema and they in fact were
forward deployed with a heavily armed shock element in the lead,
you know, which is one reason why our group center
such as they didn't counter resistance. They got hit with
a lot of firepower that was immediately exhausted, and then
when counterattacking the Vermont immediately broke Soviet lines because there
was again, there wasn't any there wasn't any depth to
the deployment. You know, if you know anything, I'm not
any I'm not at all like a military type person,
but I do know something about the internal logic of
modern warfare, you know, in an abstract deployment. Since I mean,
and if you know anything about this just not even
really deep diving into the numerical data points and stuff,
but it's literally looking at the map of the deployment
scheme of this should jump right out at you. It's
it's almost like you know those a you know, it's
like illusion pictures. They used to see them a lot,
like beer companies, and it's like you look at some
picture and it looks like it's like a bunch of
old pictures, a Spudge Mackenzie or something. But then you
see it and it's like a sexy girl or something.
And then once you see that, like, you can't unsee it.
What's like that? Okay? I mean you look at you
look at a deployment map of the Moscow, Leningrad Gorky
battlespace on June twenty second, ninety forty one, and you
realize like what it is, and then and then you
can't undersee it, you know. So the fact anybody who
makes an argument of the contrary, I got to assume
they're being dishonest or they're just profoundly ignorant of the
subject matter. Yeah, it looks like we've gone over an hour.
I hope that wasn't to skater shot man.
Speaker 1: Let me let me hit you up with one question
before we go, and this is this is a little
bit off topic, but it's a question I wanted to
ask since we were talking about Stalin so much. Yeah,
did Stalin take half of Europe at the end of
the war or was he given half of Europe at
the end of the war?
Speaker 2: I mean both, That's what was decided at Yalta. If
if if Stalin was gonna be precluded from taking Germany,
that meant that Eisenhower and Montgomery would have had to
assault Berlin. And had they done that, what would have
happened was even accounting for the punitive and purely a
lot purely ideologically motivated and additional surrender demand, vermacht Off
and SS elements would have basically welcomed them in because
that would have prevented the literal rape of and destruction
of the German Reich. And once it was clear that
Anglo American forces intended to take Berlin, Stalin would have
immediately shifted to a footing of hostility cat for the
United States and the UK. And even before that happened,
it's conceivable that these elements that were driving for Berlin
on the Soviet side, like first Ukrainian Shock Army, which
I think was under Rock. I think that I think
first Ukrainian Shock Army was enter Timoshenko. But whoever whatever
formation cone Of and Rakasovsky respectively were commanding, it's very
conceivable that they would have ordered down the company level
commanders to treat the US and the UK as enemies
who were literally trying to race to Berlin, as to
act as a blocking element, and the Soviet view, you know,
for the Germans so America to found itself at war
with the Soviet Union. You know, that's the only alternative.
But I mean, that's what that you like, I said,
the thing was decided at Yelta. It's I mean, I
don't you can uh. On the one hand, yeah, it
was the new It was the New Dealers who kept
the Soviet Union in the war. But like von Manstein,
I highly recommend von Manstein's it's marketed as his memoirs,
it's called Lost Victories, but in reality it was just
debriefing by the War Department, which obviously was very interested
in learning as much as they could about fighting the
Soviet Union with combined conventional combined arms, with an emphasis
on armored columns. Obviously. But Mannstein, who really was like
a kind of Prussian martinet and a very prejudiced guy.
He stipulated that the Soviet army was unbelievably tough. They
could absorb catastrophic attrition and not fall apart, and much
as in the Western world, as we might view their
doctrinal orientation on the battlefield as exhibiting a kind of
callous disregard for human life, it was and is highly effective.
And those things are all true. You can't really take
away from the gameness and just the raw toughness of
the Red Army. You know. So I'm not gonna sit
here and say that, oh, Shtalin was just handed a
gift by you know, the New Dealers and in general Eisenhower.
You know, because uh, the Soviet Union fought for every
single inch of ground that uh they won back, and uh,
the the attrition THEA endured is almost unfathomable. Yet by
the time they reached Berlin, their morale was great. They
were acting like they were at a party. I'm not
being flippant. They were doing utterly horrible, horrible things. By
my point being, the enronament that arrived in Berlin wasn't
some broken ragtag for us. It was a very game,
very aggressive, very high morale element, which is one of
the reasons why they were so dangerous. Like it's realistic.
And their Utergang where Troutle young, you know, Uh, she's
trying to pass through Soviet lines and then like the
kid runs up and grabs her hand.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's so it's a really poignant scene. But uh there's
the Soviet infantry men and they're like guzlin vodka and
like dancing like you're at a party. You know, these
guys have just been in action for the you know,
these guys probably were the last they were probably like
the last element drafted. They were probably the guys who
turned eighteen, you know in uh in a in the
in January of nineteen forty five, you know, and then
took you know, like eighty percent casualties. You know, they're
and they're they're like the surviving element, and they're they're
acting like you're at a party. You know, they most
most people would have fallen apart, you know, even when
they had the kind of that kind of momentum in
broad strategic terms, just because it was so it was
so brutal and so catastrophic. So yeah, I'm not I'm
not gonna take anything away from the Ivans in terms
of their toughness and gameness. But it you know, I
a race to Berlin between Montgomery and Eisenhower and and
uh the Soviets would have meant war. So that's the
best answer I can give.
Speaker 1: Awesome, All right, Well, I will encourage people to go
over to Thomas's substack that's real Thomas seven seven seven
dot substack dot com, and you can connect to him
from from there to anywhere that he's at, and uh
check him out on Twitter and make sure to subscribe
to a substack so you can get the episodes and
hear them. So yeah, that's at Thomas. This was a
This was a great series. I thought this was a
series that needed to get out there, especially after reading
after reading sub Off and getting a little of the
way through Hoffman and having to finish Hoffman. It's just
vital information that people are you're not going to hear
even if you exit court history. This is stuff that's
hidden and there's a reason why both of those books.
If you want original copies of both of those books,
you're paying two three hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I agree on all accounts. And yeah,
thanks thanks for including me man or rather for inviting
me to participate in lieu of somebody else. That's just great.
Speaker 1: Really, thank you, Thomas. Take care now.