Episode 1296: How the Soviet Union Started World War 2 - The Finale - w/ Thomas777

You can also subscribe on my website which is right there, gum Road and what's the other one, subscribe Star And if you do that, you will get access to the audio file. So head on over to the pekan Yonashow dot com. You'll see all the ways that you can support me there. And I just want to thank everyone. It's because of you that I can put out the

amount of material that I do. I can do what I'm doing with doctor Johnson on two hundred Years Together and everything else, the things that Thomas and I are doing together on kindinal philosophy, it's all because of you. And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank you enough. So thank you. The pekan Yonashow dot com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to the Peak and Yona show. We had a little bit of a hiatus because you know, 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.

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 naked 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.

Empire of Japan. So I don't really see how anybody whoks likes 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 amin of hostilities in Europe.

Hoffmann's exhaustive study of Barbarossa. It's pretty clear to me that the Soviet Union was eminently going to assault Europe and the German Rich, not just the Feure but okay, w 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 Vhi France. There was the Government of France, and it was absolutely on the side of the Axis powers. You know, there were volunteers from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland throughout 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.

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 Uh and Victor Suvarov and Uh a few other military historians, all right, says Stope 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 he not that I mean, obviously, I don't have any prejudice

against independence 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, Hoffmann when he was alive, he was in the employee of the official Historical Records division of the Bundesman, you know, and he was considered to be probably the seminole 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 agrieved 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. Van Wagen on this argument, they claim that, well, if the Soviet Union was so deep we 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 in localized autonomous firepower are are definitely changing things, most strategically and tactically, and nowhere is that more on display than 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.

to catastrophe, particularly when one's opponent is the Wehrmacht. And I'm 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 of 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.

you know, the the Tiger was a superior machine. That's not what we're talking about, you know, in the the uh, 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 that itself was a force multiplier, you know it.

speak for themselves, you know. And on the political side, I know I've gotten into this. In pre obvious 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 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 incentivization to telling the truth when the chief executives so situated as 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.

from November nineteen forty to June nineteen forty one. And Volkognanov makes the point that Stalin was very taciturn, but he became quite king ended 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 worl 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 rationale 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, it's sophisticated in others. What's irrebuttable or indisputable is that it was a total theory of political and

social and thus historical ontology. 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.

military elements. I invoked the case of Cambodia a lot, you know, from nineteen seventy five to nineteen seventy nine, and I know for a fact because I hate me all its effect on things. People suspect I only do that for the sake of polemical 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 Marxist Leninism, far more than Mao and Democratic Kempuccia, as Paul Pott and his cadre branded the country during their brief tenure, was a very pure Marxist Leninist stayed in some ways, and there was nothing There was nothing heterodox in ideological terms about the way they implemented class 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 uh, 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 very 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.

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.

to the terrain. Now, this is hugely important for reasons I'm going to 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 March of forty one, but somehow neglected to sign an execut date.

to act unexpectedly against Germany. And doing so, the USSR will cross the Carpathias, which lads as 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.

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.

Most significant. The super 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 a August nineteenth, nineteen thirty nine, which obviously coincided with the assault and the Japanese a Kalkan 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 ideologic we coded cadre structure, whereby independent of Moscow, just going to the fact of distance

and you know, remoteness. You know, he didn't 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 Turn 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.

think I briefly addressed this last episode. It was in this it was in this secret meeting or secret speech that Stalin declared that, 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 theretofore 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 of 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 ward declaration by the UK and France, Germany you'll, uh will probably be victorious on the Western front,

but only at pure 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 defense in Cordon and allow the Red Army to you know, just bowl over and annihilate resistance in the West. And you know, thus uh reverse the reverse the defeat handed to them and Iberia and you know, conquer the continent in a rapid and devastating operation.

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 di colonial movement were fully locked into dialectical uh engagement, you know, with with

with European thoughts. 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, such imperatives on the periphery that make no mistake, you know, where ever revolutionary activity jumped off that had historical momentum and forces in being. Stalin absolutely was in favor of supporting that and seeing that through.

But the uh, but but the but the core mission 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 Stalin 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, Stalin 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, Carrie Bolton's book, Stalin The Enduring Legacy. You know, Stalin was a complicated figure, and there were heterodox aspects to his worldview and his own Velt politique, but it was a radical divergence.

it's fascist propaganda. And uh it did not make us 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 all the major papers in America, I mean, other than those brands held by McCormick. We're basically, uh,

mouthpieces for the New Deal regime, you know. But it's still I mean obviously too.

haven't found anything this positive on that question. But that again goes to show you too, 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 months of 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.

not just not just America Firsters, but Joseph Schumpeter's wife. Interestingly, she spoke Japanese 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 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 for you know, sympathies for the Axis vis a vis her you know, dealings with with with Japanese people and stuff, and particularly Japanese people who are being persecuted by the New Dealers, but also h you know, propagandizing against the Soviet Union in their review was this big subversive act,

you know, which seems kind of an incredible I'd imagine that people today, but.

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 as these horrific villains, and especially became imperative, you know by ninety forty four, as the US Army was quite literally near mutiny, you know, which we've talked about. That was the real catalyst for the execution of poor Eddie Slavic. You know, it's.

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 rate so algorithmically skewed against the Soviet Union if in fact the Soviet Union was mobilized for war and planning to attack. But 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.

So there was this awkwardly unbalanced deployment schema 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 an offensive posture. The share 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 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 ver Manx that he he there there basically was a token deployment on the path to Moscow. You know, I mean, how how is heply does that work?

Any uh? I mean, any interpretation is uh, it can only result in a conclusion that the Soviets were poised for exclusively offensive uppers. 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 funnel under 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 every group center did encounter. To be clear, they were 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, especially,

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 schema, they 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 an 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 makes an argument of the contrary, I got to assume they're being dishonest or they're just

profoundly ignorant to the subject matter. Yeah, it looks like we've gone over an hour. I hope that wasn't too skater shot man.

destruction of the German Reich. And once it was clear that Anglo American forces intended to take Berlin, Stalwoin immediately shifted to a footing of hostility cot 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 Rakasovski respectively were commanding, it's very conceivable that they would have ordered down the company level commanders to treat U, 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 Yelt 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 Loss 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 Manstein, 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 going to sit here and say that, oh, Shtalin was just handed a gift by you know, the New Dealer and in general Eisenhower. You know, because the Soviet Union fought for every single inch of ground that they won back, and uh, the the attrition they endured is almost unfathomable. Yet by the time they reached Berlin, their morale was great and they were acting like they were at a party.

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 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.

I thought this was a series that needed to get out there, especially after reading after reading suver 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 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 to three hundred dollars.