One of the great deceptions of the official line on history: it was the USSR which invaded Germany and not the other way around.
The extraordinary account, in the one of the great classics of 20th century, ICEBREAKER: Who Started World War II:
V. Suvorov - Icebreaker
Suvorov challenges the widely-accepted view that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime attacked an unsuspecting USSR on June 22, 1941 with a much superior and better prepared force. Instead, Suvorov argues that the Soviet Union was poised to invade Nazi-controlled territories in July 1941.
Stalin planned to attack Nazi Germany from the rear in July 1941, only a few weeks after the date on which the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union took place. According to Suvorov, the Red Army had been already redeployed from a defensive to an offensive position. As described in Suvorov's books, Stalin had made no major defensive preparations. On the contrary, the Stalin line fortifications through Belarus-Ukraine were dismantled, and the new Molotov line was all but finished by the time of Nazi invasion.
From the classic "Red Symphony" document (time of writing, January 1938)
G. - Exactly. Have you thought of the practical plan of realization?
R. - I had had more than enough time for that at the Lubianka. I considered. So look: if there were difficulties in finding mutually shared points between us and all else took its normal course, then the problems comes down to again trying to establish that in which there is similarity between Hitler and Stalin.
G. - Yes, but admit that all this is problematical.
R. - But not insoluble, as you think. In reality problems are insoluble only when they include dialectical subjective contradictions; and even in that case we always consider possible and essential a synthesis, overcoming the "morally-impossible" of Christian metaphysicians.
G. - Again you begin to theorize.
R. - As the result of my intellecutal discipline - this is essential for me. People of a big culture prefer to approach the concrete through a generalization, and not the other way round. With Hitler and with Stalin one can find common ground, as, being very different people, they have the same roots; if Hitler is sentimental to a pathological degree, but Stalin is normal, yet both of them are egoists: neither one of them is an idealist, and for that reason both of them are bonapartists, i.e. classical Imperialists. And if just that is the position, then it is already not difficult to find common ground betveen them. Why not, if it proved possible between one Tsarina and one Prussian King ...
G. - Rakovsky, you are incorrigible ...
R. - You do not guess? If Poland was the point of union between Catherine and Frederick - the Tsarina of Russia and the King of Germany at that time, then why cannot Poland serve as a reason for the finding of common ground between Hitler and Stalin? In Poland the persons of Hitler and Stalin can coincide. and also the historical Tsarist Bolshevik and Nazi lines. Our line, "Their' line - also, as Poland is a Christian State and, what makes the matter even more complex, a Catholic one.
G. - And what follows from the fact of such a treble coincidence?
R. - If there is common ground then there is a possibility of agreement.
G. - Between Hitler and Stalin? ... Absurd! Impossible.
R. - In politics there are neither absurdities, nor the impossible.
G. - Let us imagine, as an hypothesis: Hitler and Stalin advance on Poland.
R. - Permit me to interrupt you; an attack can be called forth only by the following alternative: war or peace. You must admit it.
G. - Well, and so what?
R. - Do you consider that England and France, with their worse
armies and aviation, in comparison with Hitler's, can attack the united Hitler and Stalin?
G. - Yes, that seems to me to be very difficult ... unless America ...
R. - Let us leave the United States aside for the moment. Will you agree with me that as the result of the attack of Hitler and Stalin on Poland there can be no European war?
G. - You argue logically; it would seem impossible.
R. - In that case an attack or war would be useless. It would not call forth the mutual destruction of the bourgeois States: the Hitlerist threat to the USSR would continue in being after the division of Poland since theoretically both Germany and the USSR would have been strengthened to the same extent. In practice Hitler to a greater extent since the USSR does not need more land and raw materials for its strengthening, but Hitler does need them.
G. - This is a correct view ..., but I can see no other solution.
R. - No, there is a solution.
G. - Which?
R. - That the democracies should attack and not attack the aggressor.
G. - What are you saying, what hallucination! Simultaneously to attack and not to attack ... That is something absolutely impossible.
R. - You think so? Calm down ... Are there not two aggressors? Did we not agree that there will be no advance just because there are two? Well ... What prevents the attack on one of them?
G. - What do you want to say by that?
R. - Simply that the democracies will declare war only on one aggressor, and that will be Hitler.
G. - Yes, but that is an unfounded hypothesis.
R. - An hypothesis, but having a foundation. Consider: each State which will have to fight with a coalition of enemy States has as its main strategical objective to destroy them separately one after another. This rule is so well known that proofs are superfluous. So, agree with me that there are no obstacles to the creation of such conditions. I think that the question that Stalin will not consider himself aggrieved in case of an attack on Hitler is already settled. Is that not so? In addition geography imposes this attitude, and for that reason strategy also. However stupid France and England may be in preparing to fight simultaneously against two countries, one of which wants to preserve its neutrality, while the other, even being alone, represents for them a serious opponent, from where and from which side could they carry out an attack on the USSR? They have not got a common border; unless they were to advance over the Himalayas ... Yes, there remains the air front, but with what forces and from where could they invade Russia? In comparison with Hitler they are weaker in the air. All the arguments I have mentioned are no secret and are well known. As you see, all is simplified to a considerable extent.
G.- Yes, your arguments seem to be logical in the case if the conflict will be limited to four countries; but there are not four, but more, and neutrality is not a simple matter in a war on the given scale.
R. - Undoubtedly, but the possible participation of many countries does not change the power relationships. Weigh this in your mind and you will see how the balance will continue, even if others or even all European States come in. In addition, and this is very important, not one of those States, which will enter the war at the side of England and France will be able to deprive them of leadership; as a result the reasons which will prevent their attack on the USSR will retain their significance.
Outwardly everything seemed equitable, a part of Poland for Hitler and a part for Stalin. However, just one week after the signing of the Pact, Stalin played his first dirty trick. Hitler began the war against Poland, while Stalin stated that his troops were not yet ready. He could have told Ribbentrop that before the Pact was signed, but he did not do so. Hitler began the war and found himself on his own. The result? He, and he alone, was branded the perpetrator of the Second World War.
In the end, however, Poland, for whose liberty the West had gone to war, ended up with none at all. On the contrary, she was handed over to Stalin, along with the whole of Eastern Europe, including a part of Germany. Even so, there are some people in the West who continue to believe that the West won the Second World War.
History states [wrote Stalin] that when one country wants to go to war with another, even one which is not a neighbour, then it begins to seek frontiers across which it would be able to reach the frontiers of the countries it wishes to attack. (Pravda, 5 March 1936)