Chief Culprit by Viktor Suvorov

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(Hardcover)

  • Pub. Date: November 2008
  • 328pp
  • Sales Rank: 91,480

Reader Rating: (1 ratings)

Detailed Rating: "Intellectual Stimulation" See All

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    Product Details

    • Pub. Date: November 2008
    • Publisher: Naval Institute Press
    • Format: Hardcover, 328pp
    • Sales Rank: 91,480

    Synopsis

    Using newly released Soviet documents and reevaluating existing material, The Chief Culprit analyzes Joseph Stalin's strategic design to conquer Europe and his support for Germany, which helped bring Hitler to power and sustained him. Stalin's strategy leading up to World War II grew from Vladimir Lenin's belief that if World War I did not ignite the worldwide Communist revolution, then a second world war would be needed to achieve it. Stalin saw Germany as the power that would fight and weaken capitalist countries so Soviet armies could sweep across the European continent to the Atlantic. Viktor Suvorov reveals how Stalin conspired with German leaders to bypass the Versailles Treaty, which forbade German rearmament. Secretly, the Soviet Union trained German engineers and officers as well as provided bases and factories for war. In 1939, the nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany allowed Hitler to proceed with his plans to invade Poland, fomenting war in Europe. Stalin emerges as a diabolical genius consumed by visions of a worldwide Communist revolution at any cost, the leader who wooed Hitler and Germany in his own effort to conquer the world. The author debunks the myth that the Soviet Union was a victim of Germany's aggression. Instead, he insists that Stalin neither feared Hitler nor mistakenly trusted him. Suvorov argues that after Germany occupied Poland, defeated France, and started to prepare for an invasion of Great Britain, Hitler's intelligence services detected the Soviet Unions preparations for a major war against Germany. In 1940, Germany drafted a preemptive war plan, which it launched in June 1941, the invasion of the USSR.

    Harry Willems - Library Journal

    Suvorov, a former Soviet army officer who defected to the UK in 1978, writes in his acknowledgments, "It quickly became apparent that the Western academic community was reluctant as the Communist propaganda apparatus to accept my new interpretation of the cause of World War II." Historians know that the victors write history, but they also know that interpretations of events change over time. Suvorov's thesis is that Soviet Russia bankrolled Hitler's rise to power as a catalyst for European war, strife, and dislocation, intended as a precursor to a Communist revolution throughout Europe. He spends 350 pages offering circumstantial evidence, rewriting prevailing thought about the causes of World War II. For example, he addresses the Soviet massing of troops on its western border: if it were defensive, they would have dug foxholes and spread out defensively, yet reconnaissance photos from German archives show the Soviet troops in marching order. Stalin was about to invade Germany when Hitler surprised him and attacked Russia. According to Suvorov, that sealed the warrant for the demise of the Soviet Union nearly 50 years later, because communism would simply implode without expansion. This is a thought-provoking read that would be best understood by historians and academics.

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    Biography

    Viktor Suvorov is the author of eighteen books, including three works of fiction. He was a Soviet Army officer who served in military intelligence (GRU). In 1978, he defected to the United Kingdom, where he worked as an intelligence analyst and lecturer. He lives in England.

    Customer Reviews

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    Excellent Read for Those Who Failed to Acquire THE ICEBREAKERby Archivist_Dick

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    May 25, 2009: Yes, this is the currently available "bad boy" of 1941 Soviet military and diplomatic history. Add it to your shelf soon, who can say when they'll be gone for good - practically - like the author's English translation of THE ICEBREAKER.

    The Viktor Suvorov thesis should be well known to you by know; it has drawn flak from around the world so it must have heaved onto target or close to it. David Glantz, for example, sharply challenges the argument that Hitler's Operation Barbarossa invasion of the former Soviet Union anticipated a more deliberate, longer laid plan to strike at Nazi Germany from the east by mere weeks. As Viktor is about the only one forcefully making the claim, he should be read and his evidence considered carefully. I've a really old German translation of P.G. Grigorenko, published in Switzerland, around here not seen, or re-read, for years. Pyotr was the first to blow this particular whistle if memory serves. A few Russians are lifting up the banner these days, evidently, including Constantine Pleshakov (STALIN'S FOLLY, ISBN 0-618-36701-2) altho they attract little attention and less sensation. A professional spy, like our Viktor, on the other hand knows how to draw a crowd when he wants to. Please see the introduction to David's STUMBLING COLOSSUS (ISBN 0-7006-0879-6) for scathing criticism of Viktor Rezun - or as the target prefers, Viktor Suvorov, and his ideas. As suggested above, this book touches certain raw nerves. A good thing this is, right?

    Those lucky, as I was, to absorb THE ICEBREAKER a dozen or so years ago, will note many a poor editorial choice made throughout this clumsily translated text; letters missing from words, spaces missing between works, exceptionally bad punctuation, that sort of thing. And this should raise one's eyebrow given the fact the updated, recast ICEBREAKER is published under the rubric of a beloved and admired Naval Institute Press. Yet the quality of paper used is high. Go figure. The translation is cruelly bad, atrocious even. Small wonder it is no one stepped up to take "credit" for the Russian-to-English effort here.

    If you detect a theme in this review, good for you. There is less original material in here than one might suspect given recent political changes in Russia and a brief period of relatively good access to archival material in and around Moscow afforded to non-governmental researchers. This may be explained, perhaps, by the implication our friend "Viktor" is not particularly welcome to return to his home country from self-imposed exile dating back to the good ol' cold war days. The bibliography here contains few new titles either. Hmmmmmmm. For a more contemporary, tho less bold, excursion in fresh material from the horse's mouth flip through David Murphy's WHAT STALIN KNEW: ENIGMA OF BARBAROSSA (ISBN 0-300-10780-3). Don't get me wrong here, "Suvorov" does summon a few new facts and figures: Take a gander at Footnote Ten, Chapter Twenty-one on Page 300. Wow. No, double wow.

    This leaves me to a final point, and I'll make it brief. Not wishing to criticise CHIEF CULPRIT for what it fails to do, I'd like to put the call out for a detailed study of Red Army troop dispositions, 1938-41. Would someone kindly take this project on? Make it as boring as possible, go ahead, only I must warn you: I'll review it right here at Barnes and Noble dot com.