Reddit reviews Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War (Modern War Studies (Paperback))

Anything from Suvorov is not credible at all. See D. Glantz about Resun (aka B. Suvorov)

He provides the most complete and convincing study of why the Soviets almost lost the war that summer, dispelling many of the myths about the Red Army that have persisted since the war and soundly refuting Viktor Suvorov's controversial thesis that Stalin was planning a preemptive strike against Germany.

I'll throw in a little write-up I once did for someone who asked about where this most likely entered pop history in its current form:

>The main proponent of the argument surrounding the 1941 invasion, or at least the original proponent, was Viktor Suvorov (pseudonym of Vladimir Rezun), a defector to the UK and, as I recall, a former intelligence agent for the Red Army. His thesis was initially published in his book Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War? (1987). Essentially, he argued that Stalin had been mobilizing in "a Machiavellian plan" to defeat Germany and extend communist revolution to the rest of Europe, using Hitler as "an icebreaker" for such a scheme. Included in this are several propositions: (a) The Soviet Union had been making extensive military preparations to strengthen the Red Army through the 1930s through summer of 1941 (interrupted, of course, by Op. Barbarossa), (b) instability in the Soviet Union made the instigation of world revolution (catalyzed by Europe) necessary for its own survival, (c) that the Red Army troops mobilized en masse on the border were only prepared for offensive maneuvering, (d) Stalin, after collaborating with Weimar Germany to help circumvent certain provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, actually made efforts between 1931 and 1933 to assist Hitler's rise to power, knowing his rash behavior and predictability would make him the ideal candidate to give cause to the Soviet Union to "liberate" European countries from fascist rule, and (e) the war would have ended much earlier if this had occurred.

>Point (a) simply isn’t disputed, though accounts of Stalin’s introduction of a reduced age of conscription in 1939, as Suvurov claims, has been proven to be false. In reference to point (b), there is some credibility to this thinking, as Stalin had publicly declared it (Pravda, February 14, 1938, cited from V. Suvorov Last Republic, ACT, 1997), but the connection to the supposed 1941 invasion is, to the best of my knowledge, unsourced. Point (d) retains some validity, though seems to be largely speculation. According to the Treaty of Rapallo, Russia did actually make provisions for German military testing on Russian soil, but, having been signed in 1922, its connection to Stalin is a rather weak one. Of course, this continued under Stalin, coming to an end with the rise of Hitler in 1933. Richard Pipes makes the other assertions (Communism: A History, New York, 2001, pp. 74-75). Robin Edmonds points out that proposition (c) indicates simply that the Red Army planning staff "would not have been doing its job if it had not devoted some time between 1939 and 1941 to the possibility...of a preemptive strike against the Wehrmacht" (review of Icebreaker, found in International Affairs, Vol. 66, No. 4. Oct. 1990. p. 812).

This is back when I took things somewhat seriously on reddit.

Here's a wee bit more:

>Glantz points out that Suvorov disregards a substantial amount of archival material, and accuses him of a cherry-picking methodology. He also points out that the events of Operation Barbarossa prove that not only were the Red Army amassed on the border not only substantially unready for an offensive attack against the Wehrmacht, they were so lacking in provisions to make such a proposition ridiculous. They were lacking in fuel, food stores, and ammunition to carry out a major invasion, and troops were stationed into small garrisons rather than in concentrations around transportation hubs like railheads. Moreover, around 50% of Soviet tanks in bordering territories were in need of maintenance, while major artillery units were located near units with no modes of transporting them. As I pointed out, Zhukov had suggested a pre-emptive strike around January or February of 1941, but this plan, according to Zhukov's speculation, was either rejected by Stalin, or it didn’t reach him at all (though on this point, both arguments are problematic in their interpretation of what constitutes evidence for Stalin making the go-ahead). These are some of the main points he makes, among a wealth of examples that bit by bit chip away at Suvorov's arguments.

Sources

Glantz, D. Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War (Lawrence, KS: 1998)

Uldricks, "Icebreaker Controversy," Slavic Review, Vol. 59, No. 3 (1999): 626-43.

Gorodetsky, G. Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (New Haven: 1999).

Glantz's stuff has been posted already and he's pretty much the one-stop shop for English language discussion of the Great Patriotic War still. Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War, 1941-1943 is, like it says on the tin, a detailed treatment of the 1941-1943 period. His Stumbling Colossus is also a solid treatment of the lead-up to the war from the Soviet perspective, up through about the end of 1941. It gave me a lot of perspective on Soviet force posture prior to the invasion, and it goes a long way towards explaining why the Red Army performed so poorly in the initial period of the war.

Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War

Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War