IceBreakChron IV: IGNITING THE WAR

Started by JasonPratt, April 08, 2020, 07:54:47 AM

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JasonPratt

For the prior thread of my Icebreaker Thesis Chronology project, click here.

For the Table of Contents and Introduction thread, click here.


It's 1939: Do You Know Where Your War Is?
-------------------------------------------------

Despite my narrative teases, I assume everyone reading this on a military geek site knows at least some basic facts about the history of World War II in general and the East Front more specifically. So I know you know what time it is, this year.

But do you know when WW2 officially starts this year? -- by which I mean, being recognized to start by an official government?

I didn't.  ^-^

But we'll get to that eventually. First, let's start the year with the usual notice!

1939: Soviet fighter and bomber airfleet training manuals continue to focus teaching one massive ground strike instead of dogfighting.

Brigade Commander Alexander N. Lapchinksy, the chief Soviet airpower theoretician, in his "Air Army" manual, writes on how to defend Soviet territory: "Like a magnet, a decisive ground offensive attracts hostile forces overhead and serves as a country's best shield from enemy air attack... You do not provide air cover for a country by flying from behind your borders, but rather by flying far beyond them. [...] Given the existence of a massive invasion army, the main task of the air force is to support the advancement of this army, for which all forces must be concentrated."

He illustrates his manual with detailed maps of typical bombing targets, like, let's see, hmm... the Leipzig railway junction and Berlin's Friedrichstrasse and train station!  :o
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

January 1, 1939, Stalin's Red Army has about 21,100 battle ready tanks.

His factories will produce around another 3200 tanks this year.


January 1939: Leningrad Military District Commander Meretskov, and Central Committee representative Zhdanov (soon to be a Politburo member), start riding the same car up and down the entire Finnish border. They continue throughout the spring, summer, and fall, on a regular basis. At the very end of autumn they will finish, just in time for "Finnish militarists" to "provoke war".

What are they doing? Are they out having a secret love affair?! Of course not. They are visually inspecting the ground on the other side of the Finnish border. All year long, on a regular basis.

Seeing teams of scouts show up on the other side of your border is not the most pleasant surprise (as Suvorov dryly puts it).

When a tank division commander stares at you through binoculars for hours on end, that's worse.

Now imagine a local Politburo candidate member hanging around your border posts with the local Military District commander, not for hours but for weeks, all year long! Such was the prelude for every Soviet "liberation crusade".
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#2
January 11, 1939, the People's Commissariat of Defense Industry, in charge of arms production in the USSR for many years, is dismantled today. Ah, perhaps the dawn of peaceful coexistence at last is rising in the--!

...what? Oh, never mind. Four new People's Commissariats (or "Narkomats" for short) are created instead: one for ammunition, one for aviation, one for weapons, and one for shipbuilding.

While the Shipbuilding Commissariat theoretically produces both civilian and military ships, in practice (per JMH #7, 1982, p.55) "by 1935 [four years ago] all major shipyards were redesigned for production of military ships." More on this Narkomat later.

The Ammunition Narkomat deserves some special notice, so get ready for some details on that next!
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#3
Suvorov claims that the Soviet Ammunition Narkomat is an original organization, unique in the world at this time. Even later throughout the course of the war, the most aggressive nations will not have a separate ministry in charge of ammunition; the Nazi government for example has one minister in charge of both weapons and ammunition production. In peacetime, the Soviet Union has divided its "defense industry" in such a way that there is a dedicated ministry for the production of ammunition! (I'm unsure Suvorov is correct about the Ammo Narkomat being a unique ministry. Back during World War I, Churchill for example was (somewhat demoted to) minister for armaments in its second half after the disaster of Galipoli and the Dardenelles. Perhaps this involved weapons as well as ammo? -- or perhaps Britain folded it back into both weapons and ammo later? Suvorov clearly implies at least one non-aggressive nation during WW2 will have an equivalent Ammunition Ministry.)

Stalin's Ammunition Narkomat starts working fully and immediately, and so immediately must solve a serious problem: where should they locate all the factories that would be producing shells, gunpowder, cartridges, etc.?

Should they be built behind the Volga River for example, where enemy tanks and aircraft cannot reach so far inland? If Hitler's armies are truly dangerous and formidable and Stalin has any concerns about the Red Army's ability to deal with them, then no, absolutely not behind the Volga, that would be insane! -- no, these factories should be built in the Ural Mountains, even farther to the east, behind any wildly imaginable retreat and defeat! This is, in fact, where they eventually end up, where the raw materials need no distant transport logistic travel, where there is a sufficient industrial and energy base, and where even the capture of huge territories in a catastrophic defensive war would leave them totally secure, ready, and able, to turn the tide and win the war in a truly epic and heroic Russian fashion!

But the Ammunition Narkomat is not instructed, in 1939, to put the new factories there. Nor behind the Volga. This is not even briefly considered. Why?

Let us suppose that the Red Army needs to be supplied with only a small quantity of ammunition, for example only one hundred thousand tons, or perhaps only two hundred thousand tons. A standard military train can pull a net mass of nine hundred tons. How many trains would be needed; how many railroad cars; how many locomotives; how many workdays spent by all the railroad personnel; how much coal would be burned; how many train guards would be needed for how many days?

In a defensive war, you will just have to deal with such problems, to provide an invulnerable production base. But if you are sure the enemy will not be attacking you, you can and should plant all your factories up front close to the border, near your troop deployment.

True, Soviet trains can still only pull nine hundred tons, but now they can go back and bring another nine hundred tons more quickly to your troops, with less fuel spent on the round trip; also if for some reason you wanted such preparations to be secret, such as for preparing a surprise attack, this will help with security. And if you are planning for a great invasion then certainly you want the ammunition plants up front, where they can more quickly transfer ammunition to the tips of the guns going forward! Ideally, you want those factories as close to the border as possible.

Other logistic resources can be freed up for other internal needs, like strategic troop transfers, since troops cannot be constructed in local areas in the numbers require but (like grain for example) must be moved around from all over Russia.

Anyway, the Ammunition Narkomat, without even hesitation, is directed to build the new ammunition factories as close to the western border as the metal-forging bases will permit; in Zaporozhie, Dnyepropetrovsk, Dnyeprodzerzhinsk, Kharkov, Krivoy Rog, and Leningrad.

Not behind the Volga; not in the Urals; not in any strategically defensive position. Not yet.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

The Ammunition Narkomat must, necessarily, consume the nation's metal resources, and not only iron and steel, but copper, nickel, chromium, lead, tin, and mercury. The Russian metal pie is large indeed, but it is being sliced into smaller servings for everyone. The question will arise, how long should this be expected to last? Two and a half years perhaps?  ^-^

Now consider, what do you do with all this new ammunition? The Red Army (and its air force, and the Navy) consumes a certain amount of ammunition for military training, of course; and then there have been "liberation crusades" in the recent past; and it looks as though the Soviet Union may have to provide "international aid" to Mongolia soon with Japan looming in Manchuria. As long as you are making ammunition equal to the amounts you spend, there is no problem, comrade! -- but if you make extra ammunition, you have to store it somewhere. Soviet Russia already has plenty of storage space for ammunition, but it happens that if you add a substantial number of new ammunition factories, the surplus will eventually outpace the usage and your storage will be full.

So build new storage facilities, yes? But that is not so simple as typing out the words!

Suppose you have now been given the order from Comrade Stalin's government: build storage facilities to hold one million tons of ammunition. This is a good start. (You may think to yourself, a good start to what exactly...? -- but you should keep that thought behind your lips, unless you want to be counting trees in Siberia or have your mouth washed out with some of that new ammunition someone else will be in charge of storing after all!)

But you cannot put them all in one facility; one accident will explode the entire facility. Nor should you put them near any cities for the same reason. Nor near any factories, least of all near any other ammunition factories! You must scatter them out, but not too far from the western border either (for some reason -- don't ask why or think about it).

Hm, and smaller depots are better in another way, for then it is easier to keep the air from getting slightly too warm or slightly too dry, and your explosives from thus exploding slightly too early! On the other hand, neither do you want the humidity levels slightly too wet, for then the metals will corrode, and the gunpowder will be wet, and then Comrade Stalin's loyal disciple Comrade Beria will provide new residential locations for you and your family and your family's families!

Additional storage facilities, to put it shortly, can only be a temporary solution in several ways, and especially as long as the Ammo Narkomat keeps shoveling new ammunition at you, for you to safely keep somewhere.

Oh, and by the way, two hundred and thirty five other factories completely aside from those under the Ammo Narkomat's jursidiction, will also be producing various types of ammunition during our time of blissful peace. (Per the Soviet "History of the Second World War, 1939-1945", Vol.2, p.190.)

The ammunition must eventually be lost, along with your life, one way or another; or the ammunition must be used before it is lost. Good luck, comrade! Enjoy your life in the workers' paradise on earth, while you can!

Nobody poses a threat to the Soviet Union on the day the Commissariat for Defense Industry is split into its four more efficient constituent ministries. Japan is the largest force on the Soviet border, but while they do have a powerful air force and navy, its land army is relatively small (by Soviet standards of manpower) and currently tied down in a rather unpromising war in China. They also have limited raw material reserves, which is a big reason why the Japanese Army is tied down in mainland China! Even if they set up an invasion powerful enough to seize Soviet territory, they would be stuck with gaining the Far East, which has not yet become anything like an industrial base. Japan needs resources already mined and purified, and so also needs areas where mining and purification of materials has already been set up.

On the other hand, Nazi Germany is currently operating on a peacetime production regimen! -- partly so as not to alert its neighbors and enemies about Hitler's plans. They have no strategic reserve, and even if they did want to attack someone suddenly, they could not attack the Soviet Union that way: the Nazis would have to suddenly attack and plow through someone else first!
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

February 2, 1939: at the start of the year, the Council of People's Commissars ("SNK" in the Russian acronym, with English letters) dissolves the Chief Directorate of Border and Internal Forces of the NKVD of the USSR. Its leader, Yezhov, vanishes. Thank God (and Stalin), those evil murderers have been thrown down at last in the age of peace which--!


Also February 2, 1939: six new independent Chief Directorates of NKVD are established!

the CD of NKVD Frontier Troops;
the CD of NKVD Security Troops;
the CD of NKVD Convoy Troops;
the CD of NKVD Railway Troops;
the CD of NKVD Military Supply Troops;
and the CD of NKVD Military Construction Troops.

Having worked for several years without needing such things as armored cars anymore, their arsenal now includes the latest armored cars (BA-10), armored trains, howitzers, tanks, and aircraft.

Yes, the internal death squads have tanks, warplanes, and howitzers now. ...huzzah...?!

A special NKVD Lieutenant-General post is created to oversee and coordinate each individual NKVD Chief Directorate: the Deputy People's Commissar for Armed Forces (first held by Maslennikov).

On Soviet soil, death squads are no longer needed; so six massively upgraded death squad directorates are created. Stalin expects the secret police to use howitzers, tanks, and aircraft, on someone; and his expectation significantly precedes February 2, 1939 (because creating these new NKVD CDs must be planned ahead).


1939 (date unclear but sometime in the first half): from Lenin's time, the Soviet Union has had six military border districts. Early this year, the government effectively disbands those districts, to create eighteen military border districts instead, each district dwarfing its predecessors in combat power. Five however shall eventually be given Special Military District status: Baltic, Leningrad, Western, Kiev, and Odessa. We shall see why later.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

March 10, 1939: at start of the Eighteenth Party Congress, Stalin in his Report openly labels Great Britain and France as warmongers, accusing them of wanting to plunge Europe into war while staying on the sidelines. "In the politics of non-intervention, there is a desire not to hinder the aggressors while they do their dirty deeds, not to interfere, for example, with Japan involving itself in a war against China... The goal is to let all the participants of the conflict become engulfed by the quicksand of war, and let them weaken and exhaust each other. Then, when they are sufficiently weakened, one can enter the scene with fresh forces, act, of course, 'in the interests of peace', and dictate to the weakened war participants all the terms of peace."

Ribbentrop, the Nazi chief diplomat, will tell them the speech has been "received sympathetically" in Berlin. In political strategy, Stalin has signaled that if Hitler reaches out for alliance or cooperation, Stalin will accept. Secret negotiations begin. In this same speech, Stalin for the first time declares that the Soviet people need to get ready for "surprises" of some sort -- not at home but abroad.

Perhaps coincidentally, this will be the final such congress for more than ten years.


Stalin adds (during this or a later speech), "The aviation arms race in the capitalist countries [has continued] for a number of years and unquestionably presents one of the most characteristic and definitive signs of the inevitable general military conflict."

Of course, he's including the National Socialist Workers' Party among those "capitalists"; and of course the Soviet Union was helping the German "capitalists" prepare for an aviation arms race before the Nazis even arrived in power.

Stalin specifically has in mind Nazi Germany which now has reached four thousand combat airplanes of all types. It is clear as day that such a number of combat oriented planes signals the inevitability of a war.

If producing four thousand warplanes of all types, plus two or three thousand aircraft by some other nations, is a "wild arms race of aviation weapons", and testimony of "inevitable military conflict" -- what would plans be to produce no less than one hundred thousand aircraft of a single type? Stalin is already most of a year into a plan to do just that, with his (quite literally) signature "Ivanov" light bombers! -- and he already has a couple dozen thousand battle-ready warplanes by 1939!


March 18, 1939: during the Eighteenth Party Congress, Colonel A. I. Rodimtsev (cavalry commander; later in early 1941 the commander of the 5th Airborne Brigade, 3rd Airborne Corps) states "We will be waging the battles to come on enemy territory. That is what our regulations dictate." (Suvorov in his own career will later have an opportunity to hear Rodimtsev himself, now as a Colonel-General: "a very sharp general, not given to spouting drivel, nothing like a windbag.")

Rodimtsev will be the one who, with his 42nd Guards Division, will hold the very few last houses in Stalingrad still remaining on the banks of the Volga -- but that will be after he and his Airborne troops are converted into a Guards division. Up until June 22, 1941, they'll be training for parachute assault and airmobile operations.


March 21, 1939: on the final day of the Eighteenth Party Congress (typo'd in "Icebreaker" to be the 8th Party Congress, and typo'd in "Chief Culprit" to be the Seventeenth Party Congress, which may indicate some confusion about when this person gave this speech), 2nd Rank Flag officer N.G. Kuznetsov, commander of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, agrees that the domestic terror campaign should wind down now, so that (uncited by Suvorov) "what has been created in the USSR [with the terror campaign] can be created as well in other countries!"  :o :wow: :timeout:

He also declares, "The fleet must transform itself, and it will, just like the entire Worker-Peasant Red Army, into the most powerful attack fleet!" This very speech, rated by Suvorov as perhaps the most aggressive of the so-called "victors" congress, lofts him to his Central Committee membership (skipping candidate level), and for such words Stalin rewards him by promoting him to be the People's Commissar of the Navy of the USSR.

Kuznetsov will keep his word, doing his best to prepare the Soviet fleet to launch surprise attacks. But for defense the Soviet Union needs submarine hunters, picket boats, minesweepers, and net-layers. Kuznetsov's fleet will have great difficulties when the Nazis invade. As M.M. Kirian's editors put it, in their "Military-Technological Progress and the USSR Armed Forces", 1982, p.189, "During the course of the war, the fleet had to solve problems that were completely unforeseen during its construction. Instead of coordinating their actions with the deep offensive operations of the ground forces, acting near the shores, as the military doctrine dictated, the fleet was forced to secure the naval bases under enemy attack from land and sea and to evacuate troops, population, and property, from shoreline cities."

Another problem is that while Soviet ships are given powerful cannons, mines, and torpedo equipment, they do not have powerful anti-aircraft armament. In Soviet doctrine, enemy air power is expected to be crushed on the ground by an overpowering surprise attack, so Soviet admirals and designers simply do not think they need to spend much material, space, and factory construction, on naval anti-aircraft guns. If any enemy blitzes the Soviet Union first, the Soviet fleet will have very weak anti-aircraft defenses for protecting themselves!
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

March 28, 1939, Madrid falls, the last bastion of the Spanish Republic. Soviet military advisors are evacuated. Despite the loss, they will generally be well-rewarded by Stalin, promoted to high ranks and authority afterward. 4th Directorate Red Army (pre-"GRU") chief Berzin, on the other hand, was recalled already last year and savagely tortured and executed (triggering a purge of his underlings down to Richard Sorge, still currently operating in the Nazi embassy in Japan), typical for Stalin's intelligence chiefs (up until Barbarossa anyway). Antonov-Ovseenko, assigned in 1936 as general consul to Spain, has been similarly executed.

Why doesn't Stalin also destroy his failed elite military commanders? Suvorov argues that Stalin knew they had no chance of winning, and didn't expect them to win, so he didn't punish them for not winning.

First, as previously noted, even Communist propaganda acknowledges that over 80% of the Spanish soldiers and officers chose to fight against the Republic, which aside from being a serious military drawback also suggests serious problems with the Republic.

Second, all the Republic ports were blockaded and the closest ones were far from Russia across ocean guarded by Italian and German air and surface fleets; they wouldn't necessarily shoot at a Soviet ship, but they often caught and turned them back or confiscated goods. Even what could arrive at Republic ports, could only operate on Republic not Soviet logistics in a limited amount of the large Spanish areas. So Stalin could not send even one rifle division, much less supply it; everything he sent had to go, and arrive, and be used, piecemeal.

Third, the Spanish Communist Party was very weak and depended for its operation on collaboration with other parties, often dangerously unstable ones like the anarchists, whom Dolores Ibárruri, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain, once described as "something like a reign of thieves" (from "National-revolutionary War of the Spanish People", in "Voprosy Istorii" [Questions of History], #11, 1953, p.11. Eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union Meretskov, who fought in Spain (and who will be highly important for Soviet plans through Barbarossa), called the anarchists "jolly butchers". With allies like this, winning would be even more impossible than with no allies at all!

If Stalin knew the loss wasn't the fault of the military, why did he have Berzin killed? Partly this was just his normal way of purging the intelligence services on a regular basis; by the same token, Ovseenko was part of the old guard dating back to the original overthrow of the Tsar, who might have constituted a rallying point against the tyrannies of the new Red Tsar Stalin (and so who was executed as part of the Tukhachevsky group). But Suvorov argues that Berzin also failed in something Stalin did not expect from the standard military officers: fomenting a second world war among Stalin's enemies using Spain as the initial stage!

Soviet propaganda during the war screamed repeatedly that France and Great Britain were standing aside while four totalitarian regimes were killing children; accusing France and Great Britain of heartless indifference to the children. Of course, Stalin had enacted a law back on April 7, 1935, that made the death penalty applicable to children age 12 and older (in order to tighten up military-level discipline in his factories); and he had been murdering millions of his own nation's children with their families in starvation and concentration camps, so that wasn't the real issue. The real goal was to goad Britain and France into supporting the Republic against Italy, Portugal, Germany, and General Franco. Once all the principal powers of Europe are fighting in Spain, you would already have a second world war in effect, and soon afterward in practice -- but a war nicely distant from Soviet territory. This was also the point of agitating honest young men from fifty-four nations around the world to come fight for the Republic (whereupon Stalin's agents stole their identities for creating thousands of espionage identities.) Stalin paid for their travels, paid for their living costs, and paid for their arming. Ah, will their nations not be ashamed, to leave their young volunteer men to die in Spain?!

But the espionage and politics failed -- not Stalin's military, who did their jobs as far as Stalin reasonably expected them to. But Stalin does blame his spies and diplomats for not expanding the Spanish Civil War to the rest of Europe.

(It must be added that this element of the theory is more of an extended inference by Suvorov, and less of a direct inference from evidence. It fits into the larger theory by comparison with other evidence for the larger theory, but it is not a supporting argument for the theory in itself.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

May 5, 1939, a gorgeous Soviet cruiser with graceful lines and an unusual blue color arrives in Odessa: the "Tashkent", locally nicknamed "the blue beauty". Strictly speaking it is not a cruiser, but rather a destroyer leader.

The Soviet Military Encyclopedia will be oddly silent about which shipping yard the Blue Beauty came from, only the year it starts serving as the pride of the Black Sea Fleet, 1940.

Where did it come from? It departed from its shipyard dock on April 18, 1939, unnamed and camouflaged as a merchant vessel. Why? -- because its crew is Italian and its shipyard is Livorno, Italy, where its construction had started on January 11, 1937. In other words, this ship has been built at a time when Soviet and Italian "volunteers" were busy killing each other in Spain! This comes from A.B. Shirokorad's "Ships and Cutters of the USSR Navy, 1939-1945 (catalog)", 2002, p.241.

At least Stalin purchased it without Italian weapons! Not that Mussolini didn't offer to sell ship weaponry for it, but Stalin didn't want the pitiful Italian weapons. He wants the amazing Soviet 130mm ship cannons installed! -- and for good reason, because at this time nothing in the world comes close to them. Therefore the Tashkhent has them installed in the shipyards of Nikolaev.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Early May, 1939, armed conflict starts between Soviet and Japanese troops, near and along the river Khalkhin-Gol, on the border between the People's Republic of Mongolia (an ally but not a direct member of the USSR), and Japanese-occupied China. Neither side declares war, but the clashes turn into battles fought with hundreds of aviators, tankers, and artilleryists. Someone will have to do something about this!

In the western distance, Zhukov's epic theme music starts up...  :D  \m/


May 14, 1939: Stalin from a Pravda article, "the capitalists gnaw at each other's throats like dogs."  From his collected works (dates not provided by Suvorov, but quoted nearby this quote for context), Vol. 10, p.288, "A great deal depends on whether we succeed in staving off war with the capitalist world, inevitable as it is... until the capitalists are fighting it out amongst themselves." From his works Vol 6, p.158, "You may judge the time ripe for the decisive battle, once all class forces hostile to us have been drained enough by a struggle beyond their ability to cope."

In both cases, the plan is to conquer Europe and then "liberate" the world by this method. (Suvorov doesn't quote this specifically. He adds reference to Vol 7, p.14 as supporting evidence but doesn't quote it.)


June 1, 1939, the government of the Soviet Union officially declares (in the Pravda issue for today), "We will defend the borders of the Mongolian's People's Republic as we defend our own." On this same day, the deputy commander of the Byelorussia Military District, G. K. Zhukov, is summoned from Minsk to appear in Moscow. Tomorrow (June 2nd), he will fly from Moscow to Mongolia, where he will take command of the Soviet and Mongolian troops to defend Mongolia. Stalin orders Soviet troops in Mongolia to be armed with the most modern weapons; and directly orders a group of the best Soviet pilots to be sent, each with no less than ten air victories. They will establish air superiority.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

June 21, 1939: Trotsky, in his "Bulletin of the Opposition", #79-80, p.13, during negotiations between Great Britain, France, and the USSR, regarding alliance against Germany, "Hitler... will have his main force strike the West, and Moscow will want to exploit its positional advantage. [...] Stalin will not shrink [in this situation] from using violence on an unprecedented scale. [...] The USSR will move its entire colossus bodily toward Germany's borders [i.e. to crush neutral minors in between Russia and Germany] at precisely the time the Third Reich will be drawn into a fight for a New World Order [or 'for a new divisions of the world']."

How could Trotsky have guessed so clearly what would happen, and why did he think Stalin would continue on into conquering Europe after arranging such a fight? Because Trotsky had been a key instigator and leader in the original October Revolution in 1917, and had been deep in the party ideology -- which he still largely believes in! (He just resents not being the one to be gaining all power over all resources and means of production. For the people of course.) He has long taught, with Lenin, that the Soviet goal is to instigate and take advantage of a second world war in order to trigger a final revolutionary world war bringing all nations of the world into one worldwide socialist government as the natural, scientific, Marxian preliminary to the final utopia of communism. He had been instrumental in the first Soviet attempts to do this; and he knows Stalin agreed with this idea back during Trotsky's own power; and he can simply point to ongoing political statements and propaganda issued by Stalin's government declaring what Stalin intends to get done someday!

The difference is that up until recently, Trotsky thought Stalin was mouthing these things as a pretext for making Russia into his own tsardom. That changed once Stalin directed the German Communists to suicidally aid the rise of Hitler's National Socialists to power.  Stalin had publicly stated that German Social Democracy had to be eliminated because they weren't devoted to trying to cast Europe into a new world war; and so he had directed the German Communist Party to aid Hitler's Nazis into power, even though the German Communists would naturally be destroyed by Hitler, too.

Trotsky also understands one of Stalin's very simple methods, having been a victim of it himself (and soon to be a more permanently disposed victim from an icepick to the brain): Stalin had allied with Zinovyev and Kamenev to remove Trotsky from power. Then Stalin had allied with Bukharin to remove Zinovyev and Kamenev. Then Stalin had allied with Dzerzhinsky to remove Bukharin. Dzerzhinsky had created a very strong secret police, but Stalin removed generations of such henchmen along with Dzerzhinsky through the hand of Genrikh Yagoda. (At least Dzerzhinsky will get a KGB headquarters named after him eventually!) Then Stalin had allied with Nikolai Ezhov to remove Yagoda and his generation. Then Stalin had allied with Laventri Beria to remove Ezhov... and so on.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

June 1939, the current chief of the pre-GRU, Ivan Proskurov, reports to Stalin this month that the Nazi government still has no strategic reserves.

So, as a purely hypothetical random example  ^-^ if Hitler invades Poland, his air force will be out of bomb supplies in only ten days.

Proskurov turns out to be wrong -- Hitler's Luftwaffe will run out of bombs in more like fourteen days! -- but that is not why Stalin will have him shot eventually.

Aircraft bombs aren't everything of course; for example, airplane fuel will practically run out, not in ten days, but in twelve days! (Only a few air-wings will throw the final bombs over the final two days.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

June 1939, Stalin starts the formation of the new Finnish government.

Wait, what? When did Finland lose its government??

Ah, not yet, not yet, but who knows when the people may rise up against their oppressors and spontaneously take control of their own lives, comrade?  :coolsmiley:  ^-^ ;)

When that day comes, they will need someone to hand their property and lives over to! -- so Stalin is just planning in advance for that. Let's see, hmmm, the future "minister of the interior" of Finland should be NKVD agent T. Lekhen; and Finland's "minister of foreign affairs" should be Soviet military intelligence officer Otto Kuusinen, a deputy chief of the pre-GRU. Now, of course, the head of the Finnish government should really be also minister of foreign affairs, so Kuusinen will also be the "President of the Finnish Democratic Republic"!

This only seems fair: Stalin had his wife Aino imprisoned last year for working with Richard Sorge, so the guy needs something good to look forward to. Besides, Kuusinen had created the Communist party of Finland back in 1918 using money supplied by Lenin's government, and had tried to stage a coup, which, sure that had failed, but he hadn't had the kind of military support back then that Stalin can give him now!

Stalin clearly likes him a lot, because Otto has survived Stalin's brutal purging of the Comintern in 1937, and after all Stalin did only imprison his wife in 1938 instead of liquidating her.  <:-)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

July 1939: there have been no European army-level organizations in the Red Army since the Soviet Civil War, on the grounds that such organizations are too logistically taxing to be kept up during peacetime.

So, since "armies" are too costly to keep up during peacetime, this month, Stalin starts secretly creating armies on the European frontier!

3rd and 4th armies in Byelorussia (4th Army starts official operation in August);
5th and 6th in the Ukraine (5th starts operations in July, 6th in August);
7th, 8th, and 9th on the Finnish border.
Soon afterward the 10th and 11th will join in Byelorussia, and 12th in the Ukraine -- these will be formed in the final week of August 1939, just after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Soviet propaganda will later try to explain the appearance of these armies as having been created after Hitler starts WW2. But in fact they start being organized more than a month (and necessarily planned for even longer, of course) before Hitler invades Poland, during a time when Stalin has initiated public and private cooperation outreach efforts toward Hitler.

July 1939: since 1917, Comrades Trotsky, Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Yegorov, ("and many others" adds Suvorov) never imagined war without "blocking squads", making widespread constant use of them during the Civil War and afterward during military engagements.

What is a blocking squad? These are secret police regiments which stay behind advancing Soviet troops and spray machine-gun fire into their ranks to keep soldiers more afraid of retreating than of fighting the enemy. They arrest and summarily execute soldiers falling back without authorization. Between military adventures, these blocking squads form the backbone of the internal death squads, guards, and security escorts (used for shepherding large numbers of prisoners into concentration work camps or to execution areas).

In July 1939, as Stalin begins forming secret armies in Western Russia, each army is provided a standalone NKVD motorized rifle regiment composed not of battalions, but of blocking squads; as well as separate unintegrated NKVD blocking regiments which can be deployed from reserve.

While they can be used to help stiffen a defensive hold against invasion, they have been customarily used for stiffening attacks against tough defenses; and Soviet military doctrine still teaches their expectation for that purpose.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

August 11, 1939: Hitler has been demanding a review of the Versailles Treaty, by which Eastern Prussia had been separated from the main homeland of Germany by a Polish corridor to the Baltic sea, running to the Polish city of Gdansk (and peninsular areas north of it), and to the more-or-less twin German city of Danzig (south of Gdansk in East Prussian coastal territory) which had been declared a Free City state by the Treaty. Hitler was demanding that Dansk be ceded back to Germany's control, as well as a corridor allowed for a highway and rail-line to East Prussia across the Polish corridor. Poland is refusing to allow this; and treaties of mutual aid have been signed between Great Britain, France, and Poland.

Today, delegations arrive in Moscow to attempt to negotiate Soviet cooperation against Hitler. Stalin instructs his diplomats to demand access corridors be granted by Poland across the entire nation to Germany's borders!  :o :wow: :timeout:

Naturally Poland remembers the prior Soviet invasions dating back to soon after the end of World War One, and with them the mass shootings and terror against all layers of society by the Soviet "liberators". So you can easily guess their opinion about this demand.  ::)

Klement E. Voroshilov, a Politburo member and the People's Commissar for Defense, previously a Marshal of the Soviet Union, declares at the talks, "Since the Soviet Union has no common border with Germany... there are no roads for engaging the aggressor. (Reported in "Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn" [National Affairs], #3, 1959, p.157.) But in terms of defense this makes no sense; it only makes sense in terms of the Red Army's ongoing concept of aggressive invasion of their enemies to occupy and control them: first such corridors would allow the Red Army to occupy and conquer Poland, and then to build up forces on the German border preparing for attack.

Stalin also offers another diplomatic proposal: let France and Britain start a war against Germany, even in case of "indirect aggression" however they wish to regard this (per "JMH", #12, 1963, p.25). By such a Treaty, Stalin could also demand they abide by their terms and start a war in case of how Stalin might regard Hitler's "indirect aggression"! Once Britain and France had created a strong combat front against Hitler, the Soviet Union would then act against Hitler, too -- by invading Poland to reach Hitler's borders! Naturally Stalin would have to secure Poland first for its own protection, before attacking Hitler.

Just as naturally, Britain and France refused to agree to attack Hitler upon Stalin's idea of "indirect aggression", much less so that Stalin would then have a pretext to conquer Poland on the way to conquering Germany! They did however want Stalin to know they were serious about negotiations, so they strongly emphasized that they would definitely go to war with Hitler if Hitler invaded Poland.

As early as August 11, however, the day the delegates arrive (with start of negotiations on August 12th), Stalin decides to start secret negotiations with Germany for the Partition of Poland. According to Ingeborg Fleishhauer's "The Pact: Hitler, Stalin, and the German Diplomatic Initiative, 1938-1939", 1990, pp.237-38; and G.L. Rozanov's "Stalin-Hitler: the Documented Story of the Soviet-German Diplomatic Relationship in 1939-41", 1991, pp.84-86, this decision is presented in the form of a telegram, sent through Molotov to the Soviet chargé d'affaires in Germany, Gheorghy Astrakhov. He receives the message on Saturday, August 12th, and has it conveyed to Hitler on the same day.

Hitler is negotiating with the Italian foreign minister Count Ciano, and after some deliberation Hitler tells the Count, "The Russians have agreed with the decision to send a German representative to Moscow to conduct political negotiations." Ciano himself notes (in a diary or official report, Suvorov is unclear, but presumably cited from one or both of the prior sources), "Russian-German contacts are developing very favorably and, specifically, several days ago came the Russian invitation to send a German plenipotentiary representative to Moscow to negotiate a Friendship Pact."

This suggests, if perhaps optimistically, that Hitler had talked about Stalin offering more than a mere non-aggression agreement, i.e. a mutual invasion and division of Poland. This is happening while public negotiations are starting and continuing with France and Britain about a mutual defense Treaty against Hitler (publicly not stated as such, but everyone would know what they were visiting Moscow to talk about under current conditions.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!