Month: June 2016

When dawn came, they…weren’t sleeping. „The Soviet Preemptive Strike” and the German reply of June 22, 1941 (2)

On June 17, 1945, a group of Soviet military investigators conducted an interrogation of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel who would declare: “I must affirm that the preparatory measures carried out by us in the spring of 1941 were defensive preparations in the event of a Red Army offensive. Thus, the entire Eastern war, for the most part, can be called preventive. We thought…to prevent the offensive of Soviet Russia and, with an unexpected blow, to obliterate its armed forces. In the spring of 1941 I had formed a clear opinion: the concentration of Russian troops and their subsequent offensive...

Read More

When dawn came, they…weren’t sleeping. „The Soviet Preemptive Strike” and the German reply of June 22, 1941 (1)

Despite the internal turmoil meant to strengthen the social, economic and political regime lay down in October 1917, after the end of the Civil War, the USSR continued to establish itself externally as a great center of power in the international relations arena, harboring immense geopolitical ambitions. The Moscow regime would gradually normalise international relations, after 1922, but without settling the debts of the Czarist state and without relinquishing its lead as a world revolution hub. On the one hand, the USSR will continue to maintain “normal” diplomatic and commercial relations with other powers and will also control the...

Read More