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Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia, by Gabriel Gorodetsky
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This important book draws on vital new archival material to unravel the mystery of Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941 and Stalin's enigmatic behavior on the eve of the attack. Gabriel Gorodetsky challenges the currently popular view that Stalin was about to invade Germany when Hitler made a preemptive strike. He argues instead that Stalin was actually negotiating for European peace, asserting that Stalin followed an unscrupulous Realpolitik that served well-defined geopolitical interests by seeking to redress the European balance of power. Gorodetsky substantiates his argument through the most thorough scrutiny ever of Soviet archives for the period, including the files of the Russian foreign ministry, the general staff, the security forces, and the entire range of military intelligence available to Stalin at the time. According to Gorodetsky, Stalin was eagerly anticipating a peace conference where various accords imposed on Russia would be revised. But the delusion of being able to dictate a new European order blinded him to the lurking German danger, and his erroneous diagnosis of the political scene-colored by his perennial suspicion of Great Britain-led him to misconstrue the evidence of his own and Britain's intelligence services. Gorodetsky highlights the sequence of military blunders that resulted from Stalin's determination to appease Germany-blunders that provide the key to understanding the calamity that befell Russia on 22 June 1941.
- Sales Rank: #1001826 in Books
- Color: Grey
- Published on: 2001-04-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x .97" w x 5.98" l, 1.44 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
Review
"An excellent new history." -- Victorino Matus, American Spectator
"This literary sensation is an enthralling narrative and an outstanding historical investigation." -- Economist
"[A] fascinating and important book." -- Anthony Beevor, Daily Telegraph
About the Author
Gabriel Gorodetsky holds the Samuel Rubin Chair of Russian and East European History at Tel Aviv
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent History
By Thomas Reiter
This is an excellent, well-written, well-sourced history of 1940-1941, prior to the German invasion of Russia. I can't add much to the description of the book in other reviews, so I'll just mention a couple of things about the book:
1) While it should be obvious from the topic of the book, this is not a military history per se (war had not broken out yet), but rather a diplomatic history. The fighting in France, Yugoslavia, Greece, etc. is covered briefly to provide context, but nothing more.
2) This book does not cover the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, only its aftermath.
3) While apparently this book was written in response to claims that the USSR was planning a pre-emptive attack in 1941, don't expect a point-by-point rebuttal as I've seen in other books; rather, the author lays out the facts (as he's been able to document them) and then simply concludes that there is no truth to the pre-emptive attack theories.
4) The author does an excellent job of describing the diplomatic moves/counter-moves/reactions during 1940-1941--the period was very tumultuous, with various annexations, invasions, wars, etc., each of which "reshuffled the deck" (in the author's words). Stalin's complacency after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was shattered after the Germans' smashing victory in France, prompting Russian moves into the Baltics and Bessarabia, prompting German moves into Yugoslavia and Greece, etc.
5) The author also does an excellent job describing why Stalin trusted the Brits even less then he did Hitler, how various British maneuvers played into this distrust, and how it played into his (mis)calculations.
6) This book gives an excellent description of the intelligence received by Stalin--what he knew, when he knew it, how it was presented to him, and usually, why he didn't believe it. Very interesting...
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
In execution, a much better military history than most
By KCM
Strangely, contrary to direction one might expect, military histories of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, rather than becoming more "disciplined" from an American standpoint--insofar as they follow the expectations, rules, and requirements of profesional academia, particularly in the area of citation and presentation of evidence--seem to becoming less structured, less clearly cited, and more haphazard. Maybe I'm reading the wrong materials, or maybe I'm just overly pessimistic. In any case, Gorodetsky's work here, at least, is a much needed deviation from this unfortunate trend, based less on emotional appeals, attractive, even romantic notions and popular culture that seems more than a little pervasive in Second World War histories, particularly in the Eastern Front, and more on an extremely indepth, analytical view based on access to very numerous archives in, from what I've seen, multiple states.
I don't expect 'Grand Delusion' to serve as a rallying cry for any of the political "sides" concerning the Eastern Front--it's too rational, too deliberately methodical and expositional to do that, especially compared to its competition, it's language reserved and tempered by comparison. That could be a strike against Gorodetsky, but I personally don't think it detracts from it in its intended purpose. It does historical personalities little in the way of favors, but greatly interests the interested reader.
On a side note, I had a chance to speak with Dr. Gorodetsky about his book, very briefly--he mentioned the unfortunate fact that the designer for the book's cover cut off part of the photograph, removing part of the sign that would have otherwise indicated the German's proximity to Moscow (if memory serves correctly). Another case of a cover messed-up for aesthetics, I guess.
18 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
Solid Post-Cold War history
By Igor Biryukov
The Cold War gave birth to a myth that the Soviet Union was cunningly planning a strike against Germany in July 1941. As a result, some historians had been calling for justification of the invasion to Russia, which Nazi Germany started on June 22, 1941. The logic goes if Stalin was planning an aggression against Germany, Hitler had a right to a preemptive strike against Russia. The creators of the myth use a testimony of a defector from the Russian military intelligence by the name of V. Resun. Under a pen name "Suvorov" he wrote a book called "Icebreaker" where he presented a theory that Stalin in 1939-1941 was meticulously preparing a war against Germany. Therefore according to this theory Russia was an aggressor rather than the victim in 1941.
In "Grand Delusion" Israeli professor Gabriel Gorodetsky shows beyond reasonable doubt that Suvorov's arguments are ridiculous. He presents evidence that Stalin was not contemplating attack on Germany; but in fact was trying to avoid any confrontation with Germany while playing a compacted diplomatic game to limit Germany's political influence on the Balkans, particularly in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. He shows Stalin's obsessions with the Turkish Straits and Bulgaria, which wasn't new, but was an old Imperial policy of Russia for many years. I was surprised to learn how much "tsarist" Stalin's foreign policy really was - there was very little in it related to the communist ideology or "class struggle" theory of Karl Marx.
The failure to understand Hitler's bellicose plans was a result of Stalin's misjudgment of power structure and decision-making process in Berlin. As an extremely suspicious person, Stalin mistrusted everyone, but looks like he believed misleading information presented to him by opponents of Hitler's policy such as Count Werner Von Schulenburg (German ambassador to Moscow, who became later a leading figure of anti-Hitler failed coup) and Ribbentrop. Stalin mistrusted equally both Churchill and Hitler and attributed all warning signals to England's efforts to drag Russia into war with Germany. Also Stalin didn't believe that Hitler would allow Wehrmacht to fight on two fronts. German double agents "Litseist" encouraged this false believe. The Germans succeeded in their sophisticated disinformation campaign, which coupled with Stalin's wishful thinking, led Russians to believe that Germany was not planning to invade Russia at least in the near future.
Gorodetsky points out that the idea of a preventive war was embedded in the German (from Frederick the Great to Moltke) rather than the Russian military tradition. "Barbarossa" plan was devised to quickly crash Russia in quick 10-week war and to free Hitler's hands to complete his "mastery of Europe". Then he would take care of England without any distractions from the "Soviet Empire". It looked like everything was working just wonderful for Nazi Germany until June 22, 1941 - the beginning of the German invasion to Russia (which by the way started suddenly without any declaration or ultimatum). But it turned out that the Germans seriously underrated the opponent and seriously miscalculated the amount of the effort they would need to crush Russia. Sure, the German might was incredible, but so was German overconfidence. Hitler's disparaging attitude towards Russian "vermin" makes ridiculous the theory of preemptive strike. Gorodetsky shows that this attitude was widespread in the West - Sir Winston Churchill himself was prone to disparaging attitude towards Stalin and the Red Army.
But just before his attack on Russia Hitler was beating Stalin at his own game. Stalin's failure to prepare for the German onslaught, which cost many Russian lives, was a result of his own self-deception and wishful thinking. Although Stalin was very wily, I feel that he lacked formal education to think abstractly and deal with issues like, for example, proverbial German concept of "Drang nach Osten" or draw analogies from history. Although as a Georgian, he was obsessed with history of the Black sea and repercussions of potential German capture of the Turkish Straits. 150 years earlier the Grand Army of Napoleon stood looking across the English Channel - but there was nowhere for it to go - except to Russia. It seems to me again in June 1941 the same gravitational force was pulling 200 idle German divisions to the endless Russian steppes. Where else would these "drunk with success" armies go?
I really liked the book. This scholarly and dry book was not an easy read. But the amount of information looked at is enormous and the quality of analysis is good. Also for the first time the reliance is not only on the German and British sources, but also on the declassified Russian archives. The book de-romanticizes many myths and accounts, including well-known Churchill's history of WWII, which is "persuasive but excessively self-centered and therefore occasionally misleading interpretation of events". I highly recommend this book to everybody interested in reading a non-Disney history of WWII.
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