The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1296: How the Soviet Union Started World War 2 - The Finale - w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: November 23, 2025

73 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Thomas joins Pete to conclude a series examing the work of Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezin) and Joachim Hoffmann who sought to prove in their books, "Icebreaker," and "Stalin's War of Extermination," that Stalin orchestrated the beginning of World War 2.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Buy Me a CoffeeThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

Thank you. If you want to get the show early and ad-free, head on over to the peak canyonez show.com. There you can choose from where you wish to support me. Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me about this, even though I think on the last ad I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed, you're going to have to subscribe through. substack or through Patreon. You can also subscribe on my website, which is right there, Gumroad, and what's the other

one? Subscribe Star. And if you do that, you will get access to the audio file. So head on over to the piccunioness show.com. You'll see all the ways that you can support me there. And I just want to thank everyone. It's because of you that I can put out the amount of material that I do. I can do what I'm doing with Dr. Johnson on 200 years together and everything else.

The things that Thomas and I are doing together on continental philosophy, it's all because of you. And, yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank you enough. So, thank you. The Pekignano Show.com. Everything's there. I want to welcome, everyone, back to the Pekignano Show. We had a little bit of a hiatus because, you know, did a little traveling and everything.

But Thomas is back and we're going to finish up the series on who started World War II. Who's responsible? And yeah, so take it away, Thomas. Yeah, thanks for hosting me again. There's two issues here. And if memory serves in the first episode of this little series, we addressed the issue of when exactly the Second World War started. which seems pedantic but it's not it's this is a real matter of contention for anybody who's

seriously engaged with the subject matter there's a reason why court historians claim the opposite of hostilities was September 3rd 1939 because that represents a discreetly ideologically coded perspective and obviously the intention is to present the global strategic and geopolitical situation as being one of relative peace until the German Reich violated that peace through naked aggression against the Polish state. Okay, that's a problematic perspective for all kinds of reasons. you know some of which are political some of which are purely historical in nature and factual but what i think is irrebuttable even if one accepts you know the mainstream view of uh the uh the onset of a between the German Reich and Poland and the subsequent war declaration on the German

Reich by France and the United Kingdom. The fact of the matter is that weeks prior, the Soviet Union assaulted the Japanese Imperial Army at Talcan Gold. This was a massive engagement. This was a massive clash of forces. You know, and obviously it represented the onset of a state of general hostilities between two great powers, the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan. So I don't really see how anybody who looks like to be taken seriously can claim that this was some sort of insignificant event or somehow not related to the broader nexus of causation. you know, also precipitated the event of hostilities in Europe.

You know, either the Soviet Union going to war with Japan in a scaled capacity represented the onset of general hostilities at planetary scale or it didn't. Okay. So there's that. Related to that, but more discreetly political in terms of the significance of the subject matter vis-a-vis court history narratives and the way that official authorities in the United States and the United Kingdom. the Bundes republic continue to present uh you know and characterize the second world war is the issue of soviet intentions and what exactly the state of uh power political relations was between moscow and berlin as of you know june 22nd in 1941 and it's pretty clear to me you know and I draw in a lot in substantial measure on the late Yakim Hoffman's exhaustive study of Barbarossa it's pretty clear to me that the Soviet

Union was eminently going to assault Europe And the German Reich, not just the Fuhrer, but OKW, as well as various command elements within the party apparatus, the military, and the secular state apparatus recognize this reality, as did myriad heads of state. who found themselves allied with the german rike for various reasons you know this included croatia slovakia italy um you know uh france you know again there was no vichy france there was the government of france and it uh it was absolutely on the side of the access powers um you know there were volunteers from norway sweden denmark iceland throughout uh the central asian um islamic countries you know romania romania contributed a quarter million men which is a massive contribution for a country the size of romania you know hungary um

Bulgaria, the Netherlands, you know, Belgium, Luxembourg. You know, the list goes on and on and on and on. You know, and obviously the Spaniards at Leningrad fought incredibly valiantly, but, you know, there's, this wasn't as a matter of zeitgeist or some sort of mass hysteria. or some sort of desire to sacrifice one's life or some sort of ephemeral glory the Soviet Union had aside the fact that it was animated by

a revolutionary ideology that was truly global in character it the Soviet Union had built the military juggernaut the likes of which the world had never seen it was almost unfathomable and it was only growing larger and more powerful you know and the like I said to me this is obvious Hoffman and Victor Suvorov and a few other military history historians. Artis Stofley is another one. They brought unique insight to the table and

Hoffman in particular his data points were and are exhaustive and Hoffman too he he not that I mean obviously I don't have any prejudice against independent scholars I am one but such that people are prone to dismissing historians who don't have what they view as adequate credentialed affiliation with reputable institutions. Well, Hoffman, when he was alive, he was the employee of the official historical records division of the Bundeswehr. You know, and he was considered to be probably the seminal German historian on Barbarossa in terms of the military aspects, okay? You can't say that he was a crank or that he was some aggrieved guy who was outside of the establishment of the Bundes Republic.

Like, he was very much insinuated into it, okay? Not that that should make a difference, but such that it does, you know, I don't see how people can impeach his credibility. You know, and one of the issues that Hoffman takes up, because again, Hoffman was very focused on the quantitative military aspects. of Barbarossa, one of the things that he addressed was a lot of lay people as well as historians and military analysts who know better, but for cynical reasons, bandwagon on this argument, they claim that, well, if the Soviet Union was so deeply mobilized, and had a raid such a massively scaled war machine, why did they absorb catastrophic casualties? Well, that's exactly why they did, because they were deployed offensively.

And when you're talking about combined arms, even to this day, I mean, drones and localized autonomous firepower are definitely changing things, both strategically and tactically, And nowhere is that more on display than in the various aspects of tactical deployment and depth. But even to this day, this remains constant if we're talking about combined arms, modern warfare. you can't just call a proverbial audible in the midst of hostilities

if your forces are arrayed to assault and switch to a defensive paradigm so coming under assault when not prepared to defend in depth can lead to catastrophe particularly when one's opponent is the Vermeck and we're going to get into how exactly that plays out but not only again does the attrition rate and specifically the specifically the skewed nature of that attrition rate not only does that not tend to rebut the claim before for us it actually tends to substantiate it now i'll get into some of these data points so that

you know um to clarify what we're talking about here um i can't remember if i got into this or not in the first episode and please tell me if i'm repeating myself in order to need to correct me i'm not going to be offended quite the contrary i'll be quite gracious um Between November, 1940, and literally the eve of Barbarossa in June of 1941, the Soviets undertook a massive arms build-up. Now, don't get me wrong, by the autumn of 1940, the Soviets enjoyed. numeric and arguably technological superiority pretty much across the entire spectrum of combined arms but uh this punctuated build-up of uh november 1940 to june 1941 um can really only be interpreted as uh mobilization and anticipation of offensive operations.

On the outbreak of hostilities, June 22nd, 1941, the Soviet Union had deployed no less than 24,000 tanks, close to 2,000 of which were T-34s, which, you know, in those days, there weren't main battle tanks, there was light, medium, and heavy tanks, then arguably super-heavy tanks. But the T-34 was, I think of it as kind of like the zero of armored forces. you know it was probably the most effective armored platform of the entire war in all around terms okay um yeah obviously you know the the tiger was a superior machine but's not what we're talking about you know and the the uh the ability of t34 is to be rolled

off the assembly line rapidly you know almost like Model T Ford's or something, Odin, that itself was a force multiplier. You know, it, uh, between 938 and June 22nd, 1941, the, uh, the Red Air Force Force had acquired over 23,000 military aircraft. craft. Around 3,700 of which could be considered cutting edge. Probably about half of those had night fighting capability. The Red Army had close to 150,000 field artillery pieces and heavy mortars. The Red Navy had over 200 submarines, which I can't remember if I meant mentioned or not. But obviously, the submarines are expressly offensive. There aren't

defensive submarines. You know, and to be clear, this alone. I mean, the Soviet Union wasn't known as any kind of maritime power. I mean, if anything, you know, the Zars Navy had been sank by the Japanese in 1905, and that had further compromised. the prestige actual potential of um you know the russian navy is a real force but by june 22nd 1941 um the soviet union by far had the largest submarine fleet in the world more than four times that of uh the royal navy you know in the uk was viewed as the foremost naval power on the planet you know I mean these these data points speak for themselves you know um and on the political side I know I've gotten into this in previous series that

we've done I put a lot of emphasis on direct testimony owing I'm sure in part to the fact that my background in part is at least as that of a lawyer you know but also if we're talking about intent particularly of wartime executives there's a tendency to be able to rely upon the statements of a wartime executive or an executive who is preparing for war there's a there's a there's incentivization to telling the truth when the chief executive so situated is talking to his cabinet or as a general staff officers okay because what incentive were there be to lie number one and there's there's active disincentive

to lie because that compromises the ability of subordinate command elements to effectively execute orders and wage war towards victory conditions you know and and so I put a lot of stock in what Stalin said and a lot of this testimony from Stalin himself you know that which isn't independently documented by you know the minutes of his speeches or or by audio recording

you know a lot of Stalin's intimates were the sources of these statements including uh Colonel Volcogunov, who was Stalin's official biographer. You know, and Stalin gave a series of speeches in this, in the year preceding Barbarossa, but particularly the six to eight months immediately proceeding onset of hostilities, which approximately reflects the final phase of mobilization that we talked about just now from

November 1940 to June 1941 and Vokogunov makes the point that Stalin was very taciturn but he became quite candid and quite open within the cloisters of you know these uh command element corridors in his discussion of you know what was to be military doctrine and in the next war which he increasingly discussed as if it was an imminent possibility in volkogunov's uh own words in describing uh the speech Stalin made on May 5th, 1941, he says, quote, the leader made it unmistakably clear, war is inevitable in the future. One must be ready for the, quote, unconditional destruction of German fascism. The war will be fought on enemy territory and victory will be achieved with few casualties.

And again, this wasn't something that Stalin merely devised as a polemical device to emboldened forces under his command or to overcome any potential or actual crises of confidence is among the general staff by appeal to a revolutionary fervor. Lenin made clear in identifying the core doctrinal elements of the Red Army, you know, back in 1920, 1921, 1920, that the Red Army, that the Red Army, that the Red Red Army was an instrumentality of revolutionary imperatives.

It wasn't a defensive element. You know, and it was to be deployed offensively at all times. You know, because the only rationale for its existence within the paradigm of Marxist's historiography and Leninist revolutionary doctrine was to facilitate. the advance of history and the victory of the proletariat against the class enemy so there's really no there's really no way to interpret Soviet battle doctrine as anything other than discreetly ideologically coded and axiomatically offensive you You know, and this is this is going on, or this is relying upon the strictures of Marxist-Leninist ontology and the distinct Marxist view of military power and its utility and its ethical functions.

The Marxist-Leninism was, in fact, a total philosophical and political system. Impoverished as it may have been intellectually in various capacities, and to be fair, it was sophisticated in others. What's irrebuttable or indisputable is that it was a total theory of political and social, and thus historical ontology so the idea that the party state which to be clear by 1941 had categorically annihilated millions of people within the Soviet Union owing to what was identified as their ineducability you know the idea that Stalin or the Presidium or the Politburo standing committee or these surviving command elements

in the Red Army the idea that they would somehow hesitate to see through these doctrinal imperatives is somewhat laughable, you know, and we're not in a court of law, so it shouldn't be a problem to invoke subsequent, as well as prior precedent, to demonstrate persuasively what the doctrinal character was of marxist-leinist revolutionary military elements I invoke the case of Cambodia a lot you know from 1975 to 1979 and I know over a fact because I get a hate mail with its effect and things people suspect I only do for the sake of a polemical expediency but that's not why um paul pot was not some simple-minded brute he was actually a very sophisticated political soldier he had a very deep

understanding of marcus leninism far more than Mao and uh Democratic Kempucia, as Paul Pott and his cadre branded the country during their brief tenure, was a very pure Marxist-Leninist state in some ways. And there was nothing, there was nothing heterodox in ideological. terms about the way they implemented class warfare adjusting for the discrete conditions on the ground in Southeast Asia as in 1975 so what I'm getting at I'll move on here in a moment I don't quite understand are the same people who acknowledge that the Soviet Union was this outlier country, and that was unusual in every conceivable sense, in terms of praxis and policy and theoretical foundations and everything else, yet they insist that this didn't

somehow impact military decision-making, or that revolutionary ontology somehow stopped at the at the point of um executive decisionism when it came to the decision to you know spread the revolutionary cause to europe and specifically to annihilate um the dialectical enemy in in the the german rike but you know the uh stalin had uh spoken again and again as well to the central committee most notably on uh january eighth nineteen forty one and uh and uh there was two high-ranking Air Force officers in attendance and Stalin apparently spoke directly of the ratio and algorithm that was necessary to defeat the German Reich. the general staff as well as his own calculations as had been explicated to him by authorities that he trusted he spoke on this particular day to quote twofold superiority he said that as it been explained to him

twofold superiority is a law of military science meaning a two to one ratio um Contra the enemy in offensive operations, you know, whether you're talking about raw numbers or, you know, force multipliers and variables tending to act as force multipliers that magnify the effectiveness of offensive elements, you know, and Stalin stated openly that quote this is not a game the time is approaching for military operations twofold superiority is essential but greater superiority is even better

and he said that he spoke specifically of the difficulty of traversing the Carpathians and the needs do designate at least 5,000 attack aircraft in order to neutralize defensive positions

that infantry and armor aren't going to be able to readily traverse or into the terrain. Now, this is hugely important for reasons I'm going to get into in a moment. Okay, but from January of 4th,000 of 4th,000, 41, specifically January 8th, until May, you know, only weeks before Barbarossa. Stalin talks again and again about waging military operations in the Balkans, specifically across the Romanian frontier and discreet exigencies that are presented by waging war in that theater. okay um in a lecture given uh in a lecture given uh in the spring

i believe in march of 41 but somehow neglected to assign an exact date he uh addressed uh the soviet plenopitenti representative in belgrade which uh at that time was under the rule uh briefly of a chetnik junta which in turn led to the German intervention and ultimately the bifurcation of the kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes. But in addressing the Plenopetentiary representative in Belgrade and select members of the Politburo, he said, quote,

The USSR will only react at the proper time. The powers are scattering their forces more and more. The USSR is therefore waiting to act unexpectedly against Germany. In doing so, the USSR will cross the Carpathias, which will act as a signal for the revolution in Hungary. Soviet troops will penetrate Yugoslavia from Hungary, advance the Adriatic Sea, and cut Germany off from the Balkans in the Middle East. okay so what does this mean in both immediate tactical terms and how this impacted the battlefield situation

in operation barbarosa as well as in broader strategic terms well i'll take up the latter question first for the latter aspect first The Soviet Union planned to assault Europe through Romania. By capturing Romania, it could deprive Germany of essential access to petroleum reserves. And also, that's commensurate with Soviet deep battle doctrine, which presuming forces in being ratios that Stalin described as being a you know at least a twofold advantage and preferably double or triple that. Stalin basically was planning a deep battle like pincer flanking maneuver across the entirety of the continent in the north through Sweden

and then down to assault Germany from the north and in the south the main Schwerpunct would be through Romania and I'll get into in a moment this is why

the Army Group Center Army Group South faced savage resistance on Barbarossa army group center was moving so fast it was basically like faced with no more than token opposition on the road to moscow which doesn't make any sense unless you understand the deployment schema of the red army which was totally offensive and concentrated in the south in a way that wouldn't be rational in a defensive oriented schema.

It's a most significant, I realize I'm jumping around a bit, but, so please stop me if I'm not being clear. Most significant to Suvorov's hypothesis, in terms of Stalin's declared intentions, was probably what's going to be known as the secret meeting with the Politburo and the Soviet representatives of the Comintern, who had been called back, presumably, to be availed, for the specific purpose of being availed to this speech on August 19, 1939, which obviously coincided with the assault on the Japanese of Kelkin Gold. But this was a surprise secret meeting, and it was unprecedented for the Russian delegation of the common term to be called back. Among other things, Stalin didn't have a lot of respect, he didn't have a lot of respect for the common term. I mean, in part because he, his rigid command doctrine, he didn't, I mean, he wasn't comfortable with an ideologically coded cadre structure, whereby

independent of Moscow just doing the fact of distance and you know remoteness you know he didn't want some cadre making decisions even superficially on behalf of the Soviet Union

without his direct oversight okay but nonetheless you know the common term still had tremendous clout in 1939 and especially coming off of the defeat in Spain there was a real danger of a fracturing of a you know the the broad international front red front so this is highly significant you know I guess what I'm getting at is that Stalin wouldn't have called the Russian delegation back just for, you know,

for the sake of putting on airs or to stand on ceremony or something. And this is when, I think I, excuse me, I think I briefly addressed this last episode. It was in this, it was in this secret meeting or secret speech that, uh, Stalin declared that, uh, you know, getting the Germans to getting the right foreign ministry to agree to a a non-aggression pact

you know that would embolden them to act against Poland you know because there to four the Berlin and specifically Hitler felt that his hands were tied in resolving the Polish issue because an assault on Poland Poland, even in the wake of a gross provocation or violation of Germany's territorial integrity on the frontier, you know, would lead to a Soviet counterstrike that would be devastating. So Stalin's reasoning was, you know, we will lull Germany with this non-aggression pact, which, you know, absolutely guarantees that there was assault Poland.

which will then, you know, lead to a war declaration by the UK and France. Germany will probably be victorious on the Western Front, but only at puric cost. You know, and then, you know, and this, thus, this is the icebreaker that will soften what would be Europe's defensive cordon and allow the Red Army to just bowl over and annihilate resistance in the West. And, you know, thus reverse the defeat handed to them in Iberia and, you know, conquer the continent in a rapid and devastating operation. And I mean, Stalin, this is remarkably consistent as far back as 1925, you know, when he was less than three years into his formal ascendancy as general secretary. He spoke openly about the need to act militarily against Europe as soon as possible. Not until the political climate and the, you know, the myriad and ever sort of changing alliance structure in the West was such that what Stalin called a, quote, broad field of activity would be realizable in order to, you know,

pursue the imperative of world revolution and to be clear you know not only was a europe along with america and japan you know the kind of productive core of this planet but you know the understanding was that Europe was still the in conceptual terms, you know, the political center of human affairs, you know, conceptually, you know, every, every, every ideological schema, you know, came from Europe and even, even things like the anti-colonial movement were fully locked into dialectical engagement, you know, with European thought. So Stalin's notion was that, you know, first, last and always, Europe needs to be overrun and annihilated, and the revolution has to be implemented there.

you know it's a waste of time and it's self-defeating to pursue uh such imperatives on the periphery but make no mistake you know wherever revolutionary activity jumped off that had historical momentum and forces in being Stalin absolutely was in favor of supporting that and seeing that through but the uh but the but the core mission orientation of the Soviet Union had to be you know the the you know the implementing the world revolution in europe you know first and foremost and that's also why the spanish war was so important you know it wasn't just uh i've read some court historians claim that schnallel was somehow like reluctantly forced into the spanish war just for the sake of appeasing the common turn i mean that's that's laughable for all kinds of

reasons, but it also, you know, Stalin wasn't as heterodox of a Marxist Leninist as he's often portrayed. I mean, Stalin was complicated. You know, like I said, I, it's a lean volume, but it's a great book, Kerry Bolton's book, Stalin, The Enduring Legacy. You know, Stalin was a complicated figure, and there were heterodox aspects to his, uh, worldview and his own Veltpolitik, but it wasn't a radical divergence or something, you know, and that's important, especially because these days, even some fairly heterodox political theorists and even some revisionists seem to abide that fiction. but yeah the you can't in other words this you can't you can't you can't extricate the ambition of the sovietization of europe from the uh existence of the soviet union itself you know these these ambitions were synonymous and that's that's also why the cold war

developed the way that it did in raw strategic terms but um you know and i think i can't remember if i mentioned or not this speech in question you know the august 1939 speech it was obtained by uh the french uh news agency havas and uh The French were kind of notorious for getting a hold of these kinds of documents and records. You know, and when the Havas agency, by way of Geneva, when they went public with it, It was published in some international journal, and then in many of the major French language newspapers. But Moscow's propagandists immediately went into overdrive, you know, and claiming, you know, this is a forgery. You know, this is confabulated by the enemies of Russia and the, and this.

soviet union you know it's fascist propaganda and uh it did not make as nearly as big of an impact as one might think you know um which is really interesting because it goes to show you too how you know and a lot of that too had to do with uh this kind of deafening silence um from american news agencies you know and other than all the major papers in America I mean other than those brands held by McCormick were basically mouthpieces for the New Deal regime you know but it's still I mean obviously too I mean this there's a kind of nascent low-tech globalism emerging at least between America and um Europe by way of, you know, the UK, but even, you know, I mean, it's, it's, it's something's remarkable that there is basically no impact in terms of global opinion. And, uh, I've looked too to see if, uh, this pops up in the

America first literature. And I haven't found anything. this positive on that question but that again goes to show you too the degree to which the psychological environment was being actively manipulated you know long before the onset of formal hostilities which might seem like an obvious point to you or myself but people are inundated in this country with this idea that you know somehow the New Dealers had no interest

in these goings on and the European war and the entries from the Soviet Union and the German Reich you know until Pearl Harbor when America was attacked then that changed everything I mean that could not be more false

from the first months of the new deal regime which again coincided almost precisely with the national socialist revolution which was a totally legal revolution again you know and um roosevelt from the first days of administration was pursuing a uh uh an uh an uh a an uh a a absolutely radical anti-fascist imperative as the core mandate of an ambition of his administration you know and that can't they can't be denied you know and the

I don't want to spin this off too tangentially and I know that a lot of people criticize me for my sources well we have they have yet to directly but rebut any of these data points that I've derived from these sources namely Robert Conquest and Ernst Nolte and as well as the Black Book of Communism which is a great resource I may add but it's in the if the Soviet Union exterminated millions of people between 1917 and 1941 and there was a massive series of death camps, actual death camps, that were employed towards this incredibly gruesome task.

and the degree to which there was an information blackout about this reality can't be overstated you know and people who raised this issue you know not just not just America firsters but um Joseph Schumpeter's wife interestingly she spoke Japanese and and she was a big advocate for Japanese people. She was kind of a human rights type, but of a genuine sort, not like the 21st century sort. And she raised the issue of Soviet annihilation therapy, as an old he called it.

And she was, she insurmperter her hassled by the FBI, both for, you know, sympathies for the Axis vis-vis her, you know, dealings with, with Japanese people. and stuff and particularly Japanese people who were being persecuted by the New Dealers

but also you know propagandizing against the Soviet Union in their view was this big subversive act you know which seems kind of incredible I'd imagine the people today

but they don't I mean but it I mean it only seems incredible if one doesn't accept the true nature of a of that regime but that aside it's remarkable uh that agree to which these things could in fact be um could in fact be hidden you know um but that don't also raised i mean there's also oblique and obliquely and conversely it all it also begs the question

you know if if there was this uh mass murder conspiracy hatched in uh the german rike at vansi in 942 like why wasn't anybody you know publicizing that I mean that one would think that would be a godsend to the new dealers and a perfect way to portray the Germans as as these horrific villains and especially became imperative you know by 94 as the US Army was quite literally mutiny, you know, which we've talked about. That was the real catalyst for the execution of Port Etislovak, you know, it's, um, people, so, uh, you know, the Walter Winchell and, uh, the Office of War Information and all these myriad, uh, Anglophone news agencies,

they just decided not to report on the fact that the German Reich only existed to exterminate Jewish people just because they didn't think it was important. You know, they didn't think it was a useful way to code propaganda. I mean, I realize that's like a bit tangential, but moving on real quick, so I realize we're running out of time. I mentioned a moment ago something that's often raised is okay so why was Barbarossa so tactically successful and why was the attrition rate

so algorithmically skewed against the Soviet Union if in fact the Soviet Union is mobilized for war and planning to attack, but that's exactly why these things did develop that way. The Soviets were planning to assault Romania by Autumn of 41. And that's exactly why, like I said, Army Group South encountered comparatively savage resistance. That's also why there was powerful reserve elements in Ukraine because essentially they were there to rapidly reinforce the shock element that was going to assault the Balkans.

So there was this awkwardly unbalanced deployment schema of Soviet field armies where Soviet forces block. locking the corridor to the Moscow-Leningrad deployment space, they were exponentially weaker than those deployed to Ukraine, which doesn't make any sense unless you account for the fact that they were deployed in an offensive posture, the spherpunct of which was, you know, in the south to assault Romania, due the Carpathies. um now don't get me wrong the soviets were sensitive to the fact that moscow was being left relatively undefended but uh you know a it doesn't um like it doesn't track any other way, other than to accept what I just acknowledged. And it's also, you know, again, this idea that's endlessly bandied to this day, that

Stalin was afraid of Hitler, or that the Soviet Union was afraid of the Vermacht. It's like, well, I mean, okay, that's preposterous anyway, but so Stalin was so afraid of the Wehrmach that he there basically was a token deployment on the

path to Moscow you know I mean how exactly does that work any I mean any interpretation is it can only result in a conclusion

that the Soviets were poised for exclusively offensive operations. I mean, unless you can, it's a tortured kind of logic. I mean, I guess you could claim that the Soviets wanted to draw the Germans in and funnel the main line of, funnel into the main line of resistance at the gates of Moscow and stop them in their tracks.

But, I mean, Moscow practically felt. You know, that doesn't make any sense. I've read people who try to make some variation of that argument, but it's so preposterous. I don't really think it warrants to kind of blow-by-blown rebuttal. But that's really, you know, an example of extant conditions, speaking of herself. And the resistance that every group center did encounter, to be clear, they weren't defensively deployed either. There wasn't any depth to their deployment schema. And they, in fact, were forward deployed with a heavily armed shock element in the lead.

you know which is one reason why Army Group Center such that they didn't counter resistance they got hit with a lot of firepower that was immediately exhausted and

then when counterattacking the Vermacht immediately broke Soviet lines because there was again there wasn't any there wasn't any depth to the deployment you know if you know anything i'm not any i'm not at all like a military type person but i do know something about the internal logic of modern warfare you know in an abstract

deployment sense i mean and if you know anything about this it just not even really deep diving into the numerical data points and stuff, but it's literally looking at the map of the deployment schema, this should jump right out at you. It's almost like, you know, those, you know, it's like illusion pictures. They used to see them a lot, like beer companies. It's like you look at some picture and it looks like, it's like a bunch of little pictures of Spudge McKenzie or something, but then you see it and it's like a sexy girl or something. And then once you see that, like you can't unsee it what's like that okay i mean you look at you look at a deployment map of uh the moscow leningrad gorky um battle space on june 22nd nineteen forty one and you you realize like

what it is and then you can't unsee it you know so the fact anybody who makes an argument to the contrary i got to assume they're being dishonest or they're just profoundly ignorant of the subject matter yeah looks like we've gone a little over an hour um i hope that wasn't too scatter shot man um let me um let me hit you up one question before we go and this is this is a little bit off topic but it's a question i wanted to ask since we were talking about Stalin so much yeah did Stalin take half of europe at the end of the war or was he given half of Europe at the end of the war. I mean, both.

That's what was decided at Yalta. If if Stalin was going to be precluded from taking Germany, that meant that Eisenhower and Montgomery would have had to assault Berlin. And had they done that,

what would have happened was even accounting for the punitive and purely ideologically motivated an additional surrender demand the vermic and

Woff and SS elements would have basically welcomed them in because that would have prevented the literal rape of and destruction of the German Reich and once it was clear that

Anglo-American forces intended to take Berlin, Stalin would have immediately shifted to a footing of hostility contrary the United States and the UK. And even before that happened, it's conceivable that these elements that were driving for Berlin on the Soviet side like first Ukrainian shock army

which I think was under I think first Ukrainian shock army was under Timoshenko but whoever whatever formation Konev and Rokosovsky respectively were commanding it's very conceivable that they would have ordered

down to company level commanders to treat the U.S. and the U.K. as enemies who were literally trying to race to Berlin to act as a blocking element in the Soviet view, you know, for the Germans. So America would have found itself at war with the Soviet Union.

You know, um, that's the only alternative but i mean that's what that you know like i said the thing was decided at yelta it's i mean i don't you can uh on the one hand um yeah it was uh the new it was the new dealers who kept the soviet union in the war but uh like von manstein i highly recommend von manstein's his memoirs. It's called Lost Victories. But in reality, it was just debriefing by the war department,

which obviously was very interested in learning as much as they could about fighting the Soviet Union with conventional combined arms, with an emphasis on armored columns, obviously. Von Manstein, who really was like a kind of Prussian martinet and a very prejudiced guy, he stipulated that the the Soviet army was unbelievably tough they could absorb catastrophic attrition

and not fall apart and much as in the Western world as we might view their doctrinal orientation on the battlefield as exhibiting a kind of callous disregard

for human life it was and is highly effective and those things are all true you can't really take away from the gameness and just the raw toughness of the Red Army you know so I'm not going to sit here and say that oh Stalin was just handed a gift

by you know the new dealers and General Eisenhower you know because the Soviet Union fought for every single inch of ground that they won

back and the attrition they endured is almost unfathomable yet by the time they reached Berlin their morale was great and they were acting like they were at a party. I'm not being flippant they were doing utterly horrible, horrible

things by my point being the army that arrived in Berlin wasn't some broken rag tag force. It was a very game, very aggressive, very high morale element, which is one of reasons why they were so dangerous. Like, it's realistic in the Uttargang where Trouto Young, you know, she's trying to pass through Soviet lines, and then like the kid runs up and grabs her hand, you know, so it's a really poignant scene. But there's these Soviet infantrymen, and they're like guzzling vodka and like dancing like you're at a party you know these guys have just been in action

for you know these guys probably were the last they were probably like the last element drafted they're probably guys who turned 18 you know in uh in uh in the in the in january in 1945 you know and then took you know like 80 percent casualties you know and they're like the surviving element and they're acting like you're at a party you know they uh most most people would have fallen apart you know even when they had the kind of moment that kind of momentum um in in broad strategic terms just because it was so it was so brutal and so catastrophic so yeah i'm not i'm not going to take anything away from the ivan's in terms of their toughness and gameness but it you know i a race to berlin between um montgomery and eisenhower and um and uh

it's, uh, would have meant war. So that's the best answer I can give. Awesome. All right. Well, um, I will encourage people to go over to Thomas's substack. That's real Thomas 777.substack.com. And you can connect to him from, from there to anywhere that he's at and, uh, check him out on Twitter and, um, make sure to subscribe to a substack.

So you can, uh, get the episodes and hear. them. So, yeah, that's it, Thomas. This was a, this was a great series. I thought this was a series that needed to get out there, especially after reading, after reading Suvoroff and getting a little of the way through Hoffman and having to finish Hoffman, it's just vital information that people are, you're not going to hear, even if you, you exit court history. This is stuff that's hidden. And there's, There's a reason why both of those books, if you want original copies of both of those books, you're paying $200, yeah, yeah. No, I agree on all accounts. And yeah, thanks, thanks for

including me, man, or rather for inviting me to participate in lieu of somebody else. That's just great. Absolutely. Thank you, Thomas. Take care now. We're going to be. We're going to be able to be.