The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1374: Stalin's Plan to Invade Germany w/ Hans Vogel and Michael Palmer

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

62 MinutesSafe for WorkPete invited Hans Vogel and Michael Palmer, the translators of Antelope Hill's latest release, "Germany in Stalin's Crosshairs," to appear on the show to discuss the project and the overarching themes of the book.Germany in Stalin's CrosshairsMr. Palmer's WebsiteHow Europe Became American by Hans VogelMr. Vogel's UNZ PagePete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete'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.

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the audio files that you can download and listen to or you can stream in most cases through those locations as well. So if you want to avoid the ads, consider supporting the show if not, just know none of these ads get any endorsement from me, skip by them, do what you need to do. I appreciate all of you. Head on over to the Picanioness Show.com. You can get the show early and ad free over there. If not, here's a show. I want to welcome everyone back to the Piquino show. I am here with two gentlemen. Let me introduce them first. Hans Vogel. How are you doing, Hans? Fine. Thank you. What about yourself? doing good doing good and Michael Palmer how are you I'm fine thank you

all right let's Hans I'll let I'll let you go first tell everybody a little bit about yourself well I'm a historian I was I studied in the Netherlands and I did my PhD and my master's in America in the at the University of Florida which I found a great experience I learned a lot about Latin America, which is my specialty, and about the United States, and especially the South, which I love, and especially the food and the people. Not in that order, though. And I've been working as a history professor in several universities in Europe and in Argentina. And since I'm retired for some 20 years now, I left early because of, well, the university environment,

academic department didn't really work for me. In the end, I didn't work for them. So I left university and I've never felt better since. Since then. And I write for the under review and for my own substack. And I've been writing for Pravda in Russia and for other outlets. So I keep myself busy. Great. Michael, how about you? Well, I'm not resistant to my English name. I'm actually from Germany, as you might guess, for my accent. So I got an MD degree in Germany and worked after that for about 10 years in a department of medical microbiology. And in 2001, I took up a professorship at the University of Waterloo and Canada, where I still live, in biochemistry.

And that lasted until 2022, until I got kicked out for refusory. the COVID shot and so I have been prematurely retired since then. I quit my last job, the last job I had before they instituted the COVID shot, the mandatory COVID shot and they told everybody a week before they had to get it that they would be fired if they didn't if they didn't get it. So yeah, I think a lot of, I think that changed a lot of people's not only their opinions on how things work, but also the trajectory in their life and their work life. Oh, yeah. It was a very interesting experience. I mean, I was at the university that didn't have any medical school, so I was one of very few medical people there, right? So I actually

tried to inform people. I mean, by the time that these mandates came around, there were already several months of experience with the COVID shots and the dead bodies were already piling up, right? I mean, you could see it in all the databases, but nobody was interested, nobody was listening to me. That was really a surreal experience, I must say. All right. So we are here because Antelope Hill just published a book by, I believe I'm pronouncing his name, right? Berndt Schupper. Schupper.

And it is called Germany and Stalin's crosshairs. And I think one of the reasons why I really got excited about this book when it came out is because I, I've read Hoffman's Stalin's War of Extermination and Suvorov Resens Icebreaker. And I've adopted those theories, I believe that they are true. But a lot of what is, a lot of those books are basically, here is all the evidence. And you never, you have, it's like, it's almost overwhelming evidence that Stalin was planning to invade Germany and thus invade Europe, but it never really gets down to, you know, you just have to be like, yes, that's what I believe. And then, so you're waiting for conclusive

evidence. Do you think that this book is, this book puts the nail in the coffin of the theory that Stalin was not going to invade Germany and Europe? I think everybody who actually reads this book thoroughly and considers the arguments in the book, I think we'll have to come pretty much to that conclusion. I mean, that is the impression I got when I read the German version, the German original of that book. That is also ultimately what made me feel that this is really an important contribution to the historic debate. and that motivated me to offer the author to translate this book. I agree, yes. I think it's the final word on the issue.

Any historian who persists in repeating or regurgitating the traditional, now traditional view of the Second World War and its various vitals, like Anthony Beaver and all the other people who are covered with laurels and with psychophantic commentaries and praises. All those people will have to recognize the book by Shuiper. I'm sure they won't. So it will create a bifurcation in the historical field dedicated to the history of the Second World War. But in the end, it's impossible to ignore this book. It's impossible.

If you do so, you prove that you're an idiot, I think. To say so in those sort of basic words, but that's the way I feel about it. So I don't know how this came about. Was this a book that one of you or both of you knew about and offered to translate, or was this something that Antelope Hill came to you and asked you to translate? No, I found it in, I found the original German work and was really quite excited about it. I found it in, was it 2018 or something? It had already been published in 2015, but for the first couple of years I wasn't aware of it.

But when I found it and got around to reading it, I really felt this was a very profound contribution. I mean, it is full of evidence and it is also very professionally analyzed. I mean, one needs to take a step back perhaps and consider the person of Ben Shipper, the author. He is a former general of the East German army, National Folk Somme. He had been promoted to General Major already. or Major General is the English expression to Major General. By the time that his employment ended, so he was actually kicked out of the army when the two Germanists reunited in 1990.

So then he found himself without a job, essentially. And in his premature retirement, he then decided to take up historic investigation. And he spent several years digging through the archives in Mosul Moscow and in Minsk to research the prehistory of World War II. And he wasn't able to do so. Firstly, obviously he had the required military expertise. He even had received his own general staff education in Moscow. So he was familiar with the Soviet military tradition and culture.

And he was fluent in Russian. I mean, everybody in East Germany growing up there would receive Russian rather than English training at elementary school already. And so he was fluent in Russian also through his military career. So he had the perfect credentials. He had the time. And he dug up a lot of stuff. So in addition to this archival work,

he could also rely on several document collections that were published in the 1990s and in the early 2000s by Russian historians. And I think actually most of the material in the book is taken from those collections. I cannot be also found in those collections. So those readers who are actually able to read Russian, they can verify those citations for themselves. And I was actually very lucky after I had offered Ben Shipper

that Hans spontaneously offered to help when I approached him because, firstly, he's a professional historian, which I am not. And on top of that, Hans is also a little bit of a language genius. He speaks just about every European language, including German and Russian. And so he could actually verify much of the material that's contained in the book, right? Could double-check the translations. And he also read it out quite a few technical errors, referencing errors, page numbers and whatnot that had slipped into the German original. So I think Hans helped a lot.

I mean, on top of his general expertise, he is also, I think Hans, it's correct to say that one of his specialties is military history, right? So I think he had a very good background to really make sure that this translation was as solid as we could make it. At least it's a lot more solid than it would have been if I had worked on my own. So I'm very grateful to Hans for helping with this. It was great fun working together, yes. It was pleasure, really. So that's the added benefit of doing this kind of work, is that you fortify your ties, your, your friendship, your bonds of your friendship,

which I really appreciate it very much. It's great to work on this project. May I add something on Schweeper, which I think makes him a unique author? You know, there are historians and there are military people, sort of soldiers. And it's very rare for a soldier to become a very sort of solid historian, especially military historian. There are, of course, very few of these. And I don't know any of them, at least in modern times, except for Bern Schweeper. There may be two or three more out there, but I don't know them.

So he's a rarity. And he has a unique combination, a very strong combination. a very strong combination of knowledge and of talent and of expertise, which no historian of the Second World War has, maybe one or two or were a reserve officers a long time ago, but he was a general, made a career in the military, in the East German military, very good sort of military apparatus, and he's a very solid historian, very solid researcher.

So this combination makes the book very powerful. and a very strong argument, the definitive argument, I would say. Yes. One could assume from this subject, which is a subject that no mainstream academic would undertake, does he have some kind of ideological reason for picking this subject and running with it? He is not very strongly ideologically committed to anything, I would say. his upbringing was in the GDR, right? So I think he imbibed the usual socialist propaganda and the friendship of the Soviet Union and so on.

Obviously, he has distanced himself somewhat from that view, but he still takes a somewhat sympathetic view, for example, of the current Russian ideology of the great patriotic war. I mean, you can, if you listen to even current Russian propaganda, or Russian news and this kind of thing. They always celebrate their great patriotic war as a heroic achievement, which in a way it is, right? Indeed, the resistance they offered after they were already at the brink of disaster is really quite remarkable.

But at the same time, what they totally skip is the entire idea that this disaster was completely avoidable from the end, right? they simply should have abstained from preparing for war. That would have been the end of it. They would not have been attacked if they had kept the peace on their side. But he still takes a sympathetic view of that. He also, for example, takes a somewhat, I think, rosy view of Lenin's communism. So he contrasts in his final chapter the socialism of Lenin and the socialism of Stalin,

and Lenin is the good guy and Stalin is the bad guy. So I don't think that this is that part of the story. I mean, it's not central to the argument of the book, obviously, and I don't think it's particularly well researched, but I think it is just some sort of atavism that shows through, right? This is just some sort of remnant of his early education. So he has distanced himself obviously from the view that the Soviet Union was attacked by just some sort of raging, raging dictator.

Hitler, who simply was hell-bent on conquest, he obviously does not think that, but it is not that Swipper is ideologically committed. I mean, if you read the book, which I guess you have done, at least in part, I mean, it's a very thick book to get through, but I think the tone of the book is really, really quite sober and factual. I mean, Swipper always tries to stick to the facts. Let's try to get into a little bit of the book here. Right.

Yeah. Let's start with territorial expansion of the Soviets. The arguments always made that they knew that Germany was coming. So, you know, putting troops on Romania's borders so that you could secure oil for the coming onslaught. Sure, that makes sense. But when you really start nailing down exactly what they were doing and where they were putting what they were putting where, it's kind of hard to argue that they were planning on building up defenses, especially considering how many defensive things like the Stalin Wall they had already torn down.

Well, I think particularly striking. I mean, the book deals with two years essentially, right, 1940 and 1941, the first half. And what is particularly striking is really the enormous imbalance of forces between Germany and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940. At that time, in spring and early summer of 1940, Germany had been conducting its campaign in the West against France, right? It had defeated France after some six weeks of campaigning. But during the time and for some time afterwards, right, the bulk of the Wehrmacht was really in the West. and the eastern border, right, that was after Poland had been divided up between Germany and the West and the Soviet Union and the East, there was a direct line of contact, several hundred kilometers long. And that border was guarded at the time by only some 15 divisions, and these 15 divisions were not panzer divisions or something, but these were actually just infantry divisions that were very poorly equipped and so on and so forth.

And so they were certainly not frontline battalions, not frontline units. And at the same time, the Soviet Union had concentrated, particularly in the northern part of that common border, 102 divisions. So this was a six to sevenfold superiority of troop strength. And what is also quite compelling, when in addition to the preparations of infrastructure and so on, the AAA is out, he documents how the troops were actually the Soviet troops at the time were training for warfare in East Prussia, right? So they were making preparations for what they had maneuvers in this kind of thing. They reinforced engineer battalions and so on because in East Prussia there's lots of water,

right, lots of lakes and rivers to traverse. So they strengthened their engineer forces that would actually help them cross those obstacles. and one of the outstanding chapters, I would say, in the entire book is chapter 9, which deals with the operational plans and the operational plans of the year 1940. They spell out exactly those war plans that the practical preparations also mirror advice. So there is explicit language that relates to the conquest of East Prussia there. and it is also clear from those war plans that these were not defensive plans.

So the Soviet troops, they would not wait, the Red Army would not wait for a German attack and then counterattack. But indeed, it was planned that the Red Army should take the initiative and strike into East Prussia even before the German troops, the Wehrmacht, would be fully concentrated. So while the Wehrmacht was still in the process of marching up its tubes, the Russians would already strike and destroy these troops before they could even attain a battle posture. And this motive is really found throughout all of these operational plans. So Schupper dissects a number of operational plants and five of them overall. And then each of them you find this kind of a central idea that the Red Army would strike first and would strike deep into enemy territory

at the troops as they were just reaching their destination, but not right even before the enemy troops had to raid themselves into a battle line. So it was clear that these were always first strike plans. It really doesn't get any clearer than that. I think the analysis, I mean, you can really enjoy the chapter reading it just as just um uh what shipper just put all the pieces into place and arranging them and really making it clear what these what these um elements really mean i found that chapter particularly is stimulating to read and to translate mm-hmm yes and and especially also the the the equipment of the um the location and the the dislocation of the location of the troops and their equipment and the building of railway lines

to the east, to the German border, I found very convincing as well. And the entire replacement of sort of the moving of the industry to the east of Russia, to the eastern parts of Russia, which also already started early. I think everything in the Soviet Union. was designed to attack Germany. You can see that by the structure and the decisions taken in the back echelons of the army at the top level, but at all the levels, you can see that.

And I think it would be good to also refer, maybe I'm diverging a bit, but to the work of a Finnish historian who, as a matter of fact, supports or gives additional evidence to support Shreper. Shrebe doesn't know about him. It's a Finnish historian who died

a couple of years ago, Houtamiki, and who had the private archive of Finnish leader of Manaheim in his care. And he said that Germany was about to be attacked, that the plans were to attack Germany from two sides,

or from Russia would attack, the Soviet Union would attack, and England, or Britain, and France also attack at the same time. They would encircle Germany and attack it from all directions. That's also the reason why the Russians invaded the Baltic countries and why they started the Finnish war. So there was a big plan and the Russians, the Russian plans were part of a broader design to destroy Germany, to attack Germany. I think it's important to also refer to that. can add to your bringing up of the distribution of the arms and so on.

One very striking aspect of this preparation is indeed how very close to the Western border of the Soviet Union facilities such as airfields were located. There were many airfields that were within something like 10 or 20 kilometers of the Western border. So they were even within German artillery range. So if indeed the Soviet Union had been preparing for a defensive war. The very last thing they would have done is to put their assets this far forward.

And indeed, the initial catastrophe of the Red Army was brought about by this extremely forward deployment of the troops, but also of the Air Force, for example. I mean, all these assets were lost within a few days of fighting after the Behrmacht had attacked, right? Then it became very difficult indeed to organize an effective defense at that point. Another point is that the troops had really been arrayed in not some sort of continuous defensive line

or a series of staggered defensive lines, but they had been concentrated in large offensive groupings, so they had been really clustered together. The Germans knew that. They knew where these Soviet troops were located. There was aerial reconnaissance on both sides and so on. So they could simply punch through the gaps between those clusters and then circle them. So I don't know the exact number, I must say. I'm not sure exactly how many Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner in the first couple of weeks of fighting.

But I think it's in the millions. Maybe Hansen knows better. I think one and a half million. That's what I stood in my mind. Yeah. Right, right. That sounds about right. That number doesn't sound like a defensive force.

No. No, particularly not if it's encircled, right? I mean. Can we talk a little bit about the preliminary order of June 11, 1941? Because he spends a lot of time on that one. Yes. So the preliminary order that was issued by Timoshenko, who was the Secretary of War or Defense,

whatever you want to call him at this point, the evil commissioner for defense. And he was ordering, according to Shipper, he was ordering the high commands, right? So the trickle down the hierarchy, I suppose, to prepare for offensive actions effectively. And so the language in that order is really quite explicit.

And if this order can be proven to really exist for real, then I think this order alone is already sufficient to seal the deal to close the case. The problem with this order is that there is no archival reference for it. It has been published. The text of this order has been published. Who was the author again, Hans? publish that the Soviet Russian author? I forget. Sorry.

The two collections of documents. Yes, yes. Yes, they're online. Yes, indeed. No, Bunich. Bunech, Bunech, Operatia Grosin. So the Operation Thunderstorm. So Boonich was a Russian historian and he has published a

number, good number of books and a variety of subjects including several on World War II. And he has published the text, which he most likely found in one or the other archive. But in order to protect the person who actually handed him the document, he didn't give the full details of it. I guess this is what it comes down to. And Schwipper cites the text in its entirety,

and he makes the case that the order should be considered authentic because it fits in with all the context, right, with other directives that were issued shortly before and shortly after and so on. Importantly, there is actually one order, right? So this order is directed at the land forces, but there exists a parallel order dating from the same day to the Navy. And that order actually was indeed, is a matter of record. This order was actually transmitted to the ships, to the Russian ships, the fleet at sea at the time and was overheard by Finnish reconnaissance. So an order of very similar import that is directed to the Navy was indeed overheard the very same day.

I think that is probably the strongest bit of evidence to support the assumption that the order to the land forces should also be considered authentic. It seems like the key directive of the order was for staffs of the military districts and subordinate army and core staffs to be ready to carry out offensive operations by July 1st, 1941. That's correct, yes. That's correct, yeah. Yes. Which would mean Barbarosic would have cut that off by eight days. Yes, that's right. What could assume, I guess, that battle.

readiness by July 1st probably meant that the actual attack would have was planned slightly later. Schwipper, it uses several arguments to make the case that most likely the attack would have occurred about eights, between the eights and the 15th or something like that of July. But anyway, in either way, I mean, Barbarossa really preempted the plan. planned Russian attack most likely by less than a month, right? The amount of aircraft that were being made at this time, the manufacturing at this time, cannot be ignored, right? No, it's absolutely astonishing, right?

Well, the kind, sorry, not only the number, but the fighter bombers, not so much fighter, not so much fighters, fighter bombers, attack planes. Fighter bombers, but also long distance bombers. Also lots of gliders, right, for paratroopers. So indeed it was very clearly offensively oriented. I mean, also even the long distance bombers, I mean, they were also located in fairly close range from the border, right? So they were located between 150 to 250 kilometers from the border,

which for a long distance bomber is not really very much, right? So they were also positioned so as to strive deep within German territory. So the range of the bombers was such that most of the major German cities would have been in their range. And of course, bombers and themselves heavy bombers are not a defensive. not a defensive weapon. Have you been doing by a per se? They're designed to mass, mass destroy buildings and cities and constructures and the mass kill people. So that's the answer right there.

I suspect though that the Russians will probably have focused more on military targets than the English and the American state. Yeah, like big factories and sort of things. That's right. railway, railway junctions, that sort of thing, stations. Yes, exactly, yeah. Something else that he talks about in here, that he talks about Stalin, how Stalin misinterpreted Hitler's intentions,

that he didn't believe because Hitler was a veteran of World War I, that he would be stupid enough to start a two-front war. and even Golikov said that a lot of what they're planning, a lot of their planning surrounded the fact that what they didn't believe that Germany was going to invade. Well, I suspect that the generals and also Golikov were probably a lot more worried about the possibility than Stalin was. I think that it's really that Stalin has an enormous personal responsibility for the extent of the disaster by insisting on his miscalculation against the advice of anybody else.

There's also one really interesting aspect in the Russian reconnaissance, right? So it seems that on the one hand, the reconnaissance at the tactical level was very good. So the Russians knew down to the battalion level how the German troops were distributed, stationed and so on. At the same time, when the numbers were tallied and an overall estimate of German strengths was compiled, then they always vastly overestimated German strengths by dozens of divisions and thousands of tanks. And that estimate was then given to Stalin. So what I suspect cannot prove it with this speculation. What I suspect is that in this manner, by inflating these numbers that they gave to Stalin,

the generals actually tried to get Stalin to see the light, to understand that the threat from the German side was real. The Germany was serious about preparing for a preemptive attack on the Soviet Union. and by insisting that this wasn't true. It was one striking example which Schubert also quotes, there is a German deserter that was caught the very day before that was picked up the very day before the war broke out and that deserter told them that indeed the attack was coming at the planned hour.

And Stalin still said, okay, but what if? this is just disinformation and this kind of thing. So he still didn't want to believe it. He didn't even believe his agent in Japan. Zorga. Zorgo also said it. The Germans were going to attack. And he ignored that.

And Zorga was apparently ordered back to Russia and knew better and stayed away because otherwise he would have probably been executed for his. He was eventually. Yes, it was eventually, yes, but under different circumstances. The question that's always answered is, or always asked is, did Germany kickoff operation Barbarossa solely as a preventative measure because they knew that the Soviet Union was going, the Stalin was going to invade? does he answer this question and does he answer it in a way that is in arguable? That's a very good question. Shipper has written another book, which is even more voluminous than this one,

on the question what the Germans knew and how that influenced their decision-making, and I have not read that book yet. So I can't really say how much more he adds on that particular point. But in this book, he does include some calculations by Hitler that suggests it was not merely to head off a Russian attack. The first point is that the Germans indeed underestimated Russian strengths. So they actually expected a fairly quick victory. Within a couple of months, they expected to have defeated the Russians. That doesn't discount the idea that it was a preemptive attack.

I mean, if they had simply waited for the Russians, then obviously things would have become a lot harder. But they did underestimate Russian strengths, which might, on the other hand, suggest that they were not too worried about the eventuality, the possibility of a Russian attack on them. And the other point is that Hitler calculated, I mean Hitler had hoped to conclude some sort of peace with England. In 1940, after the fall of France, he had led the British army escape at Tunkirk as a sort of olive branch to the English, but English were not willing to conclude a peace. then he taught with the idea of invading England outright with the fleet. But I guess his generals or his admirals convinced him that this was not a good idea. It would have been probably enormously costly and ended in failure. So he did not do this.

And his calculation was that England was holding on only, because it was hoping for Russian so cool. So his calculation was by defeating Russia, he would deprive England of that hope, of that hope of support. And that would have also, on its own, being a viable motive for attacking Russia, which was not, I don't think should be construed as directly preemptive. So we are not really quite clear how much weight each of these two

motives had in Hitler's calculus, I would say. I think it's also good to point out that the Germans were very well prepared and so were the Russians for another operation for an attack, not for a defense. But the Germans were very well prepared, save on one thing, on one item. I think that the German general, German leadership didn't have a good grasp of the size of Russia and of the complications involved with a rapidly advancing army and with expanding lines of communication, becoming ever more complicated between the points out there on the front line and sort of. points in back echelons, etc., etc. Communications became so difficult, so complicated

and so sort of vulnerable that it became every day that they advanced made the entire operation weaker and they didn't have a grasp of that because of the size of Russia. I think you can, this is what they did them in, not really the Russian defenses, actually the physical circumstances of the rapid advance, I think. I wanted to jump back to Stalin's speech of April 1940 to senior Red Army commanders.

When you read things like this, when you read about the first step was the reconquest of Belarus and Western Ukraine, and then you had the Winter War, and then you have this speech, it's very hard for, I mean, we know that mainstream historians are going to stay to the post-war consensus opinion. But this is just another nail in the coffin of Stalin's plans. Yes. I mean, in this... I'm sorry, I didn't inform that in a question, sorry. Right, yeah, yeah.

Okay. So, I mean, in this speech, Stalin spells out that there's a great opportunity for Russia to strike while Germany is fighting. with the Western powers. At the time of that speech, the Western campaign against France had not yet begun. Or it might have just been underway. It's just a matter of days, really, but it had not been concluded. So Germany was still facing England and France in the West. So as I mentioned earlier, all its forces were busy there.

So indeed, right, this created a great opportunity for Russia to strike a Germany. And it could at that point not be foreseen that Germany would conclude its Western campaign against France within just only six weeks, right? One could, I guess, fairly expected to last at least several months. And that indeed would have created the perfect opening for the Soviet Union to strike. And in this speech of April 1940, Stalin lays it out just very clearly. So the war between Germany and the Western powers had already created the opportunity for the Winter War against Finland. So he had seized that opportunity. And now he proposes to his leading commanders that the Red Army needs to be beefed up because it has shown some weaknesses against Finland.

But on the other hand, the ultimate success against Finland, against Finland was not only a success against Finland as such, but also against its military advisors and suppliers from Germany among other countries. So he really tries to instill some confidence into his commanders that if they keep at it and prepare properly, they will be able to successfully take the fight to Germany. It's very clearly laid out there. And indeed, I mean, Schuber makes the case that this speech was the key event that set in motion all the feverish preparations that then began in the what he calls the Western Theater of War against Germany. Do you have anything to answer that, Hans? No, I think Michael has a very good grasp of all the details and I could not improve on that.

I wanted to go back to this topic because it's court history and we know it from, we're told one country's intentions, but not the other. When Swipper talks about the invasion of Poland by Germany and then the Soviet Union also invades, what does Schwerpher give as the Soviet reason for doing it? What are their aims in the invasion of Poland? Recuperation. Its territory belonged to Russia wants, all of it. I mean, the division of Poland between Germany and Russia restored more or less the conditions that had prevailed before World War I, right?

I mean, Poland had been divided also. I mean, there was also a share by Austria-Hungary at the time. So more or less, the borders that were running through Poland at that point were really very similar to those that had prevailed before World War I. Okay, so indeed it is an opportunity. You could simply pass it off as a war of opportunity. there was an opportunity for territorial aggrandizement and why not? Every power likes to take such opportunities.

But it is very clear that there was more behind it because immediately after these areas had been conquered, the Soviet Union began to prepare for an additional war. So the infrastructure was created, as you already alluded to Hans, right? The railroads were built up in this kind of thing, right? The infrastructure was apparently fairly weak in those areas. There were several difficulties. For example, you have wider railroad tracks in Russia than in the remainder of Europe.

So the Western territories now all of a sudden had narrower trucks, I guess. And also the capacity, the railroad capacity was just simply too low in those areas. So one priority was to build railroad tracks, new ones, or upgrade the existing ones. And on top of that, there was a lot of airfield construction. It's another striking feature, right? As I already mentioned before, airfields were built very close to the border. And that border in question was this new border, right, which had only been acquired as of September 1939. So immediately the construction of airfields began in the immediate vicinity of that newly attained border.

So clearly offensive preparations and they could only be directed against Germany because that happened to be the power on the other side of that border. I would like to expand a bit on what Michael just said about the railways. To add this is, I think, an important argument, important fact, that the railways were also improved in the sense that they were made ready for sort of receiving a higher number of trains per day. And that required also reinforcing bridges and other sort of work, other artwork supporting those railways, bridges, tunnels, et cetera, to make them adaptable.

Right. sort of ready for bigger trains, longer trains, heavier trains, etc., etc. It was an enormous undertaking. Right, exactly. The same also applies to roadways, right? So just current, the west-east roadways were also reinforced into bridges reconstructed and so on and so forth. It was all manner of transportation were upgraded. Which if you don't do it for yourself, you're doing it for the enemies, you're facilitating the enemies.

advance in your country. Yes, right. At one point that Schreber makes, and that's quite interesting, so he points out that really only the west-east traffic connections were upgraded, but not the ones that run north-south, right? And he said, if you prepare for the defense, you have to enable these lateral movements behind the front line. You don't know exactly where on the front line.

On the front, the enemy is going to attack, right, where he is going to focus his attack. So you have to be able to swiftly regroup your own forces and put them opposite to the enemy's attack. So therefore, you have to have transportation that runs parallel to the front and not perpendicular to the front. And this parallel transportation simply was completely neglected. And another point, I mean, that is really very striking. the complete neglect of defensive installations, right? So there was the Stalin line, which had been constructed behind the old Western border. And then there was supposedly the Molotov line that was to be constructed,

so a line of defensive installations that were close to the new Western border. But both of these defensive lines were created with a great deal of neglect, inferior building materials were used. The weapons systems that were made available were completely outdated. They were using some artillery pieces from the 19th century there. So the ones that were from the early 20th century, they were already classified as modern, relative to the others in those defensive installations. And also the manpower was sorely lacking.

So even in the few weeks before the war actually broke out, they were still at a manpower level of something like 30% or so if I remember correctly. So it was very obvious that these defensive installations were neglected to a shocking degree. Pro forma. Yes. Yes. Basically, the Red Army is attempting a massive deployment. And how did they try to cover this up? Were the disinformation campaigns at all effective with what we know about what German intelligence was telling them?

The Germans knew exactly what we're doing. They were very well informed, I thought. Yeah, yes. I mean, there was some political dissimulation, right? I mean, there were some statements probably authored by Stalin or his immediate circle that were published by TAS at the time and that were just simply saying, we are just simply holding some routine maneuvers and we do this every year and so on. But I don't think anybody was deceived by it. I mean, these publications occurred in response to people.

in the international press, right? So everybody in the West actually was more or less understanding what was going on, and everybody was expecting some sort of confrontation, some sort of clash. So I don't think the Germans were deceived. It seems that the Germans were more successful at deceiving Stalin's as to their intention, because Stalin wanted to believe in the first place that Hitler wouldn't attack and that the opportunity would be there for him to take. So I think Stalin engaged in a bit of wishful thinking there, and the Germans actually fed into this by telling stories how they were for now building up their forces in the east and just simply in order to protect them, right, to keep them at a safe distance from British air attacks.

But that the plan ultimately was that the troops would be then shifted to the west and then this. this landing operation in England would go forward and to further add to the credibility of this deception, the Germans actually made a point of also building up some forces in the West, right? So with only superficial inspection, you might indeed have been misled by this. They also use deceptive measures such as recruiting, English teachers for the troops and so on. You might also say that Germany, both Germany and the Soviet Union were led by a dictator. There were not democracies as we, well, but the Soviet-style democracy was more of an

traditional Eastern type, more sort of similar to the position of the Sultan in the Turkish Empire, the Turkish Empire in the 17th century, 18th century, where it would be very dangerous to contradict the Sultan. And if you did so, you would end up on a gallows or something, or also at any rate dead. In Germany not. I think Hitler had a better understanding with his underlings than Stalin, and it was better possible to criticize or to offer alternative views to Hitler than it was to Stalin. So I think this also needs to be taken into account.

I think that's a very good point. I mean, even in the final days of the war, when obviously tensions were running very high, Guderian dared to contradict Hitler and all that Hitler did was simply fire him, but he didn't touch him otherwise. Yeah, considering the speech on the lessons from the Winter War and, you know, Stalin basically acknowledging the ambition for offensive warfare and the Red Army's current state, the kind of buildup that they had to do it, they did in less than a year would have been impossible to hide. Yes, of course. Yes. Of course.

The Germans is very good aerial reconnaissance. What's his takeaway from the, when you compare the German invasion, the kind of success that they could immediately have with the Russian response? What's his takeaways from that as we'll wrap this up? Well, I mean, he deals with the actual fighting only very briefly and only to the extent that it supports the argument that Russians were not prepared for a defense. I mean, he doesn't really discuss the numbers in detail, the operational successes in detail. He really focuses on the prehistory.

I mean, it is really quite clear. I mean, he does make the statement that the catastrophic defeats of the Soviet army in the initial period of the war makes it clear that they were obviously unprepared for the defense. On top of that, he also cites some Russian officers who were given orders to attack. Even as the Germans were already attacking, for a short while the Red Army stuck to its prepared plans and wanted to actually force its own attack into the rolling German attack, unrushing German attack, and only the utter failure of this attempt probably forced them after some time to change their approach. But it is clear both from the disaster that was unfolding and from the orders initially given to the Soviet generals that indeed the Red Army had been preparing for the offensive. And this is really where Schripper leaves it at. He doesn't really go into much detail on this question.

It's basically the planning, the planning and all the decisions and the political framework and everything. Yes. Which is the best argument, I think. It is. I would really like to see Schripper to offer his analysis of what was unfolding afterwards. I think it should be quite interesting given his knowledge and understanding of the matter. but it is not included in this book. So I'll go back and I'll finish by addressing something that I address in the beginning

is, do you think that as long as you're an honest actor and an honest reader of history and not somebody that has to stick to a prescribed script or myth that this book just settles it once and for all that beyond the shadow of a doubt, the Soviet Union was planning on invading Germany and Europe and that the German and that the German preemptive strike prevented that until, at least until 1945. I would say so yes. And I think on top of that, I think you can actually really enjoy this book because you can really see Schupper's independent-minded work.

How you can really enjoy watching him fit together all the pieces of the puzzle. into one coherent picture i think it is really quite interesting yes yes absolutely it's a great book it's it's very military jargon sometimes but it's it's it's a good book it's it's it's the definitive answer basically and if you still argue uh well you um you're wrong well firstly you are you will be wrong and certainly you will deprive yourself of the pleasure to appreciate an honest, independent, very competent, minded work. Absolutely. Yes.

All right. This is where I ask each of you to tell people where they can find your work or, you know, I know Hans you mentioned writing for Unz. So Hans, why don't you go first? Well, I published a book on the history of 20th century Europe with Arctos in 20th. 2021. That's called how Europe became American. And you can get it through Amazon or whatever.

And it's also indicated in the articles I write for us. And otherwise I write in Dutch and I write in Spanish. So that's where the audience has to be really interesting. Michael. Well, okay. So I write some stuff in German. I am interested in medical topics. I actually have been working with two organizations that have addressed the COVID fiasco.

The German one is MWGFD.org.D. .de, but it's the content there is in German. Then we have the Doctors for COVID Essex. Short handle is d4CE.org. and then I have my personal website at m palmer at heresy.org sorry, is it heresy.

Is it heresy dot empalma. dot heresy. That's what it is. I have some old books that you can download there for free and occasionally I have a publisher post. But I don't write as much as Hans. So I don't have anything up every week or something like that. No, do I?

Try to, but. Yeah. All right, I'm going to encourage everyone to go to Antelope Hill. Buy the book, Germany and Stalin's crosshairs. You can use code Pete Q to get 5% off and order a bunch of other books while you're there. All of their books are worthwhile. And they're dealing. in a service and it's it's rather brave what they're doing over there some of the things that they're

publishing so i want to thank both of you gentlemen for joining me um please don't don't exit out i got to wait for the audio files to upload but um i appreciate both of your time and uh thank you very much for doing this uh thanks i'm going to i'm going to finish this book and um because it's just I have to know the real history of things and not. I just don't, I can't sit by and accept the myths and the, and the fairy tales that we're fed. And I'm sure you both are the same way or you wouldn't be here. Absolutely.

I think we all feel the same way, yes. Thank you very much. Pete was a very enjoyable interview. Thank you, Pete. Very nice.