Icebreaker (Suvorov) - Suvorov's Thesis

Suvorov's Thesis

Suvorov challenges the widely-accepted view that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime attacked an unsuspecting USSR on June 22, 1941 with a much superior and better prepared force. Instead, Suvorov argues that the Soviet Union was poised to invade Nazi-controlled territories in July 1941.

Suvorov claims that Stalin successfully manipulated Hitler into removing the "buffer zone" (Poland) between Europe and the USSR. Suvorov further argues that Stalin's goal was the export of communism to other countries. Once Hitler 'broke the ice', Soviet victory in the large-scale war that followed would enable the USSR to impose Stalinist regimes on most of Europe. In this theory, Nazi military aggression would ironically form the icebreaker for a communist invasion.

Suvorov is often accused (or praised by historical revisionists) of shifting the blame of World War II on Stalin and thus removing the blame from Hitler; however, the actual content of the book contains no praise of Hitler or justification of his terror. In his later books, Suvorov insists that Stalin was a true evil genius (although unlucky), while reducing Hitler to a grossly incompetent evil.

Suvorov mounts two arguments in support of his thesis. The principal argument is based on analysis of available data on troop numbers, weaponry, locations and behaviour, matched against technical specifications and Soviet tactics. To support the main argument, Suvorov argues that Stalin perceived the outcome of World War II as a loss.