Grand delusion : Stalin and the German invasion of Russia
"Grand Delusion draws on crucial new documentation to unravel the mystery of Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941 and Stalin's enigmatic behaviour on the eve of the attack. Gabriel Gorodetsky challenges both the Russian revisionist view--that Stalin was about to invade Germany when Hitler made a preemptive strike, and the Cold War version popular in the West--that Stalin was simply outwitted. Instead he shows Stalin as rational and level headed--though unscrupulous--pursuing well-defined geopolitical interests, actively negotiating for European peace." "Gorodetsky bases his argument on 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 on the eve of 'Operation Barbarossa'."--Jacket
Nonfiction
xvi, 408 pages ; 24 cm
9780300077926, 9780300084597, 0300077920, 0300084595
40744332
Introduction: The premises of Stalin's foreign policy
'Potential enemies' : London and Moscow at Loggerheads
'The truce of the bear'
'He who sups with the devil'
Cripps's mission to Moscow
The scramble for the Balkans
Soviet-Italian collusion
The Soviet seizure of Bessarabia
British schemes for the Balkans
The Vienna award : the German encroachment in the Balkans
Clash over the Danube
On a collision course
Drang nach Osten : the initial plans
Soviet intelligence and the German threat
The Bulgarian corridor to the Turkish Straits
The road to 'Barbarossa'
Molotov's visit to Berlin
Hitler opts for war
Postscript : preventive war?
The curtain falls on the Balkans
The British perspective : co-operation or embroilment?
Bulgaria turns to the Axis
The urge for the Straits
The Red Army alert
The Soviet defence plans
The bankruptcy of the military
The gathering clouds
At the crossroads : the Yugoslav coup d'etat
Churchill's warning to Stalin
British intelligence and 'Barbarosa'
The 'cryptic' warning
Rumours of war and a separate peace
The bogy of a separate peace
Aftermath
Japan : the avenue to Germany
'Appeasement' : a new German-Soviet pact?
'The special threatening military period'
On the alert
Emergency deployment
The flight of Rudolf Hess to England
The conspiracy
The mission
Fictitious negotiations
'Running the Bolshevik hare'
Hess as perceived by the Kremlin
On the eve of war
'Mobilization is war!'
A Middle East diversion : the flaw in British intelligence
The TASS communique
Calamity
Self-deception
London : 'this avalanche breathing fire and death'
22 June 1941 : the long weekend
Conclusion