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40 Historical Facts Accepted as Real For Many Years

Khalid Elhassan February 14, 2020 34 min

Albrecht Gessler - William Tell — William Tell. Learn Swiss-German

20. Was Operation Barbarossa a Preemptive Strike?

German onslaught at the outset of Operation Barbarossa. The Atlantic

A WWII myth that found a home among conspiracy theorists and Eastern Front fringe scholars claims that Germany invaded the USSR in 1941 as a preemptive strike. Supposedly, Stalin was about to invade the Third Reich, so Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa to beat him to the punch.

The German preemptive strike thesis originated with Viktor Suvorov, a Soviet military intelligence officer who defected to Britain in 1978. Suvorov claimed that Stalin had lowered the conscription age to increase the Red Army’s manpower, and issued maps of Germany to soldiers in the field, as a prelude to attacking. Most historians scorn Suvorov’s claims, because they are bereft of evidentiary support.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.