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Fabricated Stories About World War II Still Known by Many

Khalid Elhassan November 15, 2019 35 min

German armor on the Eastern Front in July, 1941. Encyclopedia Britannica

34. Hitler Invaded the Soviet Union to Preempt a Soviet Invasion of Germany?

Some conspiracy theorists and fringe scholars of the Eastern Front peddle the notion that Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 as a preemptive strike. Supposedly, Stalin was about to invade the Third Reich, so the Fuhrer simply beat him to the punch.

The theory originated with a Soviet military intelligence officer, Viktor Suvorov, who defected to Britain in 1978. He contended that Stalin had lowered the conscription age to ramp up the Red Army’s manpower, and issued maps of Germany to soldiers in the field, as a prelude to an imminent invasion. Most historians dismiss Suvorov’s thesis outright, for lack of any historic 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.