http://www.videofact.com/english/defectors_12_2_en.html

This is a critical review by Ralph Zulgan of Suvorov’s The Icebreaker:
http://www.onwar.com/articles/f9910.htm

“It sometimes happens that the most significant historical works are virtually ignored by the mainstream press, and consequently reach few readers. Such is the case with many revisionist studies, including this important work by a former Soviet military intelligence officer who defected to the West in 1978. Even before the appearance of this book, he had already established a solid reputation with the publication of five books, written under the pen name of Viktor Suvorov, on the inner workings of the Soviet military, and particularly its intelligence operations.

In Icebreaker Suvorov takes a close look at the origins and development of World War II in Europe, and in particular the background to Hitler’s ‘Operation Barbarossa’ attack against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Since its original publication in Russian (entitled Ledokol) in France in 1988, it has been published in an astonishing 87 editions in 18 languages. In spite of its importance to the historical record, Icebreaker has received very little attention in the United States. The few reviews that have appeared here have been almost entirely brief and dismissive — a shameful treatment that reflects the cowardice and intellectual irresponsibility of a ‘politically correct’ scholarly establishment.

According to the conventional view, Hitler’s perfidious attack abruptly forced a neutral and aloof Soviet Russia into war. This view further holds that a surprised Stalin had naively trusted the deceitful German F?hrer. Rejecting this view as political propaganda, Suvorov shows Stalin’s personal responsibility for the war’s outbreak and progression. Above all, this book details the vast Soviet preparations for an invasion of Europe in the summer of 1941 with the goal of Sovietizing central and western Europe. Suvorov is not alone in his view. It is also affirmed by a number of non-Russian historians, such as American scholar R. H. S. Stolfi in his 1991 study Hitler’s Panzers East: World War II Reinterpreted (reviewed by me in the Nov.-Dec. 1995 Journal).

In spite of rigid Soviet censorship, Suvorov has succeeded in digging up many nuggets of valuable information from publicly available Soviet writings that confirm his central thesis. Icebreaker is based on the author’s meticulous scouring of such published sources as memoirs of wartime Soviet military leaders, and histories of individual Soviet divisions, corps, armies, fleets, and air units.”

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n6p22_Bishop.html
http://divedi.blogspot.com/2005/05/who-started-second-world-war_08.html

British troops were the first Allied forces to reach the Belsen concentration camp during the advance through Germany in 1945. We had newsreel clips of what the troops discovered showing in cinemas in Britain shortly after - I can still recall the horrific images from seeing the newsreels as a small boy then. And we have extensive archived testimonial evidence from among the troops who were there as well as from survivors who came to settle in Britain. Denials simply aren’t credible.

Something that tends to get overlooked in this is that in 1939, at the start of WW2, Britain’s home population was almost exactly half that of the population of Germany with Austria.

In 1945, after the defeat of Germany, the Russians asked the Wehrmacht’s most senior operational commander, Field-Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt, which battle of the war he regarded as the most decisive. They were expecting him to say Stalingrad. What he said was: ‘The Battle of Britain’.
[Stephen Bungay: The Most Dangerous Enemy (2000) p.386]

“Churchill and Britain could not have won WW2; in the end America and Russia did. But in May 1940, Churchill was the one who did not lose it.”
[John Lukacs: Five Days in London May 1940 (Yale UP, 1999) p.189]

The Soviet-German Friendship Treaty of September 1939, when Britain and France were already at war, provided for friendly liaison arrangements across the mutual border of what had been Poland’s national territory. [Norman Davies: Europe (OUP 1996) p.1001].

The Katyn massacre came a little later.

Eisenhower had a note prepared, “Our landings have failed. The troops did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.” Maybe there would have been landings at Calais later in 1944; maybe not.

That scenario takes us in two directions: Russians on the Rhine, or Little Boy dropped on Berlin. Either of those alternatives makes Yalta look not so bad. In the first case, maybe there would have been a rump Rhineland or Hanover state, something of a Holland writ large.

On the other hand, American troops liberated Pilsen and other parts of Czechoslovakia. How far could Patton have gotten to establish facts on the ground? Would Czech and Slovakia have had a velvet divorce 45 years early?

It’s much harder to think up a way to free Poland without fighting the Soviets directly, to say nothing of restoring the bits of interwar Poland that are now in Belarus and Ukraine.

It’s really interesting to see how this is playing out. Bush seems to be pulling this part of the dance off reasonably well, while falling short more substantially in his treatment of Arab and South Asian countries.