The common version of Stalin's reaction to the opening days of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi's 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, is that he was paralyzed with fear and denial. The story, as it is usually told in the West, is that he was awakened in the night to be informed of the invasion and was instantly frozen by doubt and indecision. That he spent the spent the next couple of weeks hiding in his dacha and ignoring the pleas of his generals to do something. The truth is more complex. The common story is a deliberate over simplification by western ideologues who wish to ridicule Stalin and the entire Soviet system. There is a distinct flavor of Schadenfreude in this version of events. People fall for it because Stalin is one of the great butchers of the 20th century. It's not just hard to like Stalin, it is impossible!

In Stalin's Folly, Constantine Pleshakov gives a more realistic portrayal of Stalin during the first ten days of the German invasion. The foundations of the stereotypical presentation are there, but they are tempered by a detailed presentation of the sequence of events in those early days of the war. As the German war machine rolls across the landscape, crushing everything in its path, it is difficult to to imagine anyone coping with the shock. The Red Army can't organize itself quickly enough to form a cohesive defense. Thrown off balance at the beginning, they can do little more than rapidly retreat like a drunkard, arms pinwheeling wildly, attempting to right himself after stumbling over his own feet.

What were the causes of this spectacular failure? How did the Soviet military, which on paper looked like a formidable match for the German army, manage to disintegrate so rapidly? Pleshakov trundles the usual reasons past the reader and adds a relatively new one to the mix. In addition to Stalin's purges decimating the professional miliatry command structure and the Soviet-German non-aggression pact causing Stalin to believe himself immune from German attack, Pleshakov raises the possibility that Stalin was himself preparing a preemptive strike against Germany when the Nazis struck first. In this version of history, Stalin was moving his army and air force into forward positions as a prelude to attack.

Of course the idea that Stalin was preparing his own offensive against Germany is not new. The idea has been around for many decades. While the idea is intriguing, the evidence is not particularly compelling. Yes, Georgi Zhukov had prepared a rough draft of an attack plan in the spring of 1941. However, that is not an indication that an attack was imminent. The general staffs of all major nations prepare such plans. That is their job. Contingency planning is the reason that standing armies exist, and generals typically prefer to focus on attack rather than defense. If, in 1941, Zhukov had presented a plan for defending Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad against direct German assault, he would not have lasted as a General through the entire briefing.

Of course one must still explain the forward positions of Soviet troops on its new borders if one wants to dismiss the preemptive war theory. In the summer of 1941, the Soviet army was still in the process of moving its defensive positions from the pre-1939 border to the new border in central Poland. It was a propitious time for the Germans to invade, because the Soviet army was neither here nor there. Old fortifications had been stripped and abandoned, but new fortifications where not yet complete. The positioning of Soviet bases at the new border herald an imminent attack in the view of some. However, no firm operational plans existed at that time. Any realistic time frame for a Soviet invasion would have had to place it in the following year at the earliest.

Pleshakov tries to resolve this paradox by presenting Stalin as being divided over the issue. He wants to attack Germany, but he isn't yet committed to such an attack. In this view, Stalin has placed troops at the border in preparation for an attack, but he hasn't agreed to any plan of attack. The trouble with this theory is two fold. First, the locations of the new defensive positions in Poland were being built long before the Spring of 1941 when Zhukov prepared his rough draft of a preemptive strike. Before an attack, one generally pre-positions one's forces according to the plan not the other way around.

Secondly, Stalin allowed German "investigators" to cross into Soviet territory in the early summer of 1941 to look for the graves of German soldiers killed during the first world war. In reality, the so-called investigators were scouting out Soviet defenses in preparation for Operation Barbarossa. Likewise, German planes were repeatedly crossing the border to photograph Soviet positions. Despite the outraged protests of his generals, Stalin refused to take action against these incursions lest he provoke a war with Germany. Had Stalin truly been planning an imminent, preemptive strike against the Germans, such reconnaissance would never have been tolerated. This alone suggests that the disposition of his troops had more to do with incompetence and a lack of foresight than with any grand plan of invasion. Much like relocating the Pacific fleet to Pearl Harbor, it probably seemed like a good, non-threatening, half measure at the time.

Otherwise, Pleshakov delivers an excellent portrayal of the catastrophe that befell the Soviets in the summer of 1941. It is difficult not to feel the mounting tension in the Kremlin as army after army is pushed back and destroyed by the seemingly unstoppable Wehrmacht. The Luftwaffe controls the skies virtually unchallenged by a Soviet air force that was mostly destroyed in the opening hours. Most of the Soviet tanks are older and outclassed by the German Panzers. The Soviet field commanders are mostly young men promoted up through the ranks quickly to replace the older, more experienced men purged by Stalin a few years earlier, while the generals closest to Stalin were old heros of the revolution.

The aging heros were, in their own way, more dangerous to Russia than the Germans. They failed to adapt to the changing times, didn't trust radio for communications and didn't understand or appreciate the capabilities of tank warfare. The lack of widespread radio equipment was one of the greatest reasons for failure during this time. Units were cut off from headquarters. Information about the status along the front was meager to non-existent. It was impossible to organize a defense, much less a counter-attack, when you didn't know where your own troops were and couldn't get orders to them if you wanted to do so.

Finally, after days of failure, Stalin begins to realize the magnitude of the disaster which has befallen him. Depressed and defeated, he retreats to his dacha expecting and feeling as though he deserves to be purged by those around him. But as Pleshakov points out, the purges have benefited Stalin, even if they have nearly destroyed the Soviet Union. Stalin, like Hitler, has surrounded himself with mediocrities. He has purged anyone with the strength and intelligence to supplant him and populated his inner circle with political remoras incapable of surviving without him. Over the succeeding years of war, this would have to change. But now, at the outset, there was nowhere else to turn but to Stalin. ( )