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May
12
2021

Truth Is Gaining Ground on the Lies of World War II
Paul Craig Roberts

Years ago concerned with Washington’s growing provocation of Russia, I made the remark in a column that Hitler, like Napoleon, destroyed himself by marching off into Russia. I suggested we not repeat the folly. Two readers corrected me.  They informed me that Hitler had no choice.  Hitler’s decision was not based on hubris or miscalculation. A former Russian KGB official with access to the documents had defected to the West and written a book that proved that Stalin was preparing to invade Germany and overrun all of Europe and that Hitler had no alternative but to strike first, even though Germany was unprepared for such a war, before Stalin completed his preparations.  

I was too much under the influence of the WW II narrative to believe them.  I didn’t see how Stalin could attack when he had not that long before purged the ranks of the officers of the Red Army.  I also believed, as some historians taught, that Hitler was frustrated that the British government would not agree to sign a peace threaty favorable to the British that promised Germany’s military protection of the British Empire.  Hitler allegedly attributed the British refusal to end the war to the British belief that the Soviet Union could be brought in on the British side to replace defeated France.  Therefore, Hitler decided to remove this British hope by knocking out Russia.

All of this made sense to me, but it was wrong as I discovered when i read Viktor Suvorov’s book, The Chief Culprit (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 2008). Suvorov blaimes Stalin for World War II.  He points out that Stalin used the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to lure Hitler into attacking Poland, which Stalin knew would cause Britain and France to declare war on Germany and begin a great conflict. Stalin thought it would last for years as WWI did and leave Europe and England exhausted.  In would walk the Red Army and the Communist world revolution would have made a huge advance.  

Stalin was stunned by the rapidity with which Franch and England collapsed. Germany’s quick victory forced Stalin to move his plan forward.  According to Suvorov and other informed parties, Stalin was within two or three weeks of attacking Germany when Hitler struck.

Suvorov shattered the cafefully constructed and protected World War II narrative and became an instant pariah.  The Russians were the most infuriated as the defeat of Nazi aggression in the Great Patriotic War is a foundation of Russian unity.  As was David Irving whose histories disturbed the narrative, Suvorov was set upon and denounced, but no evidence was presented to refute him.

Now Sean McMeekin has written Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II which validates Suvorov’s book, only McMeekin somehow manages to get the credit for himself and without arousing the denunciations that were Suvorov’s reward.  Laurent Guyenot gives you the run-down here:  

https://www.unz.com/article/barbarossa-suvorovs-revisionism-goes-mainstream/ 

I highly recommend Guyenot’s article to you.  The lies we have been told are even larger than the ones I exposed in my popular columns on the fake history of World War II.  

We live in narratives made of lies.  To see truth peeking through here and there is hopeful.  

Hon. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.

He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Dr. Roberts' latest books are The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with IPE Fellow Lawrence Stratton, and published by Prima Publishing in May 2000, and Chile: Two Visions - The Allende-Pinochet Era, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen Araujo, and published in Spanish by Universidad Nacional Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile, in November 2000. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen LaFollette Araujo, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. A Spanish language edition was published by Oxford in 1999. The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in 1995. A paperback edition was published in 1997. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. Harvard University Press published his book, The Supply-Side Revolution, in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." Dr. Roberts is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990. He is the author of Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983. A Spanish language edition was published in 1974.

Dr. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments. He has contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista de Political Economica, and Zeitschrift fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has entries in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Economics and the New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, The National Interest, Harper's, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, London Times, The Financial Times, TLS, The Spectator, Il Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

Dr. Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.), the University of Virginia (Ph.D.), the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, The Dictionary of International Biography, Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century, and 1000 Leaders of World Influence. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]

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