Suvorov began his service in the Soviet Army's 41st Guards Tank Division, and worked in Soviet military intelligence (GRU) before defecting to the United Kingdom in 1978, where he worked as an intelligence analyst and lecturer. At the time he was working in Geneva, Switzerland under United Nations cover. Rezun was smuggled out of the country to England with his wife and two young children. A career soldier, he had participated in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and had later supervised the training of the elite Spetsnaz special forces. He had also undertaken missions in Munich, Rome, Basel, Amsterdam, Vienna and Hamburg.

Suvorov has written several books about his Soviet Army experiences and also joined the team led by the British General Sir John Hackett in writing the book The Third World War: The Untold Story . Published in 1982, this book was the sequel to the 1978 original The Third World War, in which Hackett and his team had speculated about the possible course of a Soviet/NATO war in Germany.

Suvorov is best known for his books about Stalin's times written in a polemic, popular-science style. In some countries, particularly in Russia, Germany and Israel, Suvorov's most controversial theses have jumped the bounds of academic discourse and captured the public imagination. The first work was Icebreaker. Later books on this subject were Day "M", Suicide, Last Republic, and The Chief Culprit. Suvorov used hundreds of Soviet-era memoirs and other publicly accessible sources to justify the following points.

1. The Soviet Union was intrinsically unstable, as any other communist regime must be. It had to expand to survive. According to the permanent revolution theory the communist system must expand and occupy the entire world to survive. Otherwise, it will fail in a peaceful and/or military struggle with surrounding “capitalist” countries. Stalin and other Soviet leaders had always understood this. It was publicly declared by Stalin that "the ultimate victory of socialism... can only be achieved on an international scale". Therefore, Soviet leaders started preparations for a massive war of aggression. However, to mislead the West, they officially declared an adherence to a more peaceful theory of Socialism in One Country, according to which Socialism can win in a single country, without being immediately overthrown by hostile "capitalist" neighbors. This leading country would then help revolutionary movements in other countries. Either way, the Soviet pre-war doctrine was based on Marxism-Leninism theory that capitalism will be overthrown through Communist revolution.

2. The Soviet Union made extensive preparations for the future war of aggression during the 1920s and 30s. Suvorov provides an extensive analysis of Stalin's preparation for war. Stalin, the leader of the Communist party officially announced three phases that should lead to the final preparation for the war: three Five Year Plan phases, with the first one focused on collectivization, the second focused on industrialization, and the third phase emphasized the militarization of the country.

3. Stalin escalated tensions in Europe by providing a combination of economic and military support to Hitler. (see Soviet-German relations before 1941). Stalin's plan and vision was that Hitler's predictability and his violent reactionary ideas made him a candidate to the role of "icebreaker" for the Communist revolution. By starting wars with European countries, Hitler would warrant the USSR joining World War II by attacking Nazi Germany and "liberating" and Sovietizing all of Europe. It is generally accepted that "from the early 1920s until 1933, the Soviet Union was engaged in secret collaboration with the German military to enable it to circumvent the provisions of the Versailles Treaty", which prohibited Germany's military production. Moscow allowed the Germans to produce and test their weapons on Soviet territory, while some Red Army officers attended general-staff courses in Germany. In 1932-1933, "Stalin helped Hitler come to power, by forbidding German Communists to make common cause with the Social Democrats against the Nazis in parliamentary elections". When concluding the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, Stalin "clearly counted on the repetition of the 1914-1918 war of attrition, which would leave the "capitalist" countries so exhausted that the USSR could sweep into Europe virtually unopposed" (see also Stalin's speech on August 19, 1939).Stalin always planned to exploit the military conflict between the "capitalist" countries to his advantage. He said as early as in 1925 that

"Struggles, conflicts and wars among our enemies are...our great ally...and the greatest supporter of our government and our revolution" and "If a war does break out, we will not sit with folded arms - we will have to take the field, but we will be last to do so. And we shall do so in order to throw the decisive load on the scale"

4. World War II was initiated by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany which became allies after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The essence of this pact was in the secret protocols which divided Europe into zones of influence, and removed the Polish buffer between Germany and the USSR. Some countries that fell into the Soviet zone of influence, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, were occupied. The difference between these smaller nations, occupied and annexed by the USSR, and Poland initially attacked by Germany was that Poland had military assistance guarantees from Great Britain and France.

5. Stalin planned to attack Nazi Germany from the rear in July 1941, only a few weeks after the date on which the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union took place. According to Suvorov, the Red Army had been already redeployed from a defensive to an offensive position. As described in Suvorov's books, Stalin had made no major defensive preparations. On the contrary, the Stalin line fortifications through Belarus-Ukraine were dismantled, and the new Molotov line was all but finished by the time of Nazi invasion.

5. Hitler's intelligence identified USSR's preparations to attack Germany. Therefore, the Wehrmacht had drafted a preemptive war plan based on Hitler's orders as early as mid-1940, soon after the Soviet annexations of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. On June 22, 1941 Hitler began an assault on the USSR.

Criticism

Among the noted critics of Suvorov's work are Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, American military historian David Glantz, and Russian military historians Makhmut Gareev, Lev Bezymensky and Dmitri Volkogonov. Many other western scholars, such as Teddy J. Uldricks, Derek Watson, Hugh Ragsdale, Roger Reese, Stephen Blank, Robin Edmonds, agree that the major Suvorov's weakness is "that the author does not reveal his sources" (Ingmar Oldberg) Cynthia A. Roberts is even more categorical, claiming that Suvorov's writings are based on "virtually no evidentiary base"

The most controversial Suvorov's thesis is that the Red Army made extensive preparations for an offensive war in Europe, but it was totally unprepared for defensive operations on its own territory. Thereby Suvorov essentially reiterates the argument put forward by Adolf Hitler in 1941. According to Jonathan Haslam, Suvorov's claim that "Germany frustrated Stalin's war" "would be comical were it not taken so seriously".

Much of Suvorov's thesis is based on circumstantial evidence: one of Suvorov arguments is that certain types of weapons were mostly suited for offensive warfare and that the Red Army had large numbers of such weapons. For example, he pointed out that the Soviet Union was outfitting large numbers of paratroopers ... preparing to field entire parachute armies, in fact ... and that paratroopers are only suitable for offensive action, which the Soviet military doctrine of the time recognized. Suvorov's critics say that paratroopers were used in defensive actions and that Soviet paratroopers were poorly trained and armed. However, Aleksei Semenovich Zhadov, commander of the Soviet IV Airborne Corps, writes in his memoirs that his corps was well trained and equipped, except for transport cars . In like fashion, Suvorov cites the development of the KT/A-40 Antonov "flying tank" as evidence of Stalin's aggressive plans, while his critics say that development of this tank was started only in December 1941.

David M. Glantz disputes the argument that the Red Army was deployed in an offensive stance in 1941. Glantz demonstrated that the Red Army was only in a state of partial mobilization in July 1941, from which neither effective defensive or offensive actions could be offered without considerable delay. Regarding Hitler's alleged pre-emptive intentions, Erickson has stated that “what really concerned Hitler was not Soviet aggression but Soviet concessions to Germany, which could frustrate his own grand design, depriving him of a pretext to attack.” One of the major critics of the preventive war thesis is the American historian Gerhard Weinberg. In a scathing 1989 review of Ernst Topitsch’s book Stalin’s War, Weinberg called all who argue that Operation Barbarossa was a preventive war believers in “fairy tales”.

Another criticism of Suvorov's position includes the claim that Stalin had never "encouraged" Hitler to start World War II, even though he agreed with Germany about the invasion of Poland in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which had to trigger a general European war because of the military assistance guarantees given to Poland by Great Britain and France. In his official statements, Stalin was opposed to Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution, implementation of which regarded worldwide war and other countries' usurpation as necessary (because practice showed that war, the ultimate devastation, could create revolutionary conditions that usually did not occur in any natural way). Stalin instead officially proclaimed the theory of Socialism in One Country according to which Socialism can win in a single country, without being immediately overthrown by hostile "capitalist" neighbors. This leading country would then help revolutionary movements in other countries. According to Stalin, "The ultimate victory of socialism... can only be achieved in international scale"

Soviet conventional theory states that Stalin prepared the Soviet Army for a general war because he knew he would have to free Europe from Fascism, and the Molotov—Ribbentrop Pact was nothing more than a way to delay the war with Nazism ... to have time for such preparations as those that Suvorov discusses.

Middle positions

In a 1987 article in the Historische Zeitschrift journal, the German historian Klaus Hildebrand argued that both Hitler and Stalin separately were planning to attack each other in 1941. In Hildebrand’s opinion, the news of Red Army concentrations near the border led to Hitler engaging in a Flucht nach vorn ("flight forward"-i.e. responding to a danger by charging on rather than retreating). Hildebrand wrote "Independently, the National Socialist program of conquest met the equally far-reaching war-aims program which Stalin had drawn up in 1940 at the latest". Hildebrand's views could be considered as a median viewpoint in the preventive war debate.

A middle position seems to be taken by the Israeli historian Martin van Creveld. In an interview in the April 11, 2005 edition of the German news magazine FOCUS, which is the second largest weekly magazine in Germany, he said: "I doubt that Stalin wanted to attack as early as autumn 1941, as some writers argue. But I have no doubt that sooner or later, if Germany would have been entangled in a war with Great Britain and the U.S., he would have taken what he wanted. Judging by the talks between Ribbentrop and Molotov in November 1940, this would have been Romania, Bulgaria, an access to the North Sea, the Dardanelles and probably those parts of Poland that were under German control at that time." Asked to what degree the leaders of the Wehrmacht needed to feel threatened by the Soviet military buildup, van Creveld replies "very much" and adds: "In 1941, the Red Army was the largest army in the world. Stalin may, as I said, not have planned to attack Germany in autumn 1941. But it would be hard to believe that he would not have taken the opportunity to stab the Reich in the back sometime."

Some of Suvorov's critics argue that the suggestion that Stalin regarded war with Nazi Germany as inevitable is at odds with the undisputed fact that the attack by the Axis in 1941 took Stalin completely by surprise. On the other hand, the fact that Stalin was taken completely by surprise contradicts the claims of some writers, who assert that Stalin was paranoid about a possible foreign invasion and so had concentrated on defensive policies. The criticism was addressed in detail in Suvorov's book Suicide. Also, the fact that Stalin was taken by surprise by the attack does not necessarily contradict Suvorov's thesis. Suvorov makes clear that he believes that Stalin was planning for war on his own terms (i.e., an invasion of his own) rather than war on Axis terms. Thus, the turning of the tables, so to speak, was what surprised Stalin, rather than the war itself.

Support

While many Western researchers (two exceptions being Albert L. Weeks and R. C. Raack ) ignored Suvorov's thesis, he has gathered some support among Russian professional historians, starting in the 1990s. Support for Suvorov's claim that Stalin had been preparing a strike against Hitler in 1941 began to emerge as some archive materials were declassified. Authors supporting the Stalin 1941 assault thesis are V.D.Danilov, V.A.Nevezhin, Constantine Pleshakov and B.V. Sokolov. As the latter has noted, the absence of documents with the precise date of the planned Soviet invasion can't be an argument in favor of the claim that this invasion was not planned at all. Although the USSR attacked Finland, no documents found to date which would indicate November 26, 1939 as the previously assumed date for beginning of the provocations or November 30 as the date of the planned Soviet assault.

However Edvard Radzinsky noted that Dmitri Volkogonov, in his own words "a lieutenant general and an eminent Russian military historian, [who] was the first person to be permitted to work in all the secret archives", found documents detailing plans in view of the situation in Europe in 1941. Radzinsky quotes Volkogonov as writing: "'No, Stalin was not planning an attack on Germany in 1941.'" But Radzinsky disagrees with that assessment. He further quotes Volkogonov: "'Nowhere is there a single word about a strike against the German forces. All the documents call for defensive measures to be taken.'" However Radzinsky considers the plans to be offensive in nature and the wording used to be not more than a cover, referring to the Winter War with Finland where "[...] 'defense' often signified 'attack.'"

Another document uncovered by Volkogonov and preserved in the Military-Memorial Center of the Soviet General Staff, was a draft of a plan for military strategy in case of war with Germany, drawn up by Georgy Zhukov, dated May 15, 1941, and signed by Aleksandr Vasilevsky and Nikolai Vatutin. He considers this to be a plan of a pre-emptive attack on Germany. The document stated:

This pre-emptive strike would have been timed to coincide with the reorganization necessary to prepare the German forces for attack. The plan drafted by the Soviet command included a secret mobilization of the Soviet forces at the Western frontier in order to be able to surprise the Germans. The overall objective of the offensive operation was to cut Germany off from its allies, and especially Romania with its oil required for Germany to conduct the war. Radzinsky reinterprets the document as a plan for a pre-emptive strike, even in the absence of an imminent German attack. He disagrees with the assessment of Volkogonov, who did not consider it to be final proof of the Soviet intentions and did not believe that the document had even reached Stalin, as this copy had not been signed by Zhukov nor Stalin, although it was addressed to the Soviet leader and signed by both Vasilevsky and Vatutin. According to Radzinsky all that the missing signatures prove is that the copy found in the archives was a rough draft. He considers it more than likely that a final version has existed but was expunged from the archives to prevent it from ever becoming known. He further points out that several high ranking military officers, Zhukov, Timoshenko and Vasilievsky regularly visited Stalin in May 1941. He sees further evidence of Stalin's intentions in the fact that around the same time military units received a directive pointing out that: "'If a particular country is the first to attack, its war is considered an unjust one, whereas if a country is the victim of attack and merely defends itself, its war must be considered a just one. The conclusion drawn is that the Red army is supposed to wage only defensive war: this is to forget that any war waged by the Soviet Union will be a just one'"

One of views was expressed by Mikhail Meltyukhov in his study Stalin's Missed Chance. The author states that the idea for striking Germany arose long before May 1941, and was the very basis of Soviet military planning from 1940 to 1941. Providing additional support for this thesis is that no significant defense plans have been found. In his argument, Meltyukhov covers five different versions of the assault plan (“Considerations on the Strategical Deployment of Soviet Troops in Case of War with Germany and its Allies” (Russian original)), the first version of which was developed soon after the outbreak of World War II. The last version was to be completed by May 1, 1941. Even the deployment of troops was chosen in the South, which would have been more beneficial in case of a Soviet assault.

In Stalin's War of Extermination, Joachim Hoffmann makes extensive use of interrogations of Soviet prisoners of war, ranging in rank from general to private, conducted by their German captors during the war. The book is also based on open-source, unclassified literature and recently declassified materials. Based on this material, Hoffmann argues that the Soviet Union was making final preparations for its own attack when the Wehrmacht struck. He also remarks that Zhukov's plan of May 15, 1941 has long been known and analyzed. Colonel Valeri Danilov and Dr. Heinz Magenheimer examined this plan and other documents which might indicate Soviet preparations for an attack almost ten years ago in an Austrian military journal (Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift, nos. 5 and 6, 1991; no. 1, 1993; and no. 1, 1994). Both researchers concluded that Zhukov's plan of May 15, 1941, reflected Stalin's May 5, 1941 speech heralding the birth of the new offensive Red Army.

In 2006, a collection of articles (entitled The Truth of Viktor Suvorov) by various historians who share some views with Suvorov was published. It was followed by sequels; six as of September 2010.

Several politicians have also made claims similar to Suvorov's. On August 20, 2004, historian and former Prime Minister of Estonia Mart Laar published an article in The Wall Street Journal titled When Will Russia Say 'Sorry'?. In this article he said: "The new evidence shows that by encouraging Hitler to start World War II, Stalin hoped to simultaneously ignite a world-wide revolution and conquer all of Europe". Another former statesman to share his views of a purported Soviet aggression plan is Mauno Koivisto, who wrote: "It seems to be clear the Soviet Union was not ready for defense in the summer of 1941, but it was rather preparing for an assault....The forces mobilized in the Soviet Union were not positioned for defensive, but for offensive aims." Koivisto concludes: "Hitler's invasion forces didn't outnumber [the Soviets], but were rather outnumbered themselves. The Soviets were unable to organize defenses. The troops were provided with maps that covered territories outside the Soviet Union."

Books by Viktor Suvorov

• The series about the outbreak of the Nazi-Soviet War
• Icebreaker () 1990, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, ISBN 0-241-12622-3
• Day "M" ()
• Suicide. For what reason Hitler attacked the Soviet Union? (), Moscow, ACT, 2000, ISBN 5-17-003119-X
• Last Republic, ACT, 1997, ISBN 5-12-000367-4.
• Stalin's Grand Design to Start World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008 (hardcover, ISBN 978-1-59114-838-8).
• Aquarium (), 1985, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, ISBN 0-241-11545-0
• Inside the Soviet Army, 1982, Macmillan Publishing Co.
• The Liberators, 1981, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, ISBN 0-241-10675-3
• Shadow of Victory (), questions the image of Georgy Zhukov. The first book of trilogy with the same name.
• I Take My Words Back (), questions the image of Georgy Zhukov. The second book of "Shadow of Victory" trilogy.
• Cleansing (). Why did Stalin behead his army?, Moscow, 2002, ISBN 5-17-009254-7
• Inside Soviet Military Intelligence, 1984, ISBN 0-02-615510-9
• Spetsnaz, 1987, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, ISBN 0-241-11961-8
• Tales of a Liberator (), fiction
• Control (), fiction
• Choice (), fiction

Books and articles by other authors

Pro

• D?bski, S?awomir. Mi?dzy Berlinem a Moskw?: Stosunki niemiecko-sowieckie 1939—1941. Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Mi?dzynarodowych, 2003 (ISBN 83-918046-2-3).
• Reviewed by R.C. Raack in The Russian Review, 2004, Vol. 63, Issue 4, pp. 718–719.
• Edwards, James B. Hitler: Stalin's Stooge. San Diego, CA: Aventine Press, 2004 (ISBN 978-1593301446, paperback).
• Hoffmann, Joachim. Stalin's War of Extermination. Capshaw, AL: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2001 (ISBN 0-9679856-8-4).
• Maser, Werner Der Wortbruch. Hitler, Stalin und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Olzog, München 1994. ISBN 3-7892-8260-X
• Maser, Werner Fälschung, Dichtung und Wahrheit über Hitler und Stalin, Olzog, München 2004. ISBN 3-7892-8134-4
• Pleshakov, Constantine. Stalin's Folly: The Tragic First Ten Days of World War Two on the Eastern Front. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005 (ISBN 0-618-36701-2).
• Reviewed by Ron Laurenzo in The Washington Times, May 22, 2005.
• Reviewed by Robert Citino in World War II, Vol. 21, Issue 1. (2006), pp. 76—77.
• Raack, R.C. "Did Stalin Plan a Drang Nach Westen?", World Affairs. Vol. 155, Issue 4. (Summer 1992), pp. 13—21.
• Raack, R.C. "Preventive Wars?" [Review Essay of Pietrow-Ennker, Bianka, ed. Präventivkrieg? Der deutsche Angriff auf die Sowjetunion. 3d ed. Frankfurt-am-Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000. ISBN 3-596-14497-3; Mel'tiukhov, Mikhail. Upushchennyi shans Stalina: Sovetskii Soiuz i bor'ba za Evropu 1939—1941. Moscow: Veche, 2000. ISBN 5-7838-1196-3; Magenheimer, Heinz. Entscheidungskampf 1941: Sowjetische Kriegsvorbereitungen. Aufmarsch. Zusammenstoss. Bielefeld: Osning Verlag, 2000. ISBN 3-9806268-1-4] The Russian Review, 2004, Vol. 63, Issue 1, pp. 134–137.
• Raack, R.C. "Stalin's Role in the Coming of World War II: Opening the Closet Door on a Key Chapter of Recent History", World Affairs. Vol. 158, Issue 4, 1996, pp. 198—211.
• Raack, R.C. "Stalin's Role in the Coming of World War II: The International Debate Goes On", World Affairs. Vol. 159, Issue 2, 1996, pp. 47—54.
• Raack, R.C. Stalin's Drive to the West, 1938–1945: The Origins of the Cold War. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. (ISBN 0-8047-2415-6).
• Raack, R.C. "Stalin's Plans for World War Two Told by a High Comintern Source", The Historical Journal, Vol. 38, No. 4. (Dec., 1995), pp. 1031—1036.
• Raack, R.C. "Breakers on the Stalin Wave: Review Essay [of Murphy, David E. What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005 (ISBN 0-300-10780-3); Pleshakov, Constantine. Stalin’s Folly: The Tragic First Ten Days of World War II on the Eastern Front. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 2005 (ISBN 0-618-36701-2)]", The Russian Review, Vol. 65, No. 3. (2006), pp. 512—515.
• Topitsch, Ernst. Stalin's War: A Radical New Theory of the Origins of the Second World War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987 (ISBN 0-312-00989-5).
• Reviewed critically by Alexander Dallin in The New York Times, November 15, 1987.
• Weeks, Albert L. Stalin's Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy, 1939—1941. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002 (hardcover; ISBN 0-7425-2191-5); 2003 (paperback, ISBN 0-7425-2192-3).

Contra

• Acton, Edward. "Understanding Stalin’s Catastrophe: [Review Article]", Journal of Contemporary History, 2001, Vol. 36(3), pp. 531—540.
• Carley, Michael Jabara. "Soviet Foreign Policy in the West, 1936—1941: A Review Article", Europe—Asia Studies, Vol. 56, No. 7. (2004), pp. 1081—1100. [Review of Silvio Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 1936—1941. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2002 and Albert L. Weeks, Stalin's Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy, 1939-1941. Oxford and Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.]
• Erickson, John. "Barbarossa June 1941: Who Attacked Whom?" History Today, July 2001, Vol. 51, Issue 7, pp. 11–17. online text
• Edmonds, Robin. "[Review: Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?", International Affairs, Vol. 66, No. 4. (Oct., 1990), p. 812.
• Glantz, David M. Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998 (ISBN 0-7006-0879-6).
• Reviewed by David R. Costello in The Journal of Military History, Vol. 63, No. 1. (Jan., 1999), pp. 207—208.
• Reviewed by Roger Reese in Slavic Review, Vol. 59, No. 1. (Spring, 2000), p. 227.
• Glantz, David M. "[Review: Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?", The Journal of Military History, Vol. 55, No. 2. (Apr., 1991), pp. 263—264.
• Gorodetsky, Gabriel. Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1999 (ISBN 0-300-07792-0).
• Reviewed by David R. Costello in The Journal of Military History, Vol. 64, No. 2. (Apr., 1999), pp. 580—582.
• Reviewed by Stephen Blank in The Russian Review, 2000, Vol. 59, Issue 2, pp. 310–311.
• Reviewed by Hugh Ragsdale in Slavic Review, Vol. 59, No. 2. (Summer, 2000), pp. 466—467.
• Reviewed by Evan Mawdsley in Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 52, No. 3. (May, 2000), pp. 579—580.
• Harms, Karl. "The Military Doctrine of the Red Army on the Eve of the Great Patriotic War: Myths and Facts", Military Thought, Vol. 13, No. 03. (2004), pp. 227—237.
• Haslam, Jonathan. "Soviet—German Relations and the Origins of the Second World War: The Jury Is Still Out [Review Article]", The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 69, No. 4. (Dec., 1997), pp. 785—797.
• Humpert, David M. "Viktor Suvorov and Operation Barbarossa: Tukhachevskii Revisited." The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 18, Issue 1. (2005), pp. 59—74.
• Lukacs, John. June 1941: Hitler and Stalin. New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2006 (ISBN 0-300-11437-0).
• McDermott, Kevin. Stalin: Revolutionary in an Era of War (European History in Perspective). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0-333-71121-1; paperback, ISBN 0-333-71122-X).
• Murphy, David E. What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa. New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2005 (ISBN 0-300-10780-3).
• Reviewed by Robert Conquest at The American Historical Review, Vol. 111, No. 2. (2006), p. 591.
• Reviewed by Raymond W. Leonard in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 37, No. 1. (2006), pp. 128—129.
• Neilson, Keith. "Stalin's Moustache: The Soviet Union and the Coming of War: [Review Article]", Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 12, No. 2. (2001), pp. 197—208.
• Roberts, Cynthia A. "Planning for War: The Red Army and the Catastrophe of 1941", Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 47, No. 8. (Dec., 1995), pp. 1293—1326.
• Rotundo, Louis. "Stalin and the Outbreak of War in 1941", Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 24, No. 2, Studies on War. (Apr., 1989), pp. 277—299.
• Gerd R. Ueberschär, Lev A. Bezymenskij (Hrsg.): Der deutsche Angriff auf die Sowjetunion 1941. Die Kontroverse um die Präventivkriegsthese Wissenschaftliche Buchgemeinschaft, Darmstadt 1998
• Uldricks, Teddy J. "The Icebreaker Controversy: Did Stalin Plan to Attack Hitler?" The Slavic Review, 1999, Vol. 53, No. 3, pp. 626–643.

Neutral, cautious approach

• Keep, John L.H.; Litvin, Alter L. Stalinism: Russian and Western Views at the Turn of the Millennium (Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions). New York: Routledge, 2004 (hardcover, ISBN 0-415-35108-1); 2005 (paperback, ISBN 0-415-35109-X). See chapter 5, "Foreign policy".

Other

• The Attack on the Soviet Union (Germany and the Second World War, Volume IV) by Horst Boog, Jürgen Förster, Joachim Hoffmann, Ewald Osers, Louise Wilmott, Dean S. McMurray (Editors), Ernst Klink (Translator), Rolf-Dieter Müller (Translator), Gerd R. Ueberschär (Translator). New York: Oxford University Press (USA), 1999 (ISBN 0-19-822886-4).
• Carley, Michael Jabara. "Soviet Foreign Policy in the West, 1936—1941: A Review Article", Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 56, No. 7. (2004), pp. 1081—1100.
• Drabkin, Ia.S. "'Hitler’s War' or 'Stalin’s War'?", Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, Vol. 40, No. 5. (2002), pp. 5—30.
• Ericson, Edward E., III. "Karl Schnurre and the Evolution of Nazi—Soviet Relations, 1936—1941", German Studies Review, Vol. 21, No. 2. (May, 1998), pp. 263—283.
• Förster, Jürgen; Mawdsley, Evan. "Hitler and Stalin in Perspective: Secret Speeches on the Eve of Barbarossa", War in History, Vol. 11, Issue 1. (2004), pp. 61—103.
• Haslam, Jonathan. "Stalin and the German Invasion of Russian 1941: A Failure of Reasons of State?", International Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 1. (Jan., 2000), pp. 133—139.
• Isby, D.C., Ten million bayonets: inside the armies of the Soviet Union, Arms and Armour Press, London, 1988
• Koch, H.W. "Operation Barbarossa...The Current State of the Debate", The Historical Journal, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Jun., 1988), pp. 377—390.
• Litvin, Alter L. Writing History in Twentieth-Century Russia: A View from Within, translated and edited by John L.H. Keep. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001 (hardcover, ISBN 0-333-76487-0).
• Roberts, Geoffrey. "On Soviet—German Relations: The Debate Continues [A Review Article]", Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 50, No. 8. (Dec., 1998), pp. 1471—1475.
• Vasquez, John A. "The Causes of the Second World War in Europe: A New Scientific Explanation", International Political Science Review, Vol. 17, No. 2. (Apr., 1996), pp. 161—178.
• Ziemke, Earl F. The Red Army, 1918—1941: From Vanguard of World Revolution to America's Ally. London; New York: Frank Cass, 2004 (ISBN 0-7146-5551-1).