Soviet offensive plans controversy Immediately after the German
invasion of the USSR during World War II, Adolf Hitler asserted
that the Soviet Red Army had made extensive preparations for an
offensive war in Europe, thus justifying the German invasion as
a preemptive strike. After the Second World War, this view was
supported by some Wehrmacht leaders, like Wilhelm Keitel.
Suvorov, "Icebreaker", and the 1980s In the 1980s, this claim
was reiterated and explored by Vladimir Rezun, under the
pseudonym Viktor Suvorov, a former officer of the Soviet
military intelligence and defector to the UK in his book
Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War and several
subsequent books. He argued that Soviet ground forces were
extremely well organized, and were mobilizing en masse all along
the German-Soviet border for a Soviet invasion of Europe slated
for Sunday, July 6, 1941, but they were totally unprepared for
defensive operations on their own territory. One of Suvorov's
pieces of evidence favoring the theory of an