Soviet offensive plans controversy

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The Soviet offensive plans controversy was a debate among historians as to whether Joseph Stalin had planned to launch an attack against Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941. The controversy began with the 1988 book Icebreaker: Who started the Second World War? by former Soviet defector and UK resident Viktor Suvorov. In it, he claimed that Stalin used Nazi Germany as a proxy to attack Europe. Suvorov's main argument, that the Soviet government was planning to launch an offensive campaign against Nazi Germany, has been widely criticized as a historical distortion. The majority of historians believe Stalin sought to avoid war in 1941 because he believed his military was not prepared to fight German forces, though historians disagree on why Stalin persisted with his appeasement strategy of Nazi Germany despite mounting evidence of an impending German invasion.

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