Who Started World War II?

A Russian historian and former Soviet military intelligence presents evidence to show that the German attack against the Soviet Union in June 1941 was a preventive strike to counter an imminent Soviet assault against Germany and Europe. Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun) explains why Soviet dictator Stalin should be considered the “chief culprit” of World War II. This 50-minute lecture, given at the U.S. Naval Academy in October 2009, is based on years of research for several books. Stalin aligned the Soviet Union with Third Reich Germany from August 1939 to June 1941 because he planned and expected that Germany and other European countries would soon exhaust themselves in destructive war, thereby enabling Soviet forces to then overwhelm and sweep across a weakened continent.