[smc]

Originally Posted by tslust

... While all this was going on, the "Phony War', the fall of France, the Battle of Britian, Hitler and Stalin had a 10 year non-aggression pact that (on the surface) Stalin had no intention of breaking. In some schools of thought along with sketchy evidence, the Soviets were planning and preparing an invasion of Germany. Therefore, according to them, Operation Barbarossa was a pre-emptive attack.

I think that Stalin's theory of "socialism in one country" precludes that he would have invaded Germany. Everything he did -- from the non-aggression pact with Hitler to the betrayal of the Spanish Republic -- was done in the context of the practical application of that theory. It is where "peaceful coexistence" comes from. Trotsky's book The Revolution Betrayed, published in 1937, is a remarkable scientific analysis of Stalin's theory and how it spelled the ultimate end of the Soviet Union.