this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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I remember reading somewhere (Wikipedia, maybe?) that the Soviets became aware of the invasion plans before it happened by a German communist in the Wehrmacht who defected and told them about Germany's impending invasion. The article claimed the authorities disbelieved him, assumed he was a spy, and quietly executed him.

All of which sounds like something an anticommunist would make up to smear the USSR and so I'm hesitant to believe it.

Another claim I've heard was that when the invasion began Stalin didn't believe the officials telling him the Nazis were invading and thought it was a hoax and that they were conspiring against him, even threatening them. I don't remember where I heard this one but I believe it was coming from a liberal I was arguing with.

This also sounds too much like bullshit to be believable, so I'm here looking to fact check this stuff. Is there any truth to this stuff or is it just more anti-Soviet nonsense invented to make them look bad?

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[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

The first one is sort of hard to disprove because it's too vague. It may be that there are no records of such an event because it never happened, or because the records were destroyed or never written. It's one of those historically worthless unfalsifiable claims.

Like, the first thing you would want to know if you wanted to verify if this is actually true or not is what is this person's name? What lot of these stories tend to have in common is that the sources are unnamed and anonymous so you can't even look for them in documents.

The second claim is almost certainly bullshit. We actually have first hand accounts from some of the people who were closest to Stalin at the time. They would all have had to be lying for decades including long after "destalinization" when it was fashionable to slander Stalin.

The ones making these kinds of claims, mainly Trotskyites and revisionists from the Khruschev clique, were opponents of Stalin who were not directly involved in the initial meetings and could not have known except through other people, and those people never mentioned this.

Not to mention that the idea of Stalin threatening and accusing people is a very obvious attempt to evoke a Hitlerian image. That doesn't work because this is entirely out of character, by all accounts he had a very different personality to what the propaganda portraying him as this ruthless, paranoid dictator would have you believe.

If you listen to recordings of his speeches, or read the accounts of people who had conversations with him or interviewed him, they all portray him as remarkably soft spoken and intellectual. Which should come as no surprise because he was a huge nerd, he spent a lot of his time when he was not engaged in politics, reading and writing books.

[–] pyromaiden@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, every time I learn something new about Stalin the claim he was a paranoid megalomaniac becomes less and less believable. He seemed somewhat introverted at times based on what I've heard.

I found the alleged deserter:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Liskow

[–] haui@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So from the sources which are just more articles which in turn have no sources attached I cant gather what happened or why. They claim that he was mean to the comintern and they killed him for it. Another caricature about the "hitleresque communists".

Anyone have an idea where to look for more information?

[–] pyromaiden@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I've learned to be less trusting of Wikipedia's sourcing over time. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt in that I don't think they're trying to have such poorly sourced propaganda articles but I do think they need to change their methodology because it clearly isn't working as intended.

[–] haui@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 3 months ago

I think it absolutely works as intended. I think it is another tool of the bourgeoisie to control the masses. It is somewhat independent but it is still designed to reproduce the biased media view by having articles of major news outlets as sources. Whoever controls the media, controls wikipedia.

[–] durduramayacaklar@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 3 months ago

Libshit. Lib media argues that Hitler was wrong about policy and portraying him like a “resoanable” man but on the other hand Stalin was ruthless, maniac, paranoid etc etc They couldn’t finish the burying him today with their lies