Barbarossa – another ‘defensive invasion’?

When it is pointed out to True Believers – even those who pose as academics – that the Boer War was started by the Boer republics declaring war on the British Empire and invading British territory, the panic-stricken reaction is as predictable as it is entertaining. Seeing their National Party myths collapsing, we are always frantically assured that the Boers were completely and utterly innocent, and that the mean, nasty British bullies were totally to blame for… err… being attacked.

The top three far-fetched, straw-clutching excuses that are trotted out to try to keep this ridiculous and self-serving fiction alive are essentially:

1. British forces were ‘massing on the border’

2. The Boers only attacked because the British were about to invade

3.  It was (wait for it) a ‘defensive invasion’ as the poor old, misunderstood, invading Boers ‘only wanted to take up defensive positions in British territory’

None of these excuses are actually true, of course, but – in the spirit of ‘what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’, let’s take them one-by-one, and apply them to another crackpot invasion launched by a deeply unpleasant regime; that of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany in 1941.[1]

Straw-Clutching Excuse 1:
If you pretend a neighbouring nation has troops ‘massing on the border’, that gives you carte blanche to attack and invade them

This one is especially laughable, as, when it comes to the Boer War, the British certainly did not have troops ‘massing on the border’ of the republics. Indeed, the British army had hardly any troops in theatre at all. I have shattered this much-loved NP fallacy at length in various articles:

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2024/09/11/massing-on-the-border-more-maps/

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2024/04/15/massing-on-the-other-side-of-the-border/

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2024/04/09/the-garrison-the-reinforcements-and-massing-on-the-border/

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2025/10/14/another-challenge-for-the-true-believers/

Fast forward to 1941, however, and immediately prior to Germany launching Barbarossa, there were millions of Red Army troops near their shared frontiers; so, presumably in the Klippies-addled minds of the Faithful, that completely excuses Hitler’s invasion? While there were barely any British troops near the borders of the republics in 1899, on 22 June 1941, the Soviet Union’s four western Military Districts[2] – ie. those which were on the border shared with Germany and its minions – contained no less than 171 divisions[3] and 11,000 tanks.[4] Some 56 of these divisions – theoretically around 750,000 men – were deployed along the frontier itself.[5]

Equally, no one can deny that the Soviet Union had massively expanded its forces in the couple of years prior to being attacked. In terms of total divisions fielded, the Red Army had expanded from 131.5 in January 1939 to 316.5 by 22 June 1941 – an increase of over 140%. Their number of aircraft had increased from 7,700 to 18,700 across the same period.[6]

What is more, Soviet military spending had increased from 12% of GDP in 1933, to 18% by 1940.[7] And, in May 1941 – just a month before they were attacked – the Red Army had called-up 800,000 additional reservists.[8]

So there can be no doubt that vast Soviet forces were near the borders of the Third Reich, or that the Red Army had more than doubled in size in the years immediately prior to Hitler launching his invasion. Similarly, no one can deny that Moscow had mobilised enormous numbers of reservists just prior to Barbarossa being launched.

Thus, based on how the True Believers desperately tie themselves in knots to justify Kruger’s attack against the British Empire – and unless they are shameless hypocrites – one is left to assume that they can only consider Nazi Germany the innocent party in all this, and instead heap all the blame onto the Soviets – I mean, they had large numbers of troops on the border, after all.

Straw-Clutching Excuse 2:
Claiming (without any actual evidence) that another nation is about to attack you completely justifies invading them

Returning to the Boer War, the True Believers like to pretend that Kruger’s invasion wasn’t a real invasion, as all it did was ‘preempt’ a (completely mythical) British invasion. Needless to say, and as appealing it is to some, this self-serving excuse is also complete nonsense, as I have covered previously:

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2017/12/16/a-war-of-aggression-portrayed-as-a-war-of-necessity/

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2024/07/18/another-visit-to-planet-pretorius/

Of course, Nazi Germany also attempted to justify their blatant aggression against the USSR by using similar lies,[9] so let’s apply this oft-deployed excuse to that situation, and see if it stands up to scrutiny.

In the early hours of 22 June 1941, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, von Ribbentrop, met with the Soviet Ambassador in Berlin, Dekanozov, to present him with the Declaration of War. Though von Ribbentrop was personally against Hitler’s madcap invasion, he dutifully justified the attack by explaining:

‘The Soviet Government’s hostile attitude to Germany and the serious threat represented by Soviet troop concentrations on Germany’s eastern frontier have compelled the Reich to take military countermeasures’. Dekanozov recalled that ‘under the guise of taking ‘defensive measures’ [now, where have we heard that nonsense before?], the invasion was already underway’.[10]

The German Declaration of War included several made-up casus belli. Berlin claimed that the Communist International was engaged in anti-German subversion, sabotage and espionage, that the Soviet Union was conspiring with the United Kingdom against Germany, and – wait for it – that there was an offensive build-up of Soviet troops from the Baltic to the Black Sea. It was thus, we are asked to believe, all Moscow’s fault that Hitler had been forced to order the Wehrmacht to respond to this threat[11]… by… err… invading.

Prior to the meeting, as Ribbentrop waited for Dekanozov, his interpreter recalled: ‘Von Ribbentrop is nervous, walking up and down from one end of his large office to the other, like a caged animal, while saying over and over, ‘The Führer is absolutely right. We must attack Russia, or they will surely attack us!’ Is he reassuring himself? Is he justifying the ruination of his crowning diplomatic achievement?[12] Now he has to destroy it ‘because that is the Führer’s wish’.’[13]

That same fateful morning, the German Ambassador in Moscow, Schulenberg,[14] had a similar meeting with the Soviet Foreign Minister, Molotov (he of ‘cocktail’ fame[15]), to present the Declaration of War. In a made-up claim familiar to those who study the Boer War, Schulenberg also attempted to justify German aggression by stating, ‘[the USSR] has concentrated all its forces in readiness at the German border’.[16]

So, again, one is left to assume that, unless the True Believers are indeed unspeakable hypocrites, they must completely support and excuse the German attack against the USSR. I mean, all a dodgy regime has to do is pretend an invasion is ‘pre-emptive’ and everything is hunky-dory… right?

Straw-Clutching Excuse 3:
If you (much later) claim you ‘only’ ever wanted to invade part of a neighbouring country, and then dig in to hold it, that is perfectly OK, as that makes it just an (ahem) ‘defensive invasion’

According to the translation of a laughable newspaper article by the High Priest of Boer War Myths, ‘the Boer invasions of the Cape Colony and Natal… were after war had broken out and because they hoped thereby to attain better military positions – which in a war situation is justified’.

Of course, this is just yet more utter rubbish, as I explained at length in this rebuttal of his nonsensical claims:

https://www.chrisash.co.za/2022/09/05/poor-old-prof-pretorius-embarrasses-himself-yet-again/

As his deluded rantings demonstrate, True Believers like to justify Kruger’s aggression by pretending the Old Troll only ever wanted to invade and capture parts of Natal and the Cape (which, presumably makes it all perfectly OK) to take up ‘better military positions’… all of which just happened, by sheer good fortune, to be deep inside British territory. Of course, neither the Prof or any of his sheep-like sycophants have ever been able to explain where these make-belief ‘better military positions’ actually were – which is rather telling for those of us who were not brain-washed by the Apartheid regime.

In reality, and as the Prof must know but will never dare admit, the Boer invasion plans were much more ambitious and far-reaching. Jan Smuts – ie. the man who finalised the invasion plans – told his son (and biographer) that he planned for ‘the Boers to strike down swiftly at Durban and the other ports upon the outbreak of hostilities, in order to prevent the British landing reinforcements. That phase completed, the mopping up of troops in the country would begin’.[17] What is more, over a month before the republics attacked the British Empire, Smuts also boasted that, if all went to plan, the Boers would be the ‘founders of a United South Africa, of one of the great empires of the world … an Afrikaans republic of South Africa stretching from Table Bay to the Zambezi’.^[18]

How, one wonders, does any of that fit in with the Prof’s whitewashing gobbledygook?

But, just for fun, we also shall disregard inconvenient historical reality for a moment. Instead, let’s play along with their entertaining fantasies, and pretend that, if one invades another nation’s territory with the aim of ‘only’ annexing some of it and taking up defensive positions, that makes that perfectly acceptable; indeed, according to the True Believers, doing this somehow even makes the invader the innocent party.

So, once more, let’s apply this rather pathetic excuse to Barbarossa.

No one can deny that Hitler’s invasion of the USSR also happened ‘after war had broken out’ (indeed, it is unclear how any invasion could possibly happen before a war had broken out[19]), so – in the Wacky World of the True Believers / the History Department of the University of Pretoria – Nazi Germany would seem to be in the right so far.

Of course, there is a big difference. As I have just shown, the self-serving notion that Kruger’s attack on British territory was a ‘limited invasion’ is simply a figment of the imagination of a few blinkered propagandists. In stark contrast, Germany really did ‘only’ want to take part of the USSR, and then adopt defensive positions. Not even Hitler was insane enough to contemplate capturing the inconceivable vastness of the Soviet Union in its entirety, and the German invasion plans ‘only’ ever envisaged taking the western portion of the USSR, up to what was known as the ‘A – A line’ (ie. Archangel–Astrakhan line, or, sometimes, the Volga–Archangel line).[20] So unfathomably enormous was the USSR, that this would have seen Germany taking ‘only’ about 10% of Soviet territory, and then digging in. As the one-bollocked genocidal lunatic himself stated: ‘The operation’s final objective is the establishment of a defensive barrier against Asiatic Russia running along the general line of the Volga to Archangel’.[21]

And there we have it, folks: all poor, misunderstood Adolf wanted to do was to ‘attain better military positions which [we have been assured] in a war situation is justified’. Thus, following the Prof’s bizarre logic, Nazi Germany can only possibly have been the innocent party in all this.

So the question is simple: do the True Believers apply their favourite, straw-clutching excuses to the German invasion of the USSR in the same way they wheel them out to justify the Boer invasion of British territory? And if not, why not? By their own twisted logic, those who pretend Kruger was blameless in 1899, must also consider Hitler’s Germany to have been the wronged party in 1941. And so one must conclude the True Believers also feel the Nazis were ‘forced’ to invade the Soviet Union, and thus to be completely and utterly guiltless in the war they started.

As none of them are ever brave enough to respond to the challenges I present on my blog,[22] perhaps we shall never know… but such are the warped mental gymnastics these risible characters have to indulge in to keep their ridiculous and self-pitying fantasies alive.

NOTES:

[1] The difference, of course, is that Barbarossa was an invasion by a deeply unpleasant regime against another deeply unpleasant regime, rather than one against a functioning democracy, a champion of free trade and liberalism, and scourge of the slave trade

[2] The four Soviet military districts on the frontier with the Axis were the Baltic Military District, the Western Special Military District, the Kiev Special Military District, and the Odessa Military District. These were renamed after the war began

[3] Glantz, Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia 1941, p.16, 219

[4] Mercatante, Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe, p.64

[5] Dimbleby, Barbarossa, p.137

[6] Meltyukhov, Stalin’s Missed Chance: Soviet Union and the Struggle for Europe, 1939–1941 (translation from the original Russian)

[7] Clark, Kursk: The Greatest Battle: Eastern Front 1943, p.55

[8] Glantz, Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia 1941, p.22

[9] Much to the delight of certain German extremists, this nonsense was given a shot of oxygen in the 1980s when a book called ‘Icebreaker’ was released. This essentially claimed that Stalin was planning an invasion of German territory in the summer of 1941. The conspiracy theory was supported only by circumstantial evidence and is not taken seriously by experts on the subject – see Glantz and Gorodetsky

[10] Dimbleby, Barbarossa, p.143

[11] Cohen, Small Nations in Times of Crisis and Confrontation, p.113

[12] The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which, essentially, bound Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in an unholy alliance

[13] Weitz, Hitler’s Diplomat: The Life And Times Of Joachim von Ribbentrop, p.268

[14] Schulenberg was also completely opposed to the invasion, and would later be executed for his part in the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler

[15] The name comes from the propaganda Molotov produced during the Winter War against Finland prior to WW2. Soviet state radio declared that incendiary bombing missions over Finland were really ‘airborne humanitarian food deliveries’ for their ‘starving’ neighbours. Unsurprisingly not taken in by this, the Finns sarcastically dubbed the Soviet incendiary cluster bombs ‘Molotov bread baskets’. When the hand-held bottle firebomb was developed to attack and destroy Soviet tanks, the Finns called it the ‘Molotov cocktail’, as in ‘a drink to go with his food parcels’

[16] Bellamy, Absolute War, p.104

[17] Jan Christian Smuts by his son, p. 90, quoted in O’Connor, A Short Guide to the History of South Africa, 1652-1902

[18] Roberts, Salisbury, Victorian Titan, p.734

[19] One is left to wonder at the quality of education offered by the History Department of Pretoria University

[20] Kay, Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940–1941, p.31

[21] Glantz, Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia 1941, p.272, quoting Führer Directive 21

[22] https://www.chrisash.co.za/2025/10/02/c-s-lewis-and-the-cowardice-of-the-true-believers/ and https://www.chrisash.co.za/2025/10/14/another-challenge-for-the-true-believers/