"World War II:
Reboot" by Igor Shumeiko, summary

This book is a historical and journalistic study of the causes and course of World War II, published in 2007. The author refuses to consider the European states that surrendered their economic potential to the Nazis without a fight as innocent victims. The author uses the term "Great War," which dictates a harsh logic of survival and justifies the harsh geopolitical moves of the opposing coalitions.

For this historical work, the writer was awarded the prestigious Imperial Culture literary prize in the political journalism category.

This work is part of the extensive historical book series "Military Secrets of the 20th Century" (book number 1 in the series). Other well-known works in this series include "Stalin’s Missed Chance" by Mikhail Meltyukhov and "The Three Wars of Great Finland" by Alexander Shirokorad.

Geopolitics of a United Europe

In the early 1930s, the Western powers were surrendering their diplomatic positions. British and French politicians hoped to direct Hitler’s aggression eastward. The Munich Agreement was the culmination of this strategy. Neville Chamberlain’s British government forced Czechoslovakia to capitulate. Adolf Hitler gained a vast military-industrial complex without firing a shot.

President Edvard Beneš commanded a first-class army and a powerful line of mountain fortifications in the Sudetenland. The Czech armed forces numbered two million men and relied on superior equipment. German generals feared an assault on these impregnable positions. However, the Czech leadership chose to surrender. As a result, the German Führer became the trustee of a colossal European arsenal.

The Škoda and ČKD factories began operating to serve the Wehrmacht. Until the very end of the war, Czech workers assembled tanks, self-propelled guns, and automobiles for the Nazis. Czechoslovak armored vehicles ensured Hitler’s swift victory in the Polish and French campaigns. Later, these vehicles crushed Soviet soil with their tracks. The writer points to the total economic integration of conquered countries into the German war machine.

The harsh logic of confrontation

Igor Shumeiko examines the concept of the Great War. Such a large-scale conflict abolishes peacetime norms. The priority becomes the complete destruction of the enemy. To defeat Nazism, the British Empire resorted to the most radical measures. During the Operation Mers-el-Kebir, British squadrons decimated the French fleet.

The British took this step to maintain control of the Mediterranean. They feared the transfer of French ships to the Kriegsmarine. Similarly, the British occupied Iceland, which belonged to neutral Denmark. This protected the northern convoys from German submarines. Such preemptive strikes were dictated by military necessity.

Drawing on these British precedents, the author explains the Soviet Union’s actions. The annexation of the Baltic republics and the retraction of the Polish border proved necessary for the USSR’s survival. Latvian and Lithuanian leaders had already demonstrated their willingness to cede their territories to Hitler. The Red Army occupied strategic footholds in the Baltic to defend the Leningrad front.

The Anatomy of European Resistance

Many Western historians extol the heroism of the European underground. Official chronicles extol the exploits of the French maquis or Czech partisans. Shumeiko debunks this rosy myth with simple arithmetic. The scale of actual resistance to the occupiers in Western Europe was negligible. Miners’ strikes were lost in the backdrop of the uninterrupted operation of factories to supply the Wehrmacht.

Dutch, Danish, and Belgian enterprises supplied the Third Reich with raw materials and food. Peaceful Sweden shipped millions of tons of iron ore to the Nazis. Its neutral status reliably protected Swedish mines from British bombing. French farmers shipped meat, wine, and grain to Germany.

The true, most painful resistance for Hitler arose within Germany itself. The Red Orchestra and the Black Orchestra inflicted colossal damage on the Nazis. German anti-fascists, generals, and diplomats regularly passed secrets to the Allies. Wehrmacht officers attempted several times to physically assassinate Hitler, culminating in the bombing of the Führer’s headquarters in the summer of 1944.

Technocrats of the Third Reich

Particular attention is paid to the figure of Albert Speer. The Nazi armaments minister managed to significantly increase the production of military equipment. The efficiency of German industry was based on brutal pragmatism. German engineers coordinated the work of thousands of factories across the continent. French and Norwegian managers willingly collaborated with Berlin administrators.

Speer and his French counterpart, Jean Bichelonne, found common ground easily. They agreed on mass production of consumer goods in France. This freed up German capacity for weapons production. The European technical elite worked undisturbed for the Reich. Western specialists valued the stability and financial infusions from Germany.

The writer rejects myths about the occult nature of fascism. Contemporary popular culture often portrays the Nazis as possessed magicians. Books and television programs peddle fictions about Hitler’s flying saucers and the secrets of Tibetan expeditions. Such mystification downplays Europe’s historical guilt. It is far more convenient to attribute one’s own defeats to demonic forces than to acknowledge the industrial and military might of a united enemy.

Yugoslav Rift

Events in the Balkans illustrate the thesis of the immutability of political instincts. The bloody fault line ran right through Yugoslavia. Serbian units offered fierce armed resistance to the occupiers. Josip Broz Tito’s army pinned down hundreds of thousands of German soldiers. The partisans forced Hitler to withdraw entire army groups from the Eastern Front.

Croatian politicians chose a different path. The Independent State of Croatia became a loyal satellite of the Third Reich. Local legions carried out ethnic cleansing of the Serb and Jewish populations. Bosnian Muslims formed their own Waffen SS divisions. The Nazi command valued their loyalty and supplied them with weapons.

Half a century later, Western sympathies were distributed in exactly the same way. In the 1990s, a renewed Brussels-based Europe sided with the Croats and Bosnians. The Serbs once again found themselves under the brunt of airstrikes and political sanctions. The writer sees this as a direct continuation of European geopolitical interests.

Exposing pseudo-historical concepts

A significant portion of the text is devoted to debunking the theories of Viktor Suvorov and Vladimir Bukovsky. These writers attempted to prove Stalin’s inherent aggressiveness. They accused the Soviet Union of secretly aiding Hitler on his rise to power. Shumeiko exposes the absurdity of such constructs. The collapse of the Weimar Republic was determined by the choices of German voters and local political elites.

German industrialists and aristocrats financed the National Socialist Party. President Paul von Hindenburg legally appointed Hitler as Reich Chancellor. Soviet leaders had no influence over Germany’s domestic political processes. The Reich’s communists were physically exterminated by stormtroopers in the very first months of Hitler’s dictatorship.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact has been described as a forced diplomatic pause. Stalin attempted to delay the inevitable clash with a united Europe. Moscow used the time gained to rearm its army and fortify its new borders. British Prime Minister Churchill justified this move by the Kremlin in his memoirs. The USSR outplayed the Western democracies on their own diplomatic field.

Domestic political reforms of the Soviet Union

The author touches on the topic of the post-war internal development of the USSR. Joseph Stalin recognized the need to renew state ideology. In private conversations, the leader openly spoke of the danger of the state’s demise without a new theoretical foundation. Victory in the war revealed the need to gradually remove the party nomenklatura from direct economic management.

The country’s leadership planned large-scale systemic transformations. In the final years of Stalin’s rule, the outlines of the future program emerged: easing international tensions, decentralizing governance, and expanding intra-party democracy. The liquidation of the sectoral departments of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was the first step toward limiting the absolute power of officials. A cautious encouragement of a critical approach began in literature and science.

These plans remained unfulfilled. The sudden death of the leader halted the renewal processes that had begun. The party functionaries who came to power, led by Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, froze the country’s development for decades. The refusal to explore new theoretical approaches led the Soviet project to stagnation and eventual collapse. The ideological strength built by the victorious people during the Great Patriotic War was squandered.

Post-war reorganization of the world

The defeat of Nazi Germany changed the balance of power on the planet. Soviet troops took control of vast swathes of Eastern Europe. The Yalta Conference cemented new spheres of geopolitical influence. The United States and Great Britain recognized Moscow’s right to create a reliable buffer zone. Eastern European states had previously served as a convenient springboard for German aggression.

Winston Churchill’s Fulton speech marked the beginning of the Cold War. The British politician called on Anglo-Saxon countries to unite against the Soviet threat. Joseph Stalin issued a harsh response to his former ally in the newspaper Pravda. The Soviet leader recalled the millions of victims of the Russian people. Moscow refused to tolerate hostile regimes on its western borders.

Shumeiko condemns contemporary European politicians for practicing double standards. Today’s revanchists are attempting to equate the responsibilities of the Nazi aggressors with those of the Soviet liberators. Baltic and Eastern European elites are demanding historical repentance and financial compensation from Russia. However, it was their countries that served Hitler’s war machine for decades.