Why did Germany invade the Soviet Union in 1941?

Years ago, I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.  In an exhibit about the German invasion of the Soviet Union, I read that the reason for the invasion was that the Germans wanted “Lebensraum.” This makes sense: the Germans needed some Lebensraum (living space) after a big chunk of Germany was given to Poland, France and Czechoslovakia in the Treaty of Versailles that Germany was forced to sign after World War I.

In 1939, Germany signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression agreement with the Soviets, and the two countries then jointly invaded Poland.   Was Germany willing to risk violating the non-aggression pact to invade a former Ally, less than two years later, just to get some living space?  After all, Germany had taken back the territory that they had lost to Poland and they had gotten the Sudentenland back from the Czechs in 1938.

Napoleon famously said that “History is lies agreed upon.”  The official history of World War II includes the lie that the USSR was not planning to invade Germany, and that the Germans were the aggressors.  Now a reader of this blog has come up with some proof that the Russians were on the verge of invading Germany and the Germans made a pre-emptive  strike.  

Update on the Irish prisoner at Dachau

I previously blogged here about an Irishman who was allegedly a prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp.  It turns out that I was wrong in assuming that the Irish prisoner was a British SOE agent who was using the code name Patrick O’Leary.  A reader who commented on that blog post yesterday wrote that there was another Irishman who was at Dachau, but so far I have not been able to find out his name.

The reader mentioned in his comment that there were a lot of prisoners brought to Dachau in the last months before the camp was liberated.  In fact, there were 7,000 prisoners who arrived in the last days who were not registered.