Would Stalin attack?

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There is no ground to think of an imminent soviet attack on germany ,
however with the germano-soviet pact , the red army re-positioned well forward of its previous border line with at the same time large construction of airfields and relocation of stores, it was a stupid disposition for defence but would be suitable for an attack .
Stalin disbelieved the reports of an imminent german attack , he believed it was a british ploy, their last card to avoid defeat .... as it was
Stalin was over aggressive but he couldn't believe that the red army couldn't do a third of what the germans were achieving , time and time again , perfectly simple plans collapsed due to the lousy performance of the red army field officers ,
nobody was game enought to tell him he had shot all the good ones and the rest were scared stiff .

from simon " I wonder how much material was appropriated from the captured territories in the east that wouldn't have been available to Germany without Barbarossa? "
simple ....everything
hitler got pretty much nothing out of russia , no petrol , no manganese , no coal ,
he got some food stuff and slave labor, that's all
before the invasion the trains and ships were bringing everything germany wanted including oil and raw materials , even rubber and supplies from japan by the transiberian railroad
the russian were being paid in machines and hight tech stuff ,
that was the old historic german-russian relationship ,two hundred year old
a great deal , Stalin couldn't believe hitler would do something so stupid .......he did.... :kill:


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i like your POV

 

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There is some misconception about how the soviets viewed the western allies ,
for stalin there was very little difference between the old capitalists and the new aggressive german style ,
the western allies had invaded russia against the soviets in 1918 , 1919 pretty much in concert with von sanders germans ,
any effort to create a common front against hitler had failed ,
britain and to a lesser degree france choosing appeasement time and time again , culminating in the betrayal of one of their best allied ,
the negotiation of the summer 1939 in leningrad only served to prove the duplicity of the western powers ,
their desire to see nazi germany and soviet russia kill each other was palpable an barely hidden ,
he turned the tables on the allied very deftly indeed , leaving them to contemplate the fruits of their deceptions .
They were f#!king with a master of the double-cross

Why would stalin do the dirty work for them !!!! ??? as long as the war lasted he was holding aces
he made some noise about attacking at a speech for the graduation ceremony of some young officers ,
more of a " up and at them " motivation for a pink faced audience .
his army was being re-moulded , with new weapons and a new officer corp ,
it would take a couple of years at least , keeping the peace until then was of paramount importance .
he was quite relaxed about treachery in the army ,
after the purge blood bath , no one would move , his paranoia was at all time preemptive and very practical , the NKVD got purged at regular interval too as a precaution

incidentaly there is not much proof that the officers who got shot would have been much better than the new batch , the massive culling of the officers during the 1936 purges allowed at least some new faces to be promoted quickly instead of the civil war warhorses !


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Men like Tukhachevsky, who had the same ideas as Guderian, might have been handy.

Tukhachevsky transformed the irregular revolutionary detachments of the Red Army into a well drilled, professional military. He wrote several books on modern warfare and in 1931 was given a leading role in reforming the army. He held advanced ideas on military strategy, particularly on the use of tanks and aircraft. His ideas were opposed by Stalin's military cronies from the Civil War, Voroshilov and Budunny and he was eventually shot.

And others like Rokossovsky were cooling their heels in prison.

About 70% of the officer corps had only 12 months experience by '41.

What do you think the likely outcome would be if Stalin attacked Germany when the Wehrmacht was fighting in France?

And thanks me262.

 

I think ANZAC and jeauger make some good points, but I think you also have to look at the overall Soviet (i.e., Stalin) behavior prior to Barbarossa. Stalin took advantage of external events to sieze the Baltic States, launch a war with Finland and seize Bessarabia, not ot mention a good chunk of Poland.
I believe there are several ways to interpret these actions:
1) The Soviets were building a defensive border zone, and that the Germans were too dependent on the Soviets to risk a war.
2) Stalin was attempting to restore, and slightly expand, the Soviet borers to pre-revolution Russian Empire limits.
3) Staln was postioning the Soviet Union for a later attack to take advantage of mutual exhaustion of Germany and the allies a la WWI.
4) Stalin was a dictator dedicated to expanding the Soviet Union.
5) Stalin saw eventual class warfare with the west as ineviatable in a Marxist historical context and was preparing for that.

Or combinations of the above. Personnally I think it was no. 3, and Stalin was as surprised as anyone when the French went down so quickly.

 

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Yes canabridge , all your points are on the spot and Stalin could even have held them all simultaneously or concurrently ,
he was broadminded in a bastard sort of way and always kept his options open as long as he could
Anzac ..yes , Tukhachevsky and hundreds like him were a grievous loss ,
the interwar period saw german-soviets exercice in armor , paratroops motorised and tactical aviation ,
the theory of " deep battle " was developed and with the concept of " operational warfare " would be applied by the germans pretty much verbatim .

meanwhile thousand of good modern officers got shot , or starved , worked to death in the camps to be replaced by men like kulik , who believed in mass bayonnet charge and divisions equipped with horses transport

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I should mention that in May of 1941 in a speech to the Politburo, Stalin laid that claim that within 2-3 months he would be ready to attack the Germans. Or so the book I read claims whether it is true or not I do not know.

Will Fowler's The First 7 Days Barbarossa Nazi Germany's 1941 Invasion of the Soviet Union

 

i would think stalin would guess that an unprovoked attack into western europe would galvanize france ,the uk ,italy ,the usa and everyone else into a united coalition to stop the bolshevics at once ...a stalinist germany would be unacceptable to the western powers and very risky for stalin especially after the fiasco in finland..whatever new weapons the red army may have acquired..

 

I do think that Stalin had intentions of invading Germany but he still had to rebuild his army after the purges. He put a lot of friends from the 1st Calvary Army he made during the Russian civil war. This was not the smartest thing because it was his friends from the civil war that was responsible for several blunders including scrapping large tank units, and spread tanks around.

 

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Totally agree ,
Stalin character was to position himself to have the sure thing before moving , the ultimate snapping turtle !
he never took a risk and could wait for years to get someone
( all the times being their friend )
when he made his move it wasn't him who did the knife work , often the guys which he was getting rid off would come to him for support and would plan their counter move with him !!!
his strategy was simple and clear , let the capitalists war-mongers exhaust each others , and avoid at all cost to be dragged in ,
The situation after a long and bloody war would decide future possibilities for a fresh and rearmed soviet union
meanwhile grab all the loose bits possible while the westerners are busy
The reaction of the west to the soviet attack of Finland came as a rude shock there were shipments of arms and even talk of an expeditionary forces
The westerners were looking like they could unite against the soviets easily enough .

Caution and avoidance of all provocations from the allied was essential ,
rebuilding the army after the Finland disaster a necessity
He got a serious case of paranoia in the spring of 41 that the british secret service was contaminating his sources of informations
It would make a war with germany appears likely and force him into a rash move .
The german abwher was probably muddying the waters in this direction
For Stalin , an attack against soviet Russia was so illogical and absurd as to make any contrary evidence an obvious british plot !


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According to the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact Russia was supposed to supply Germany with wheat, oil and other materials that were necessary to the German war effort which they did. Germany was also supposed to send military equipment such as tanks and planes which they never did nor did Hitler have any intention to do so, if Hitler hadn't invaded Stalin could have very easily seen that as a breach of the pact and abandon it.

 

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The treaty went through two phases , prior to the fall of France , Hitler was pretty much the beggar ,
swallowing every moves made by Stalin with a forced smile , the soviet advance into bessarabia , the baltic states and Finland were NOT approved by Berlin ,

After the catastrophic fall of France , the Dunkirk disaster , Yougoslavia , and Greece, Stalin did some pretty convincing groveling in his turn ,
not insisting any more on prompt payment for all the goodies and the complete engineering drawings of the Bismark ,
he even ignored the observation flights over soviet territory ,
usually a pretty good indication someone is up to no good

From this I conclude that Stalin did not want a war in the west against Germany in 41 ,
probably not in 42 either but things would not be so bad then

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