Did the USSR step up its building of war factories or military bases, its military output, its military technology or anything of the sort which would suggest that Stalin expected Hitler to attack the USSR or that Stalin planned to attack first?
If we look at military vehicle production numbers, we see a big jump from 1940 to 1941 and a huge one from 1941 to 1942 and it stabilizes at that point. ( Soviet combat vehicle production during World War II - Wikipedia ). Since Operation Barbarossa was in June 1941, it seems likely that the jump in production in 1941 occurred after Germany invaded.
So, was Stalin ramping up preparations for war in other ways?
The classic interpretation, which I’ve read in a goodly number of books, is that, yes, Stalin did not expect Hitler to attack…and, in turn, Stalin, treacherous soul that he was, was building up his military strength to attack Hitler first. He wouldn’t have been ready for a few years, but that seems to have been his plan.
I believe J.F.C. Fuller mentions thi (“Military History of the Western World” but I don’t have a cite at the moment. I also think Dupuy and Dupuy mention it, but, again, no cite right now.
(ETA: No, not in Dupuy and Dupuy. Their summary is more paragraph-driven by date. Will keep looking.)
ETA Again: I Googled and found this – which I find highly suspect. It says Hitler only forestalled Stalin’s attack by a few weeks. I think this is flaming batpoo. Several years, yes; weeks, no. Stalin was not going to make a June or July attack. Wholly nonsense.
Stalin and Hitler distrusted each other immensely. This did not stop stalin from selling grain, steel, crude oil, and diamonds to Germany. Stalin was convinced that he would have enough time to rearm, to the point that he could invade Germany and defat the Nazi forces.
In N. S. Kruschev’s memoir , he related how German technicians advising the Russian railroad builders in the Western Ukraine (in 1940) were advising the Ukrainians to convert the rail lines to the German gauge-Kruschev (rightly) saw this as proof that the Germans planned an invasion.
The version i’ve always read of this is that Stalin, normally a professional paranoid, was delusional about the prospects of a German attack.
I say delusional, because he seems to have had a total blind spot about Hitlers treachery.
He may have been terrified that the Germans were going to roll over the USSR (having seen the disastrous Red Army’s performance in Finland) and thus been wallowing in denial, he may have been unwise enought to trust hitler, there may have been some some other unknown reason. All the evidence is however, that he ignored all signs of an impending German attack.
Of which there was an enormous amount. Do you wonder how a massive German army managed to sneak up, undetected to the Russian border, and launch a totally unexpected attack. Well, they didn’t. In fact the German offensive was one of the most telegraphed operations of all time.
Churchill warned him (form Ultra intercepts), numerous spies warned him, the German ambassador to Russia (an Anti-Nazi) warned him, defecting soldiers warned him, there were clear and obvious preperations along the length of the border.
How did Stalin respond to this? It was all a plot, probably by Churchill, to drag Russia into the war against Germany. People who were to insistent in their warnings were arrested as subersives. The border forces were expressly forbidden from taking up defensive postures as being to provocative.
When Hitler did invade, Stalin seems to have suffered a nervous collapse, retiring to his dacha, he only recovered when his sub-ordinates (who he had cowed to much to overthow him for his idiocy) begged him to return and take up the post of warlord.
Indeed. It’s a bit dated having been published in 1973, but Barton Whaley’s Codeword Barbarossa goes into some depth on close to 100 separate warnings of Germany’s impending attack, as well as German disinformation operations. His conclusion was that Stalin was convinced that Hitler was going to make an ultimatum demanding territorial concessions from the Soviets and saw all of the warnings through the prism of this preconceived notion.
I read somewhere that the Allies warned Russia that Germany was going to attack. Of course this might have been what the Allies thought was the truth at the time; an attempt to distract Hitler by getting Russia in the war; or some of both.
After Germany did attack Russia, the Allies ramped up operations in places like Yugoslavia to distract and delay the Germans on the Eastern Front. This was to buy Russia some time as they were not prepared for the German attack.
Whether or not Stalin expected the Germans to eventually attack, the Soviets were caught absolutely flat footed on the day the Germans did attack. I remember reading in one of my Russian history classes that when the first Soviet outpost reported being under attack, the response from HQ was “don’t be ridiculous, who would be attacking you?” Also, Stalin had that weird breakdown where he completely withdrew for a few days after the attack until members of the government went to his home to beg him to tell them what to do (this was in a book by Timoth Garton Ash, but I can’t remember which).
Now that’d make an interesting what-if scenario. If Hitler demanded the Baltic states, Belorussia and Ukraine, would Stalin have complied? Would Hitler have enough lebensraum to be satisfied?
If Hitler had remained focused on the UK, and assuming the US didn’t enter the war, how long would Stalin have been willing to abide by the treaty and not attack Hitler, do you think? Indefinitely?
In my opinion, yes. I don’t think Stalin would have ever worked up the nerve to launch an attack. My read on Stalin is that he was afraid to take risks, even when the possible rewards were great.
Yugoslavia surrendered to the Germans in April, 1941 - the German invasion of Russia was delayed by the Yugoslavian action, but not because the Allies initiated it. Greece, similarly, surrendered before Barbarossa began - on June 1, 1941 and Barbarossa started on June 22, 1941 (it was scheduled earlier for May 15, 1941, but postponed for a variety of reasons.)
Neither Yugoslavian nor Greek operations began after the attack on Russia, in fact, they ended before the attack on Russia.
In addition, the Allies were unable to make decisions about whether the Balkan Campaign was going to happen at all - the Germans decided they were going to attack Yugoslavia and Greece, Yugoslavia didn’t decide to attack Germany and Greece didn’t decide to attack Italy or Germany.
There were discussions about how much the Balkan Campaign influenced Barbarossa and its timing, though:
