I read something like that in the book Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor. Stalin had heard about the invasion just before Khruschev, Molotov and the rest of the inner circle arrived. And when he saw them coming towards him he looked frightened (I think the quote is ‘visibly paled’). He thought they were there to arrest him because their forces were being totally overwhelmed by the Germans due to his purges. Instead they wanted him to come back to Moscow to take command.
IANAH
It seems to me that Stalin did not believe Hitler.
Put yourself in Stalins place. WW1 was a disaster for Russian arms. Sure, it lead to the glorious revolution but Russia was defeated in the field. Germany was, itself ground down by Western armies.
Now, you just purged your military REAL good. You are not stupid…paranoid…but not stupid. You know you screwed up royally. The Finland campaign showed that to you in no uncertain terms. You are vulnerable. REAL vulnerable and you need to do something about it.
The problem is that will take time. So…
Germany approaches you with a proposal to divy up Poland with a nonaggression treaty. It is obvious they are looking West.
GOOD!
Let them look West. The West beat them last time. Let the West and Germany knock themselves out. We can reform our army…get it back into fighting trim…then we can look at plunging into a distracted and weakened Germany say in…1944.
Then things turn to crap…France is knocked out. All of a sudden a confident and winning Germany had their hands free.
It must have been a real “Oh Shit!” moment for Stalin. He knew he was in trouble…and desperately wanted to believe Hitler and so bent over backwards trying to delay the inevitable.
Stalin really was blind. The signs of an impending German attack were all there-German technicians working in Russian factories left for “vacation”-the Germans were stepping up tank and gun production, and german overflights of Batic ports wer sighted. In the meantime, Stalin’s idiotic political generals conceiveda brilliant idea! They stockpiles thousands of trucks, tanks, and guns on the Polish-Russia borders. The idea was that the soldiers would be mobilized, and rushed to the borders by train-where they would find their materiel ready and waiting-only tyhe German blitz prevented that! The Germans advanced oer 80 miles on the firts two days. The Red Airforce was destroyed on the ground. I am really surprised that the initial defeat wasn;t enough to have inspired a revolt by senior Russian generals.