I have seen explanations that Stalin thought the Germans would not fight a 2 front war again, that he mistrusted British intelligence and thought June 22 was already too late to start an invasion. But really, why did he not believe the troops massed on his border were intended to invade the USSR?
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Beacuse he either didn’t want to provoke Hitler or he felt the ussr was still not sufficiently ready militarily to confront hitler using a preemptive strike. But the ussr had been preparing industrially and militarily for war for over 10 years prior to 1941 so there’s that
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Also he kept sending Germans supplies AND he wanted to prevent the anticommunist Churchill and Hitler to stay at war. Churchill already helped fight the Bolsheviks in the Russian civil war.
Also after 1812 and 1914 it is reasonable to think that a 2 front war of a European land power is plain stupid. I predict it might not be the last stupid surprise attack by an AXIS power this year🙄
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Because Barbarossa didn’t make sense. Even in the Totalitarian mind of Stalin, if you don’t have enough oil to make war for for another 18 months, you switch production and create exports and buy. In this case he would have sold the oil to Hitler gladly. Stalin was evil but he was also brutally pragmatic, and he’d shown that time and time again after getting obsessed with Cracow and getting his butt kicked by the Poles.
He did stupid things, but he did them for sound political reasons.
Here’s the situation: Stalin want Germany and Britain to ground each other down. He’d been hoping for a long trench war in France but still, the economic damage each was doing to each other was immense. Eventually the economies would overheat and collapse under inflationary pressure just like in 1918. This was gonna happen, this is what Lenin banked on in signing Brest Litovosk and his underlying predictions of the Great War that called on him to oppose entering it at all costs.
Starting a two front war in Russia like Napoleon when being strangled by Britain was so asinine and genre blind Stalin didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to try it. It’s shity alternate history paperback territory, something assembled by an uncreative hack…and Hitler was a hack. No one could really understand that the Nazis were pulp gangsters come to life. No one could be that stupid, short sighted, self defeating and obviously evil evil right?
WRONG. It’s called Refuge in Audacity, and Hitler was a master of it.
Hitler could have invaded Turkey and 'liberated Iraq and sent the oil via the Berlin Baghdad Railway. But that was too much logistics, you know, nerd war. Real manly men didn’t concern themselves with feeding the troops, but cracking the skulls of the enemy! Or cauldron battle, depending on if you were enlisted or officer.
Also, how do you respond to this Intel and not provoke the Germans if wrong? Panic mobilization sent the Great Austrian Asskicking of Serbia into World War I, and anything truly proactive is basically deciding to try and have a war on your own term, a war that might be avoided with better diplomacy.
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