Challenge: You're In Charge of the Soviet Union In World War II

Been trying to think how the Soviet Union could win much earlier. Maybe the trick would be not to hold the Germans on the Dnieper but in September so starve the Red Army there of reinforcements that the line in front of Moscow collapses. Hitler would probably take the chance and rush for Moscow as in our OTL. OTL Winter Offensive pushed the Germans back hundreds of kilometers and made a good stab at encircling Army Group Centre. In the end the Soviet Pincers were just too weak to hold and effort was wasted on additional attacks in the North and South. A better prepared attack (built up with the reserves that weren't sent to the front to enable a German breakthrough)
MIGHT wipe out Army Group Centre in Jan 1942 - we could see the Russians in Berlin in 1943. Not sure the Red Army could do it - the skills and trucks might not be there but in OTL the Germans were very weak at that point. Probably worth the gamble.
 
The Soviets would obviously be better off staying out of the war as long as possible. Historically they tried appeasement and it didn't work. Hitler read appeasement as weakness. What if they tried a hard line in the winter of 1940/41? The Germans were sending reconnaissance planes over Soviet-held territory in an increasingly blatant manner. What if the Soviets shot several of them down in the fall of 1940, put any surviving pilots on trial and cut off the supply of Soviet oil and other raw materials to the Germans?

What do the Soviets have to lose? Machine tools and weapons that the Germans promised but delivered as few of as they could? Yeah.

The Germans attack? They're going to do that anyway. If they attack in the winter of 1940/41 or before the spring mud hardens, then bonus.
 
Another option: Play on the German fears. On about June1, 1941 invite a German delegation to view a demonstration of massed T34s and KV1s, manned by picked crews. Point out that these tanks are not deployed near the frontiers because that's NOT where the Soviets would make their main defensive effort if invaded. Yeah, the Germans have an extra three weeks to prepare for the new tanks, but there is a chance they'll decide to wait and try to come up with a counter
 
1. Start growing a massive mustache so as to be a proper pre-WWII Soviet.

2. Send Lysenko to Siberia, attempt small-scale agricultural reforms while keeping the essential collectivist character intact.

3. Get rid of make-work gulags, put the zeks to work on useful projects (building factories in the Urals would be a good example) and shorten some sentences, particularly those of purged officers.

4. Come out in support of Romania as regards the Vienna dictate, attempt to get them on our side come the war.

5. Actually listen to my spies when they tell me that the Nazis are planning to attack, and make the proper preparations.

6. Keep large forces at the border with some entrenchments to confuse the Germans on the "real strategy" - have a prepared withdrawal to the "Stalin Line" built on the '37 borders and trade space for time when the war comes. If all goes well, come winter we'll be in prepared positions as Fritz freezes outside them.

7. Try to remove the most idiotic economic flaws of Stalinism - let the central planners use the concept of interest, let Kantorovich and Leontief work in peace, etc, etc.

8. Keep up the crazy facade with all-night meetings, mandatory dance parties and propaganda film showings. Find some scapegoats who nobody likes, send 'em off to Siberia. Better liked people who still need purging can be ambassadors to South America.

9. Long-run postwar plan is perestroika + computerized central planning, more Deng than Gorbachev. The flaws in Comrade Lenin's NEP were greatly exaggerated, etc, etc.

10. Is there some way I can get a more pro-Soviet Chinese leader running things? Hmm.
 
Is there some way I can get a more pro-Soviet Chinese leader running things? Hmm.
Yeah, don't support Mao or simply push him in the direction of ruling a Communist Manchuria rather than all of China. That way the KMT has a chance of winning.
 
Releasing most survivors among the purged Soviet officers would help, especially by making training of the much expanded Soviet army more effective. Not continuing the purge would help. Stalin was still purging a trickle of officers throughout the fall and winter of 1940/41.

One of the little-known aspects of the lead-up to war: The Soviets had a very large bomber force, theoretically for strategic bombing. The Germans were actually afraid of it--fearing that the Soviets would bomb the Romanian oil fields. The Soviets thought they had a world-class bomber force too. They didn't and that became obvious when they tried to use it at the beginning of the war. Whether due to poor aircraft or poor training, the Soviet bombers didn't do much early on, and lost a lot of pilots on futile and costly raids.

Some possibilities: (1) See if there was anything that could be done to make the Soviet bomber force viable. If the Soviets can bomb the Romanian oil fields effectively early in the war, then the Germans have a real problem. (2) Have preps in hand to allow the Brits to use Soviet airbases to attack the Romanian oil fields early on. Losing Romanian production would be devastating to the Germans early on, less so as more synthetic oil production came online.
 
Would the KMT really lean towards the USSR and against the USA? I thought there were some very close America-Nationalist China ties.
 
Certain giant douchebags are eliminated (Beria, Voroshilov, Budenny, Timoshenko, Andropov, Kruschev etc etc)

I promote Chuikov and rescue Roksovvsky out of the Gulag. Army Groups are given to people like them and Tolbukin who are not souless butchers like Zhukov and Konev

Fighter production is shifted to the Lagg 3 and 5.

I try to sell off as many of my T-26's and BT series as I can so I can free up crews for accellerated T-34 development; the rest get scrapped
 
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