Assuming that:
- Lenin was healthy, no assassination attempt by Fanny Kaplan, and lived to his 80s.
- The Nazis still rose to power and launched Operation Barbarossa to seize the oil fields in the Caucasus, with the ultimate goal of expanding the Lebensraum
Could the Soviet Union under the leadership of Lenin defeat Operation Barbarossa?
I have been pondering about this myself, because Stalin did industrialize the country and propelled the Soviet Union decades ahead. Without the gigantic industry that Stalin built, the Soviet would not be able to withstand Germany, and I remember listening to the recording of Hitler complaining to Mannerheim about how the Soviets could produce so many tanks in the Urals. At the same time, the Great Purge severely weakened the Red Army, which was thought to be responsible for the early successes of the Nazis during Operation Barbarossa. If Lenin survived, probably there would be no Great Terror, but OTL his early economic policies were such a failure that he was forced to implement the market-oriented New Economic Policy, and these were not as effective as Stalin's Five Year Plans. So I suspect that if Lenin lived longer, probably the Soviet Union would have been destroyed if the Nazis had launched a massive invasion, but I'm not sure. Any thoughts on this?