How Would No-Stalin-Purges Affect The Nazi Invasion?

Not necessarily in 1941 though, Hitler was very hesitant about the date, but yes the victory disease from the fall of France and then IMHO as much if not moreso the Soviet performance in Finland convinced him the Soviets were a joke militarily.
Every moment he waited, the Soviet Union got stronger.
 
Every moment he waited, the Soviet Union got stronger.

I am well aware, but it doesn't mean he won't think harder about going in 41 with Britian in the war and the Soviets looking much more formidable. Some effort was made by Germany to get the Soviets to attack the ME in 1940, but I suspect a bigger one will occur if Stalin rolls over Finland and perhaps decides to grab Sweden as well.

A better prepared Soviet army might mean Stalin attacks Poland earlier in September of 1939 as well and the Red Army does better there as well.
 
Wait, what? Why would Stalin attack Sweden? He expressed absolutely no interest there in that in the 1939-1941 period.

For the same reason any expansionist leader decides to grab one further country after taking another, because it's there and you are on a winning streak.

Finland OTL was cold water on Stalin's easy victories against Japan, the Baltics and Poland. With a clear fast victory there it changes ones mindset about future endevors.

Stalin probably wouldn't have attacked Germany until at least 1943 OTL because of that glass of cold water. Without it he might have gambled on '42 depending on if the war in the West is still on.
 
Last edited:
For the same reason any expansionist leader decides to grab one further country after taking another, because it's there and you are on a winning streak.

Except that posits that Stalin was being expansionistic for the sake of being expansionistic, instead of as a means to some end. Once expansion has achieved it's goal, there is no need for further expansion.Stalin's purpose in attacking Finland was to ensure the security of Leningrad against any potential attack from the north. Once Finland is taken, he has all the buffer territory he will ever need against an attack from Scandinavia. He has not the slightest interest in attacking Sweden.
 
I'm not entirely sure the initial campaign will be easier for the Soviets since the invasion was founded upon the idea that the Finnish proletariat would rise up and establish a communist regime. Once it's apparent that won't happen I think they will do much better than OTL.

There is also the point to be made that one of the core reasons for the poor initial showing of the Red Army against Finland was that Stalin absolutely underestimated the Finns' ability to defend themselves. Not only did he believe/hope that the Finnish left was very close to rising up in another revolution, he also seems to have understood the Finnish military as no better than third-rate White militia, and that just the Red Army opening fire with artillery and Soviet aircraft bombing Finnish cities will bring the nation to its knees in days.

IOTL, only one side in the Winter War was prepared for an actual war in late November 1939, and it was the Finns. The Soviets were prepared to make not a campaign but merely a show of force which would collapse the Finnish "White militia" while the Finnish Reds would again take over in the Finnish towns with the Red Army supporting them, occupying the nation with impunity.

If Stalin still believes these things ITTL, and decides to micromanage the resources etc. allowed to the Leningrad Military District for the Finnish campaign, any even brilliant commander leading the Soviet attack might find himself hamstrung by Stalin's decisions, his attacking force so small and inadequately outfitted that an initial curbstomp would not be possible under the circumstances in which the Winter War would be fought. The terrain, the weather and the Finnish competences will still be the same ITTL, after all.

Of course after the initial reality check, ITTL with a competent leader in charge of the campaign in Finland, the Red Army's warplan and its attacking formations would be amended quicker and it might not need all of three months to beat the Finnish army. But it would still take time to rearrange units, etc, in the tight confines of the Karelian Isthmus, and even if the Soviets here would eventually break the Finnish defence (in late January 1939, say) and reach Helsinki, many in the West would still say that the Red Army performed badly in the first weeks of the war, and it might well be that Hitler, for example, would still see the Soviet campaign in Finland as supporting his views about the inferiority of the Russians. And that would be down to Stalin misjudging the Finns, not the ineptness of the Red Army attack - as it partly was even IOTL.
 
Last edited:
There is also the point to be made that one of the core reasons for the poor initial showing of the Red Army against Finland was that Stalin absolutely underestimated the Finns' ability to defend themselves. Not only did he believe/hope that the Finnish left was very close to rising up in another revolution, he also seems to have understood the Finnish military as no better than third-rate White militia, and that just the Red Army opening fire with artillery and Soviet aircraft bombing Finnish cities will bring the nation to its knees in days.

IOTL, only one side in the Winter War was prepared for an actual war in late November 1939, and it was the Finns. The Soviets were prepared to make not a campaign but merely a show of force which would collapse the Finnish "White militia" while the Finnish Reds would again take over in the Finnish towns with the Red Army supporting them, occupying the nation with impunity.

If Stalin still believes these things ITTL, and decides to micromanage the resources etc. allowed to the Leningrad Military District for the Finnish campaign, any even brilliant commander leading the Soviet attack might find himself and his attacking force too small and inadequately outfitted, hamstrung by Stalin's decisions, that an initial curbstomp will not be possible under the circumstances in which the Winter War would be fought. The terrain, the weather and the Finnish competences will still be the same ITTL, after all.

Of course after the initial reality check, ITTL with a competent leader in charge of the campaign in Finland, the Red Army's warplan and its attacking formations would be amended quicker and it might not need all of three months to beat the Finnish army. But even if the Soviets here eventually break the Finnish defence ( in late January 1939, say) and reach Helsinki, many in the West would still say that the Red Army performed badly in the first weeks of the war, and it might well be that Hitler, for example, would still see the Soviet campaign in Finland as supporting his views about the inferiority of the Russians. And that would be down to Stalin misjudging the Finns, not only the ineptness of the Red Army attack - as it partly was even IOTL.

Competent generals willing to provide good advice means he might not misjudge the Finns.
 
Competent generals willing to provide good advice means he might not misjudge the Finns.
Musjudged or not, and no matter how competent or amazing a general is, they still have to actually fight the war. Planning is important, but there's limits to what it can do before contact with the enemy, and it's not like Finland was an easy campaign in the first place. Even the name of the Winter War kinda indicates the difficulty of what they were dealing with.

I mean, they could hardly do worse. But even with more men and equipment allotted initally, I have my doubts about them just being able to just roll over winter terrain.
 
Last edited:
Competent generals willing to provide good advice means he might not misjudge the Finns.

How ready would Stalin be at this point to listen to a general tell him that the Finnish military is a force to be reckoned with, not just a disorganized rabble of White blowhards who will fold as soon as they get to taste some Cold Soviet Steel (tm)? I think that is the crux of the issue. Would competent generals have the guts to offer him level advice on the issue, and would Stalin and his closest Soviet leaders (like Molotov, say) who have been dealing with the Finns in late 1939 be ready to listen to them and abandon their previous misconceptions?

We would do well to understand that Stalin saw the entire process that led to the Winter War as a game of chicken with the Finns, in which he was driving a huge truck and the Finns a small private car, and that both knew the massive lead in power and resources the USSR had over Finland. He was convinced the Finns were bluffing all the way, and that they would eventually fold. It is debatable if he would be ready to abandon this thinking about the Finns necessarily bluffing. Quite bravely and tenaciously, certainly, but without any real strengths to base their bluster on.
 
Last edited:
Let's say Stalin does kill off most of the generals in the army. And then the Nazis invade. How would things be different this time around?

It wasn't just the men he killed but the number of "Staff" officers that were also 'purged'

Lack of men with the skills necessary to control the day to day and operational activity of the armed forces hurt the Soviet Union every bit as much if not more than the loss of certain high ranking officers.

Neither grow on trees but are nurtured over time

Had those officers not been shot, imprisoned or dismissed etc then its almost a certainty that the Red Army would have performed far better than it had in the early parts of the war in the east.

As for the Army turning on the state / Stalin if the purges had not been carried out - given that all the evidence proclaiming such things was falsified paranoid BS I do not agree that the only alternative was for the Army to do this.
 
It wasn't just the men he killed but the number of "Staff" officers that were also 'purged'

Lack of men with the skills necessary to control the day to day and operational activity of the armed forces hurt the Soviet Union every bit as much if not more than the loss of certain high ranking officers.

Yes I would go with the enormous advantage of an adequate supply of staff officers. They may not be the brains of the outfit but they are its central nervous system without which any organism is a crippled jellyfish.

Those disrupted division, corps and army staffs had they been extant could even as done as badly due to Stalin's refusal to prepare as in the OTL June battles but after that the fact that Soviet formations would be able to manoeuvre to battle and arrive with their helmets on their heads, their boots on their feet and their trousers somewhere in the vicinity of their arses would have told.

As ObesessedNuker pointed out above a very slight margin of improvement results in Barborossa falling apart much further west with dramatic consequences as the war progresses.
 
Top