Pangur
Donor
O Duffy may have been a wantabe facist however he was very pro British so no way with him in power that you see any involvement with Hitler
Paralyzed in Darkness: A Very Different Cold War (TL)
- Thread starter TheReformer
- Start date
Oh definitely. Butterflies regarding a different relationship than the one Dev presented OTL (with his constitutional reforms) would be interesting.
Well I'm gonna guess the French right are gonna be making alot of progress and those officers calling for a leaner more mobile and more mechanized army are gonna get a lot more attention also hows de Gaulle doing?
Do you have any source on this? Being pro-treaty doesn't necessarily make someone pro-British, especially consdering O'Duffy's close friendship with Michael Collins.
What is Japan going to do to the European colonies in the Pacific now that the Dutch, French and British have been crippled?
Or get smashed by the RN and MN who can afford to deploy to the far east
So how hard are going the Nazis going to try to crush Christianity. Im assuming they will either replace it with "Positive Christianity" or They will move to completely crush religon and replace it with Worship of the state
You mean do whatever society wants and to be damned with principle
Got exams atm so there wont be any updates until Friday 12th.
Drang Nach Osten - Friday 12th Jan
The Challenges of an Empire - 14th Jan
The Sun Sets Again - 16th Jan
To Make the World Anew Again - 17th Jan
Beginning of Chapter 2 - 19th Jan
Drang Nach Osten - Friday 12th Jan
The Challenges of an Empire - 14th Jan
The Sun Sets Again - 16th Jan
To Make the World Anew Again - 17th Jan
Beginning of Chapter 2 - 19th Jan
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Chapter I: Drang Nach Osten
Tad late due to unforseen circumstances... enjoy!
With the guns on the Western front now having fallen silent, Tannenbaum completed, France in a state of Chaos and Greece under Italian and Bulgarian occupation (Much to the anger of the British), Hitler now turned his eye to the east. The target had always been Russia, not only were the only major 'western' bastion of communism that Nazism and Fascism were essentially created to destroy, but furthermore they were a nation populated with that the Nazis saw as Untermenchen - sub human Slavs - who in the eyes of German leadership were no more owed the land to the east than the Native Americans were to the western United States. Germans, Hitler believed, had the right to their own "Manifest Destiny" and they would seek it through the policy of the Drang Nach Osten, 'the drive to the east'.
Germany had been preparing for the conflict that would essentially define it's future for some time, developing new tactics learned from the French Campaign, expanding their already powerful air force and due to their now free reign to use international trade they too focused on expanding their existing industrial capacity and war machine. Having defeated France by mid 1939 Germany had significant time to prepare - all the while Stalin continued on with his officers purges and lackluster reconstruction of the Soviet army from the ramshackle mob that it had been after the Soviet-Polish war. Paranoid to the core about threats to his power, Stalin treated the USSR as essentially his own personal fiefdom - murdering or imprisoning anyone who dared even think to question his authority and position. He did however begin to start asserting the Soviet position in the east by the end of 1939, having annexed the Baltic states earlier that year he turned his armed forces instead on the Finns to the North. The USSR demanded Karelia among other small island territories from the Finnish Government by November 1939 - a demand that was swiftly refused by the Finnish President Kyösti Kallio. The Soviet armies invaded shortly after, but to incredibly limited success - the use of the Mannerheim line by Finnish forces effectively halted Soviet advances and delivered massive casualties on Soviet forces throughout December of 1939. While initially faced with confusion over how to react to Soviet tank attacks, the Finns soon were demonstrated the sheer incompetence of Soviet military leadership and experience when Soviet tank forces repeatedly attempted to head on charge Finnish positions allowing them to disable the tanks entirely through simple low-tech weaponry like shoving a crow bar or a log into their tracks. Divisions of the Soviet army, even when properly equipped, would throw themselves at the Finnish lines only to panic and retreat in dissaray when they came under heavy and accurate artillery fire from Finnish positions that would often lead thousands dead or wounded in merely a matter of hours. Finns too would deploy incredibly damaging guerrilla tactics against the much more numerous Soviet forces, using poor weather to launch surprise skiing attacks on the enemy and hampering their supply routes.
The war would drag on for months, with Soviet forces unable to break the various lines of defence put up by Finnish forces. The sheer cost in casualties for this conflict for the Soviets was devastating, hundreds if thousands would go missing, be killed or injured, and all the while Germany sat ominously silent on their borders silently observing and preparing. Hitler recieved constant reports on the now aptly dubbed 'winter war' and was impressed at the skill of the Finnish soldiers in defending their homeland - and equally impressed at how much worse the Soviet military seemed to be performing compared to expectations. The Finns however would surrender to the soviets by March as their front line began to collapse - the result being that while the Soviets took Karelia and other territories they were not able to take Finnish independence. The two countries would be at war once more shortly after however, having successfully made enemies with virtually all of their neighbours, decapitated their armed forces and allowed Germany and it's allies to prepare the soviets found themselves inexplicably unprepared when Germany renaged on their treaty of non-aggression with the USSR on May 15th 1941. German forces, having been preparing for the conflict for well over a year, absolutely overwhelmed the surprised Soviet forces on the border - demonstrating the effectiveness of their Blitzkrieg tactics in the east by surrounding hundreds of thousands of soviet troops in the south of the country with armoured spearheads directly into the Ukraine and the Baltic states where in many cases - notably in Lithuania and Ukraine - they were welcomed as liberators. Around four million Axis forces, over three quarters of which being German, had amassed on the Soviet border in secret totally overwhelming the divided soviet armies and causing mass retreat across the entire border.
The soviet high command and forward air forces were totally destroyed by the Luftwaffe within hours of the conflict beginning. Stalin, shocked with Hitler's decision and German speed at perparing for the invasion, did not honestly believe the strength of German forces in the east was the level that it was and ordered a general counter offensive by 9:15 in the morning on the day of the invasion. German forces however easily brushed off any attempts to fight back by Soviet forces and pressed on with their advance. Many soviet divisions were simply incapable of counter attacking anyway, having been so shattered that their organisation essentially had collapsed in the face of the advance. Finland too commenced hostilities with the Soviets, launching a campaign to return their lost territories to their control on the same day as Germany. Within a month German forces had advanced at a shocking pace into the Soviet Union, every single former Baltic state had fallen to German occupation, as had half of the Ukraine with German forces advancing up to the Dnieper river. German Fallschirmjagers ensured the German advance could press on further by successfully seizing bridgeheads from Soviet control in advance of German armoured and infantry columns along various strategic rivers, allowing armour to cross immediately without even stopping to secure the area and speeding up the advance by potentially days. In the north, Finnish forces disloged the vast majority of the soviet army from their positions, pushing them back to their pre-winter war borders before pushing further into Karelia and Murmansk while Soviet leadership panicked, declaring a "Great Patriotic War" the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov urged his people to a patriotic victory in a speech that inspired many Russians - however faced against the odds inspiration can only do so much.
The German advance scared many western Governments, the speed at which the Germans had occupied much of western Russia left Attlee's Government fearing that the war may be over before winter even began - Britain's best hope at seeing stagnation on the eastern front for Germany that would allow them to later open up a new front in France. The United States too was stunned by German advances, leading many experts in strategic theory and geopolitics wondering if they were witnessing the birth of a new global superpower and the essential end of Russia. In the German army however an opposite view began to become apparent - despite initial success it soon became clear that the Germans had underestimated Soviet strength, especially in regards to their industrial capacity which essentially became a cottage industry for tanks. Nonetheless Germany plowed on into the heartland of Russia with Field Marshal von Bock famously stating "the vastness of Russia devours us" in his personal diary - both nations were now locked into a battle of ideologies, for supremacy and frankly for survival.
Hitler's faith in the encirclement strategies deployed earlier in the war began to wane as the German advance slowed due to inevitable logistical struggles, instead his main strategy for defeating the Soviets turned to defeating them through economic starvation. This would change however after the Battle of Kiev. Determined to hold the city Stalin urged the deployment of additional forces to the city to ensure it's security against the German advance in late July 1941, by now German forces had once again begun their advance and soon threatened to capture the city which they finally did after a brutal fight with red army forces - the cost to the Soviets however was horrific. A huge number of Soviet divisions became trapped in and around the city after a successful German encirclement operation led by General Guderian that ultimately would lead to the death or capture of over 600,000 Soviet soldiers. The defeat was a crushing blow to soviet high command who now faced the very real possibility of a German advance on Moscow. The Germans wasted no time in Pursuing that goal with a surprise attack form the German 2nd Panzer group that threw several soviet divisions on the centre front into dissaray and surrounded over 500,000 Soviet soldiers on the front line. Another devastating blow that left the Soviets with a mere 90,000 soldiers to face off against hundreds of thousands of motivated and well equipped Germans in summer.
The battle for Moscow would be bloody and far more anticlimactic than many western observers expected. The battle began on September 14th 1941 with German tanks under the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies surging across the Moscow Canal and enveloping the city from the north facing stiff but not difficult resistance. Street to street fighting began days later as infantry divisions surged into the city from all angles while Stalin himself had initially intended to remain in the city but would evacuate silently before the encirclement. Many of the cities inhabitants put up a stiff resistance to occupation, German propaganda noted the use of children as young as 11 and women by Soviet forces to defend the city, but within two weeks of intensive fighting morale to defend the city essentially collapsed as German propaganda about Stalin's decision to flee the city soon set in and resistance cracked. German casualties were reported to be lower than even the battle of Kiev at around 38,400 though unofficial estimates guessed more like 43,000 German soldiers were killed. Thus by October 1941 Moscow had fallen to the German Reich, all the while in the North Leningrad remained surrounded and cut off from supply for it's civillian and military population and in the South Hitler began the next military offensive; Fall Blau - an operation to secure Stalingrad and the Caucuses.
It was only in November that the cold would start to set in over the Russian front - but by then it was long too late. Soviet morale had essentially collapsed with the fall of Moscow and with Stalin himself having been killed during his hasty withdrawal from Moscow in October. Stalin having initially vowed to remain in the city, he decided to escape on advice of his supporters as German forces began to surround it when the truck he tried to smuggle himself out of the city was hit by a German mortar shell. His body was never recovered from the blast. The German advance itself had pressed on, launching armoured columns along the road to Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan in late March of 1942 after a winter in Moscow due to the onset of Soviet winter and extreme overextension in supply by December 1941. German forces had effectively stopped their advance at the Volga river following the capture of Kazan, Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan - or the so called 'A-A line'. Their advance in the south however continued through late 1941 and the early months of 1942. Forces pressed on Stalingrad which fell after bloody fighting due to massive German commitment to the city in February of 1942 - cutting off vital fuel supply routes and ending Russian mechanical resistance in the north. German forces then further pushed south, pressing into the Caucuses where Lavrentiy Beria had taken up refuge among the Caucus mountains though this front would drag on for another eight months of fighting as German forces pressed slowly into the south and Soviet forces used guerrilla tactics to oppose their advance, this was costly to the German war machine but justified as Beria was captured by German forces and hung with barbed wire and communist forces in the south were eradicated.
Leningrad itself would fall after months of starvation in May of 1942, and with that despite any sensible military leader in the west proclaiming German victory following the defeat of the Soviets at Stalingrad, now any question of a 'comeback' or at least stalling the German army were dashed. Germany had done the unthinkable, and conquered the east. With the soviet Government unwilling to ever discuss the terms of surrender, favoring jumping back behind the Urals and continuing the war forever, the Germans instead just divided their territories among their allies. Romania would be ceded back Bessarabia along with areas of 'greater Moldova' in Ukraine. Finland took the entirity of Karelia and regained control over it's old borders and Hungary would annex a small area of Carpatho-Ukraine the Soviets had taken in the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement. Germany however would seize the entirity of the rest, annexing the country into six seperate regions of varying military and civillian administrations; Reichskomissariat Gottengau in Crimea, Reichskomissariat Ukraine, Reichskomissariat Ostland, Reichskomissariat Kaukuses, Reichskomissariat Moscowien and finally Reichskomissariat Ingermanland. Each being headed from various renamed cities including Theodorichafn, Rowno, Riga, Tiblisi, Moskau and Hindenburg respectively.
Fighting would continue in the east for months, but largely at a standstill. German forces would largely focus on on securing their position and carry out atrocities aimed at finding and capturing Slavic Jews for deportation while executing millions of Russian, Ukranian, Baltic and Caucus civillians or pushing them into essential slavery at the hands of German soldiers. The final offensive in the conflict recognised by western and German military observers came in October of 1942 when German forces in Kazan and Astrakhan advanced further east to the Ural mountains on the insistence of Hitler who believed the mountains to be a more defensible barrier against post-Soviet aggression This would actually be incredibly costly for the German forces in Russia due to the guerrilla tactics used in the mountains but eventually succeeded in dislodging the Russian forces by late 1942 with two vast military camps being established on the border known as Das Bassenheim and Das Balk after the commanders of the Teutonic Knights. This was all in line with Generalplan Ost that would be further introduced throughout 1941 and 1942, during which German forces first were forced to deal with significant numbers of Soviet partisans throughout their newly conquered territories. Germany now faced a vast number of internal problems and political objectives it was hoping to achieve, and now it had the means to achieve them.
Drang Nach Osten
With the guns on the Western front now having fallen silent, Tannenbaum completed, France in a state of Chaos and Greece under Italian and Bulgarian occupation (Much to the anger of the British), Hitler now turned his eye to the east. The target had always been Russia, not only were the only major 'western' bastion of communism that Nazism and Fascism were essentially created to destroy, but furthermore they were a nation populated with that the Nazis saw as Untermenchen - sub human Slavs - who in the eyes of German leadership were no more owed the land to the east than the Native Americans were to the western United States. Germans, Hitler believed, had the right to their own "Manifest Destiny" and they would seek it through the policy of the Drang Nach Osten, 'the drive to the east'.
Germany had been preparing for the conflict that would essentially define it's future for some time, developing new tactics learned from the French Campaign, expanding their already powerful air force and due to their now free reign to use international trade they too focused on expanding their existing industrial capacity and war machine. Having defeated France by mid 1939 Germany had significant time to prepare - all the while Stalin continued on with his officers purges and lackluster reconstruction of the Soviet army from the ramshackle mob that it had been after the Soviet-Polish war. Paranoid to the core about threats to his power, Stalin treated the USSR as essentially his own personal fiefdom - murdering or imprisoning anyone who dared even think to question his authority and position. He did however begin to start asserting the Soviet position in the east by the end of 1939, having annexed the Baltic states earlier that year he turned his armed forces instead on the Finns to the North. The USSR demanded Karelia among other small island territories from the Finnish Government by November 1939 - a demand that was swiftly refused by the Finnish President Kyösti Kallio. The Soviet armies invaded shortly after, but to incredibly limited success - the use of the Mannerheim line by Finnish forces effectively halted Soviet advances and delivered massive casualties on Soviet forces throughout December of 1939. While initially faced with confusion over how to react to Soviet tank attacks, the Finns soon were demonstrated the sheer incompetence of Soviet military leadership and experience when Soviet tank forces repeatedly attempted to head on charge Finnish positions allowing them to disable the tanks entirely through simple low-tech weaponry like shoving a crow bar or a log into their tracks. Divisions of the Soviet army, even when properly equipped, would throw themselves at the Finnish lines only to panic and retreat in dissaray when they came under heavy and accurate artillery fire from Finnish positions that would often lead thousands dead or wounded in merely a matter of hours. Finns too would deploy incredibly damaging guerrilla tactics against the much more numerous Soviet forces, using poor weather to launch surprise skiing attacks on the enemy and hampering their supply routes.
The war would drag on for months, with Soviet forces unable to break the various lines of defence put up by Finnish forces. The sheer cost in casualties for this conflict for the Soviets was devastating, hundreds if thousands would go missing, be killed or injured, and all the while Germany sat ominously silent on their borders silently observing and preparing. Hitler recieved constant reports on the now aptly dubbed 'winter war' and was impressed at the skill of the Finnish soldiers in defending their homeland - and equally impressed at how much worse the Soviet military seemed to be performing compared to expectations. The Finns however would surrender to the soviets by March as their front line began to collapse - the result being that while the Soviets took Karelia and other territories they were not able to take Finnish independence. The two countries would be at war once more shortly after however, having successfully made enemies with virtually all of their neighbours, decapitated their armed forces and allowed Germany and it's allies to prepare the soviets found themselves inexplicably unprepared when Germany renaged on their treaty of non-aggression with the USSR on May 15th 1941. German forces, having been preparing for the conflict for well over a year, absolutely overwhelmed the surprised Soviet forces on the border - demonstrating the effectiveness of their Blitzkrieg tactics in the east by surrounding hundreds of thousands of soviet troops in the south of the country with armoured spearheads directly into the Ukraine and the Baltic states where in many cases - notably in Lithuania and Ukraine - they were welcomed as liberators. Around four million Axis forces, over three quarters of which being German, had amassed on the Soviet border in secret totally overwhelming the divided soviet armies and causing mass retreat across the entire border.
The soviet high command and forward air forces were totally destroyed by the Luftwaffe within hours of the conflict beginning. Stalin, shocked with Hitler's decision and German speed at perparing for the invasion, did not honestly believe the strength of German forces in the east was the level that it was and ordered a general counter offensive by 9:15 in the morning on the day of the invasion. German forces however easily brushed off any attempts to fight back by Soviet forces and pressed on with their advance. Many soviet divisions were simply incapable of counter attacking anyway, having been so shattered that their organisation essentially had collapsed in the face of the advance. Finland too commenced hostilities with the Soviets, launching a campaign to return their lost territories to their control on the same day as Germany. Within a month German forces had advanced at a shocking pace into the Soviet Union, every single former Baltic state had fallen to German occupation, as had half of the Ukraine with German forces advancing up to the Dnieper river. German Fallschirmjagers ensured the German advance could press on further by successfully seizing bridgeheads from Soviet control in advance of German armoured and infantry columns along various strategic rivers, allowing armour to cross immediately without even stopping to secure the area and speeding up the advance by potentially days. In the north, Finnish forces disloged the vast majority of the soviet army from their positions, pushing them back to their pre-winter war borders before pushing further into Karelia and Murmansk while Soviet leadership panicked, declaring a "Great Patriotic War" the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov urged his people to a patriotic victory in a speech that inspired many Russians - however faced against the odds inspiration can only do so much.
The German advance scared many western Governments, the speed at which the Germans had occupied much of western Russia left Attlee's Government fearing that the war may be over before winter even began - Britain's best hope at seeing stagnation on the eastern front for Germany that would allow them to later open up a new front in France. The United States too was stunned by German advances, leading many experts in strategic theory and geopolitics wondering if they were witnessing the birth of a new global superpower and the essential end of Russia. In the German army however an opposite view began to become apparent - despite initial success it soon became clear that the Germans had underestimated Soviet strength, especially in regards to their industrial capacity which essentially became a cottage industry for tanks. Nonetheless Germany plowed on into the heartland of Russia with Field Marshal von Bock famously stating "the vastness of Russia devours us" in his personal diary - both nations were now locked into a battle of ideologies, for supremacy and frankly for survival.
Hitler's faith in the encirclement strategies deployed earlier in the war began to wane as the German advance slowed due to inevitable logistical struggles, instead his main strategy for defeating the Soviets turned to defeating them through economic starvation. This would change however after the Battle of Kiev. Determined to hold the city Stalin urged the deployment of additional forces to the city to ensure it's security against the German advance in late July 1941, by now German forces had once again begun their advance and soon threatened to capture the city which they finally did after a brutal fight with red army forces - the cost to the Soviets however was horrific. A huge number of Soviet divisions became trapped in and around the city after a successful German encirclement operation led by General Guderian that ultimately would lead to the death or capture of over 600,000 Soviet soldiers. The defeat was a crushing blow to soviet high command who now faced the very real possibility of a German advance on Moscow. The Germans wasted no time in Pursuing that goal with a surprise attack form the German 2nd Panzer group that threw several soviet divisions on the centre front into dissaray and surrounded over 500,000 Soviet soldiers on the front line. Another devastating blow that left the Soviets with a mere 90,000 soldiers to face off against hundreds of thousands of motivated and well equipped Germans in summer.
The battle for Moscow would be bloody and far more anticlimactic than many western observers expected. The battle began on September 14th 1941 with German tanks under the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies surging across the Moscow Canal and enveloping the city from the north facing stiff but not difficult resistance. Street to street fighting began days later as infantry divisions surged into the city from all angles while Stalin himself had initially intended to remain in the city but would evacuate silently before the encirclement. Many of the cities inhabitants put up a stiff resistance to occupation, German propaganda noted the use of children as young as 11 and women by Soviet forces to defend the city, but within two weeks of intensive fighting morale to defend the city essentially collapsed as German propaganda about Stalin's decision to flee the city soon set in and resistance cracked. German casualties were reported to be lower than even the battle of Kiev at around 38,400 though unofficial estimates guessed more like 43,000 German soldiers were killed. Thus by October 1941 Moscow had fallen to the German Reich, all the while in the North Leningrad remained surrounded and cut off from supply for it's civillian and military population and in the South Hitler began the next military offensive; Fall Blau - an operation to secure Stalingrad and the Caucuses.
It was only in November that the cold would start to set in over the Russian front - but by then it was long too late. Soviet morale had essentially collapsed with the fall of Moscow and with Stalin himself having been killed during his hasty withdrawal from Moscow in October. Stalin having initially vowed to remain in the city, he decided to escape on advice of his supporters as German forces began to surround it when the truck he tried to smuggle himself out of the city was hit by a German mortar shell. His body was never recovered from the blast. The German advance itself had pressed on, launching armoured columns along the road to Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan in late March of 1942 after a winter in Moscow due to the onset of Soviet winter and extreme overextension in supply by December 1941. German forces had effectively stopped their advance at the Volga river following the capture of Kazan, Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan - or the so called 'A-A line'. Their advance in the south however continued through late 1941 and the early months of 1942. Forces pressed on Stalingrad which fell after bloody fighting due to massive German commitment to the city in February of 1942 - cutting off vital fuel supply routes and ending Russian mechanical resistance in the north. German forces then further pushed south, pressing into the Caucuses where Lavrentiy Beria had taken up refuge among the Caucus mountains though this front would drag on for another eight months of fighting as German forces pressed slowly into the south and Soviet forces used guerrilla tactics to oppose their advance, this was costly to the German war machine but justified as Beria was captured by German forces and hung with barbed wire and communist forces in the south were eradicated.
Leningrad itself would fall after months of starvation in May of 1942, and with that despite any sensible military leader in the west proclaiming German victory following the defeat of the Soviets at Stalingrad, now any question of a 'comeback' or at least stalling the German army were dashed. Germany had done the unthinkable, and conquered the east. With the soviet Government unwilling to ever discuss the terms of surrender, favoring jumping back behind the Urals and continuing the war forever, the Germans instead just divided their territories among their allies. Romania would be ceded back Bessarabia along with areas of 'greater Moldova' in Ukraine. Finland took the entirity of Karelia and regained control over it's old borders and Hungary would annex a small area of Carpatho-Ukraine the Soviets had taken in the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement. Germany however would seize the entirity of the rest, annexing the country into six seperate regions of varying military and civillian administrations; Reichskomissariat Gottengau in Crimea, Reichskomissariat Ukraine, Reichskomissariat Ostland, Reichskomissariat Kaukuses, Reichskomissariat Moscowien and finally Reichskomissariat Ingermanland. Each being headed from various renamed cities including Theodorichafn, Rowno, Riga, Tiblisi, Moskau and Hindenburg respectively.
Fighting would continue in the east for months, but largely at a standstill. German forces would largely focus on on securing their position and carry out atrocities aimed at finding and capturing Slavic Jews for deportation while executing millions of Russian, Ukranian, Baltic and Caucus civillians or pushing them into essential slavery at the hands of German soldiers. The final offensive in the conflict recognised by western and German military observers came in October of 1942 when German forces in Kazan and Astrakhan advanced further east to the Ural mountains on the insistence of Hitler who believed the mountains to be a more defensible barrier against post-Soviet aggression This would actually be incredibly costly for the German forces in Russia due to the guerrilla tactics used in the mountains but eventually succeeded in dislodging the Russian forces by late 1942 with two vast military camps being established on the border known as Das Bassenheim and Das Balk after the commanders of the Teutonic Knights. This was all in line with Generalplan Ost that would be further introduced throughout 1941 and 1942, during which German forces first were forced to deal with significant numbers of Soviet partisans throughout their newly conquered territories. Germany now faced a vast number of internal problems and political objectives it was hoping to achieve, and now it had the means to achieve them.
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So the rains in spring didn't do anything to hamper the German advance? The date chosen for Barbossa IOTL wasn't a coincidence the German advance began on the summer solstice after the spring rains which may i add has been usually wet causing the rivers to flood and everything to turn to mud for longer than usual. Because of the poor infrastructure of the area, the roads were mostly unpaved and thus turned to mud, while the railroads were of a different gauge than those of the Germans and giving the maximum amount daylight for the German advance. Even the German military leadership didn't think an invasion could happen before mid-May. Stalin still doesn't notice the build-up of 3+ million German troops even though with peace in the west there is only one feasible direction those troops can go? Stalin may believe that Germany couldn't fight a 2 front war but when Germany is showing no signs of demobilizing still remains on a war footing and is massing thousands of troops on your border well there can be only one conclusion.
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Also considering the Fall of France spurred enough panic in the US for some truly massive military armament projects to be passed IE 2 Ocean Navy Act this seems some what out of place
The Rasputitsa Spring Thaw season where it rains significantly as you noted takes place to the extent tat it would damage the German advance in March-April sure, but the area affected are nowhere near the Soviet border - in fact the German advance would have only just begun to experience the effects of the end of the Rasputitsa when they reached the end of "Phase One" of their advance a month into the invasion. The advance across Western Ukraine however would have been virtually unhampered, only in the marches in Belarus would they have found a real problem and as you can see from the map - as per real life - they failed to make up much ground in the first month there anyway. Essentially Germany went for it and when they got to the end of Phase One of their advance they slowed down to deal with logistical problems associated. You are right however, in places this logically still would have slowed down the German advance - however unlike real life in this TL Germany has not actually been at war with anyone major for well over a year and as such has done what they did not do in real life and built a suitable number of trucks (Something they failed horribly to do in OTL) - thus meaning the effect of Rasputitsa in the border areas where it is weaker was limited further.
As for Stalin, in OTL he failed to notice the very same buildup of around 3,690,000 German and Axis forces on his border - this was something entirely possible even under peacetime conditions as like in OTL when France was occupied there would still be only one direction for the Wehrmacht to go, historically there may have been a belief that Germany would traget Britain for invasion but i guess our version of that in my TL is them assuming Germany keeps millions of troops on the French front to take advantage of their chaos. Irrespective of that, even if Stalin did suspect German intentions it is doubtful at best that he would have acted upon them before it was too late - the Red Army was a nightmare of disorganisation, lack of equipment and frankly lack of dedicated soldiers at the start of the war in OTL. In these conditions it is no different - except it is facing a better prepared Germany attacking earlier and committing to the main part of their advance during Summer when things like the Spring Thaw or the Winter Freeze are no longer a problem or are yet to be a problem. By the fall of Moscow for example the 'Russian Winter' would have barely started.
It's an interesting area of history around the date of the invasion though, many historians argue for example if Hitler had not delayed his invasion of the USSR by 34 days to deal with the Balkans he would have defeated them and taken Moscow. I tend to agree.
Roosevelt still continues on with preparations for war, even if parts of the American public disagree with him. But one of the key differences is that unlike in OTL when France was occupied, thus leaving the opportunity for US entry to the war - there was a peace struck.
I'm now wondering how do communists around the world react to the fall of the Soviet Union?
You'll find out that in the first update of the next chapter. First i'm gunna give a bit of a breakdown of how Europe is and what Germany is up to domestically, then you'll get info about Japan and the US, Then we're at Chapter 2.