Soviet Questions, PoD Molotov Ribbentrop

With the PoD being the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact, how can the Soviet Union
A perform better in the winter war and avoid much of the humiliation of their early defeats,
and B assuming Barbarossa happens, be prepared to defend from it better keep Germany from penetrating so deeply into the soviet Union?
 
With the PoD being the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact, how can the Soviet Union
A perform better in the winter war and avoid much of the humiliation of their early defeats,

They could have had better intelligence on the layout of the Finnish defense, or had better artillery-air-armour-infantry coordination.

B assuming Barbarossa happens, be prepared to defend from it better keep Germany from penetrating so deeply into the soviet Union?

Well first of all have better commuication from the start between Moscow and the front, there are reports of Soviet commanders who whilst unprepared merely mobilised their troops and managed to hold superior German forces for several hours. Mobilising and preparing the Red Army a week or two before Barbarossa could have saved several Soviet divisions form catastrophe and caused much larger German casualties. Keeping the bulk of the Red Army at the Stalin line and just a skeleton force in eastern Poland could have led to the Germans being stopped far from Moscow and forced a stalemate with the incoming winter hundreds of miles from Moscow, Leningrad or the Volga.
 
I confirm what The Red says. Basically, the Soviets had their pants round their ankles as it was: they were sitting right up in salients with their planes lined up on the runways. The Germans had flown spying missions (pretty obvious ones) and knew the locations of airfields and supply dumps, so there was fish-barrel type activity. Moscow was basically not giving orders for the earliest part of the war, and units were caught totally unready. And of course this was on top of the Purges and the re-organisation so officers didn't know their units and so on.

If Stalin had had a sudden attack of reality and ordered his troops to behave like they were about to be invaded, even weeks before the show started, that would have helped a lot. If the Soviets had been gearing up for a defensive war from the moment they'd finished their M-R Pact meal in summer 1940, the catastrophe won't even approach OTL's proportions.
 
1 point:

Orders by general staff about camouflaging airfields and unit dislocation sites were issued five times within 1940-summer 1941 period. Without any considerable effect.

Units just not had time, resources or skills needed for such things.
 
Against the Finns your POD is too late you only have 90 days between M-R and opening hostilities against the Finns.

You could do some small things for them to do better against the Finn's but overall they will still not perform as a first rate military power

1. put a competent commander in charge of the theater (zhukov or shtern have relavent combat and command experience by this point)

2. change the attack date (either wait till the spring or attack right away in the fall so you are not attacking in the middle of winter which severely reduced the effectiveness of Russian mechanized forces)

3. Bring up all the heavy guns from the Toka line and the Stalin line so they can be lined up wheel to wheel to crack the mannerheim line

4. Deploy submachine guns en masse

As far as 1941 goes the possibilities of them performing better or being mroe prepared are limitless... they had their head up their ass to get slaughtered the way they did
 

Cook

Banned
The poor performance in the Winter War was due mostly to Stalin’s purges of the Red Army Officer Corps wasn’t it?

Likewise the poor Soviet situation at the start of Barbarossa. Stalin had the Red Army deployed way too far forward without any real depth, making them vulnerable to encirclement. He’d decapitated the Red Army’s command structure well before the Wehrmacht ever crossed the border and he refused to allow his field commanders to withdraw when they were being surrounded and over-run.

I know that’s nowhere near a full list of the Soviet problems but it does keep coming back to Stalin; keep him and suffer, purge him and do better.
 
The problem basically is Soviet Leadership, more precisely Stalin.

Although intelligence reports quite accurately mentioned the weaknesses and strongpoints of the enemy forces in both the Finnish and German armed forces, Stalin was not listening and simply ignored all intel. His power was at its greatest, shortly after the purrification of the Russian Society, but it also had removed the few people capable of leading armed forces into battle.

So the solution could be to dispose of him as quick as possible, replacing him by a new more realistic leader.
 
To remove Stalin after the POD and before Barbarossa would probably only provoke an internal struggle in USSR (and probably a bloody one). There was no old strong fugures left and new ones yet had to gain their standing. It may disrupt military reforms which began at that time and make Barbarossa more successful (to what extent may be argued).

As for wrong decisions... Well, there was correct intel. Mixed with incorrect one and complete fiction. It maybe would help if Stalin was less delusional after befriending Hitler, but not really much.

Nothing helps soviets in Winter War, I think. They did as well as they could, and butterflies had too little runaway to take off after the POD. With Barbarossa it is less clear. Huge losses at the very start could be prevented with more competence (not only from Stalin, but his generals especially, who also believed that Hitler would not attack) and maybe luck too (butterflies, hey!) but otherwise germans wold still drive east, as the whole state of the Red Army is unlikely to improve compared to OTL.
 
Red Army at the Stalin line and just a skeleton force in eastern Poland
Except the Stalin Line in Russia had been disassembled, and all the Guns and Eqiopment prepared for shipment to the New [uncompleted] Line in Poland
 
The poor performance in the Winter War was due mostly to Stalin’s purges of the Red Army Officer Corps wasn’t it?.

No, it was because of rapid growth of Red Army during this period. Army size was almost tripled.

. Stalin had the Red Army deployed way too far forward without any real depth, making them vulnerable to encirclement.
Also not true. Red Army was dispersed both along border and in depth.

I know that’s nowhere near a full list of the Soviet problems but it does keep coming back to Stalin; keep him and suffer, purge him and do better.
Remove Stalin and all soviet command structure will just collapse.
 
Although intelligence reports quite accurately mentioned the weaknesses and strongpoints of the enemy forces in both the Finnish and German armed forces,.

In fact soviet intelligence failed miserably in both accouts. They couldn't discover even general locations of finnish fortifications before Winter War and almost doubled real size of Wermaht before Barbarossa.
 

Cook

Banned
To remove Stalin after the POD and before Barbarossa would probably only provoke an internal struggle in USSR (and probably a bloody one). There was no old strong fugures left and new ones yet had to gain their standing. It may disrupt military reforms which began at that time and make Barbarossa more successful (to what extent may be argued).

Weren’t most of the senior figures the same then as when Stalin died?
Wouldn’t it be more possible for a Cabinet style consensus decision making system to be the result?
 
With the PoD being the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact, how can the Soviet Union
A perform better in the winter war and avoid much of the humiliation of their early defeats,
and B assuming Barbarossa happens, be prepared to defend from it better keep Germany from penetrating so deeply into the soviet Union?
It would be very easy, just replace this mr. Stalin with more competent
leader for example in the early 1930's...
If you consider that M-R Pact is the key point, then A - don't start that
Winter War against Finns. And if do anyway, then take only those areas
which are important: Suursaari and other islands, Petsamo area in the north,
and secure the region of Leningrad.
And B - listen to your spies and re-organize your troops into defensive position. At the start of Operation Barbarossa there was over million of soviet troops in Ukrainan and Belorussian region. The Soviets had more
tanks, artillery and planes than Germans, but most of the troops were
ready to attack to West. So, when the Germans attacked first, most of the soviet troops weren't able to defend themselves.
 
Tukhachevsky survives

Purge him before he purges you. The only way the Soviets put up a solid defense that stops the Germans cold is if the POD goes all the way back to the failed Soviet campaign in Poland in 1920. If Tukhachevsky is not in the campaign (Say he's been wounded very early), then no vendetta develops by Stalin against him.


If Yagoda, in 1936, gets wind of the next upcoming series of purges, he can go to Tukhachevsky and tell him he's next.:eek: Actually, he wouldn't be, he'd be two steps down the line. But ultimately it would be the truth. Yezhov, Beria, and Voroshilov of course are 100% complete toadies and would never be brought into such a move. But Yagoda, a toady himself, was also in a near constant state of fear regarding Stalin, and even a rat will fight if cornered. Assuming Tukhachevsky believes him, and he wants to live, a quiet little accident could be arranged. Massive disruption to the Soviet Command structure yes, but no more purges, and continued military development of the Soviet armed forces.:)


This would mean a dispersed Red Air Force on Barbarossa, a sortied fleet, and a fully mobilized army in field fortifications with a heavy armored reserve. This assumes all outside events are the same as OTL, including the non-aggression pact. Hey, if you were a Soviet leader what would you have done in the face of Chamberlain's actions at Munich? So, the operative question I'm asking is: Tukhachevsky as a Soviet Jaruzelsky? Is it possible? Or ASB?:confused:

It's just an idea. Please don't curbstomp me, just tell me why I'm so wrong.:p
 

Old Airman

Banned
With the PoD being the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact, how can the Soviet Union
A perform better in the winter war and avoid much of the humiliation of their early defeats,
It doesn't have anything to do with MR. MR (or, more precisely, war between Germany and Anglo-French alliance) allowed Stalin to get Finland without fear of West using it as a casus belli and organizing a little crusade against communism. Manner of said invasion was completely dependent on Soviet decision. OTL Stalin felt that either Finns would welcome Red Army (as W. Belarussians and, to a lesser extent, w. Ukrainians) or would be too spooked to fight (as Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians). So, initil stages of invasion was a military parade, not a proper invasion. Once Red Army started to treat the war as a war and not a demonstration of force, Finland was toast. So, the answer is obvious: let Reds treat the war seriously from the very beginning and behold Finnish People's Republic.
 
Weren’t most of the senior figures the same then as when Stalin died?
Wouldn’t it be more possible for a Cabinet style consensus decision making system to be the result?

Yes, they were mostly the same. But the difference that at 1940 all this figures were relatively new (apart from Molotov and some others, who, ultimately had no far reaching ambitions) to power and had not accumulated authorities in their own. They were completely dependent on Stalin. And purges were very recent memory, in fact still ongoing in lesser scale, and were a familiar method to solve power problems. So removing Stalin at that time would result in chaos.
Of course, consensus is also possible, but it would require certain willingness to do so. While I can see an agreement between Molotov and Beria at least for a while, others, like Khruschev, may prove less prone to it.

Also, Stalin may be incompetent (he wasn't really, but that's arguable). But he was probably most competent administrator from the whole bunch and, unless you somehow change USSR to some kind of democracy and bring to power a completely new government, any Stalin successor would likely do worse or no better.
 
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Cook

Banned
While I can see an agreement between Molotov and Beria at least for a while, others, like Khruschev, may prove less prone to it.

Interesting.
I was expecting you to say Beria would be the problem child.

Some dissent is healthy. You don’t want constant agreement in a cabinet; you just don’t want them resolving their disagreements by shooting each other.
 
Interesting.
I was expecting you to say Beria would be the problem child.

Some dissent is healthy. You don’t want constant agreement in a cabinet; you just don’t want them resolving their disagreements by shooting each other.

Info on Beria is contradictory, and I think he was not very interested in ultimate power at the time - he wanted to quit NKVD for engeneering job before Stalin brought him to Moscow to take out Ezhov after all. But he would be fighting for his life if Stalin goes down - no going back after what he did. Still I don't see him as an initiator of a new purge - he is likely to try to find support with some other firm stalinist - hence Molotov. Unless it's Beria himself who did Stalin, but that's a very different Beria.

Also depends on how Stalin was removed. If he's dead and there is any suspicion on unnatural cause, most likely accustations would fly. It's too easy and familiar. If there is clearly no one to blame, bloodbath is less likely.

On the other hand... Beria was still in full control of NKVD (he was not in 1953) and that's a real power.
Military commander is Voroshilov and he is above his competency. He is likely to support someone than make any move himself. Later in 1940 he was replaced with Timoshenko, who seemed like more or less honest and not very keen politically. Tukhachevsky and the like would be very different matter.

In fact, some consensus may not be unlikely. But if this council would be able to make any decisions, not to say right ones? Again, Beria may be willing to make decisions, but would he be obeyed? I don't think so. So the consensus may be achieved only to get time to make preparations by various groups to consolidate positions and make preparations for another coup.

Problem that all this people who were at power in USSR were not accustomed to dissenting opinions even constructive ones. Surprisingly, it's actually Stalin who at least listened to dissenters (especially non-political) even if only to send some of them far away.
 
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