Spring War Instead of Winter War?

The thing is that I'm agreeing with you, and noting that the only reason the USSR delays an offensive at all is that they have to think like this. The USSR of 1939 has no reason whatsoever to delay the offensive of OTL, given they quite reasonably expected their army to bulldoze over Finland (from the same amateurish misperception of mass = quality that appears in a lot of AH timelines) and that they had the green light as per the M-R Pact. So there needs to be a change in Soviet internal politics to make this work, there is zero external reason and no military reason the RKKA will delay any attack on Finland otherwise.
 
1) Which doesn't work as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact's Secret Protocol assigned Finland to the Soviet sphere with not so much as a wince on the part of the Nazis. The Nazis have no problems whatsoever with a rapid Soviet conquest of Finland at this point.

Well, Stalin must have thought otherwise as he was wise and cautious enough to occupy the Baltics in mid-June 1940, when all other major powers in Europe were kind of busy with something. Stalin wasn't afraid of Hitler in 1940, he wanted to avoid Western intervention - it was the sole reason he took a time-out on annexing Finland in OTL after all.
 
Um, if you look at the chronology it's *after* he'd gotten a bloody nose in Finland. Stalin very understandably did not want to add to his debacles, and in 1939 he'd already hollowed out any actual independence those three states had possessed *before* the annexation. Stalin's caution in avoiding an actual war in the Baltic states was *because* of the tomfoolery in Finland. His decisions to annex the Bukovinia in addition to Bessarabia, however, show that he wasn't afraid of outsiders in itself, it was his understanding of how weak his armed forces actually were.
 
The thing is that I'm agreeing with you, and noting that the only reason the USSR delays an offensive at all is that they have to think like this. The USSR of 1939 has no reason whatsoever to delay the offensive of OTL, given they quite reasonably expected their army to bulldoze over Finland (from the same amateurish misperception of mass = quality that appears in a lot of AH timelines) and that they had the green light as per the M-R Pact. So there needs to be a change in Soviet internal politics to make this work, there is zero external reason and no military reason the RKKA will delay any attack on Finland otherwise.

Thank you, now we are once again discussing the same topic :D

In OTL Winter War in 1939 was far from pre-destined. Key butterly moments are so-called Yartsev negotiations before Munich Accord in 1938, and OTL border negotiations in autumn 1939. On a latter scenario many Finnish politicians and military leaders, Mannerheim being the most important to mention, wanted to buy time and make concessions but Foreign Minister E. Erkko and other hardliners felt that it would be pointless to bargain with Soviet Union like the Baltic states had done.
 
Thank you, now we are once again discussing the same topic :D

In OTL Winter War in 1939 was far from pre-destined. Key butterly moments are so-called Yartsev negotiations before Munich Accord in 1938, and OTL border negotiations in autumn 1939. On a latter scenario many Finnish politicians and military leaders, Mannerheim being the most important to mention, wanted to buy time and make concessions but Foreign Minister E. Erkko and other hardliners felt that it would be pointless to bargain with Soviet Union like the Baltic states had done.

A decision that proved wise, given the 1939 war IOTL was about an attempt to create the FSSR, as opposed to any more "limited" goals and the USSR blatantly lied about what it had wanted the whole time. However if the war is delayed by negotiations, the USSR will still be spending time at least working on *some* of its potential logistical issues. How much effect that work has, however, is a very different question.
 
Um, if you look at the chronology it's *after* he'd gotten a bloody nose in Finland. Stalin very understandably did not want to add to his debacles, and in 1939 he'd already hollowed out any actual independence those three states had possessed *before* the annexation. Stalin's caution in avoiding an actual war in the Baltic states was *because* of the tomfoolery in Finland.

I agree, and the Baltic occupation was really such a massive and well-planned operation you were talking about earlier, showing the fast learning and adaptation of Soviet military power and leadership. A thought: perhaps the Soviets for some reason try to move ahead with Estonia and Latvia, starting a war there? This is a potential flashpoint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orzeł_incident

Suppose a short war ensues, and this takes away Soviet focus from Finland so that they'll have to invade later, and having learned a few lessons in Baltic states, this time the invasion begins with proper forces and good preparations?

His decisions to annex the Bukovinia in addition to Bessarabia, however, show that he wasn't afraid of outsiders in itself, it was his understanding of how weak his armed forces actually were.

I summarize Soviet prewar foreign policy like this:
After Litvinov had tried and failed to create containment against Hitler with SOVNARKOM, Stalin opted for old and trusted "let you and him fight"-method in dealing with his potential and perceived foes in Entente and Germany. After France was knocked out so early, much to his surprise, Stalin switched his strategy to calculated testing of Hitler's responses and his willingness to expand and defend Nazi sphere of interest, all the while he urgently reorganized his armies for inevitable showdown with Third Reich. The only flaw of this thinking was Stalin's vision of Hitler as a likeminded cool and calculative strategist instead of a gambler that ol'Adie really was.
 
1) Well, in that case you get an inversion of OTL: the Soviets get a bloody nose in a war that sees them gain three new SSRs, and then Finland goes blooie in the next strike. An interesting ATL question is if the USSR bungles the one but gets the FSSR in a model war from the next, what precisely does this do to the Nazi Victory Disease pattern with regard to planning the war with the USSR? Finland's not a small country, after all.

2) A good summary, the one thing I'd make a little different is that Stalin's foreign policy reflected that the USSR wound up being isolated *knowing* it was weak the whole time, and that his actions reflected attempts to postpone the inevitable. But when he was disregarding warnings from everybody, his very success in creating a system he ran as the most arbitrary and powerful dictator of the 20th Century and possibly ever meant that the USSR's freedom of action was sharply limited. Stalin wasn't thinking there would never be an invasion so much as he expected, I think, that the Balkans Campaign meant there wasn't enough campaigning season left, so that the failure of the Germans to move on the original D-Day and H-Hour meant that the USSR would have until 1942 to get ready.

And as I said, if anyone in 1941 USSR tried to tell Stalin what he wasn't interested in hearing, they were either blessed with balls of adamantium or they had a deathwish.
 
1) Well, in that case you get an inversion of OTL: the Soviets get a bloody nose in a war that sees them gain three new SSRs, and then Finland goes blooie in the next strike. An interesting ATL question is if the USSR bungles the one but gets the FSSR in a model war from the next, what precisely does this do to the Nazi Victory Disease pattern with regard to planning the war with the USSR? Finland's not a small country, after all.

Size-wise in European standards that's true, as the distance from Helsinki to Petsamo was longer than from Mediterranean to North Sea - but by population statistics even a swift conquest of a country that has less population than Berlin might not seem that impressive. Then again it won't create an impression of a colossus with clay feet either, so both sides might prefer to wait for 1942 to make their move.

2) A good summary, the one thing I'd make a little different is that Stalin's foreign policy reflected that the USSR wound up being isolated *knowing* it was weak the whole time, and that his actions reflected attempts to postpone the inevitable. But when he was disregarding warnings from everybody, his very success in creating a system he ran as the most arbitrary and powerful dictator of the 20th Century and possibly ever meant that the USSR's freedom of action was sharply limited.

Yep, he was too succesfull for his own good in this regard.

Stalin wasn't thinking there would never be an invasion so much as he expected, I think, that the Balkans Campaign meant there wasn't enough campaigning season left, so that the failure of the Germans to move on the original D-Day and H-Hour meant that the USSR would have until 1942 to get ready.

And he was right as well, by mid-June it was already too late to invade European Russia.

And as I said, if anyone in 1941 USSR tried to tell Stalin what he wasn't interested in hearing, they were either blessed with balls of adamantium or they had a deathwish.

Yep, hence my previous comments about the difficulties of getting the delayed full-scale invasion to materialize.
 
The Winter War told Hitler what he wanted to hear, that the Soviets would be an easy target. Their recovery and firepower in the second offensive should have told him that the initial impression of ineptitude was deceptive, but that wasn't what he wanted to hear.

Historically, the Soviets tried to correct the German misconceptions about Soviet military power in the months leading up to the German invasion. They took Germans on tours of aircraft factories cranking out mass quantities of modern fighters, for example. They probably should have shown the Germans mass quantities of KV1s and T34s in say May of 1941, let them take pictures even. The optimum situation for the Soviets was for the Germans and the west to occupy each other long enough for the Soviets to finish rearming and enter the war at a time and on a side of its own choosing, and revealing a couple of new models of tanks was probably worth risking giving the Germans another month to prepare for those tanks.

A later war with Finland would almost certainly reveal the new Soviet tanks, and almost certainly would make the Soviets look at least a little more competent. Would that be enough to deter Hitler, or would it just mean that Barbarossa was better thought out and prepared?

That's a tough question. A lot of people focus only on one front in the war and fail to grasp the large scale shifts of power from theater to theater that happened or could have happened in 1941. The leaders of the time were quite aware of those shifts.

Hitler was quite aware that in the short-term a German invasion of the Soviet Union would make a Soviet attack on Japanese-held Manchuria impossible and that would allow the Japanese to shift their power south. He hoped that the increased Japanese power would force the US to focus their naval forces on the Pacific, giving him time to prepare for the inevitable war with the US. That sort of worked in the short-term because the US was forced to move naval units to the Pacific and didn't build the fleet in the Atlantic back to pre-Pearl Harbor levels until 1943. Hitler figured he would long since have disposed of the Soviets as a major power by then and would be harnessing ex-Soviet resources to building air and naval power for the war against the US.

Obviously, that strategy overestimated Japanese strength and underestimated the Soviets and the US, but what other strategic choices did Hitler have in 1941? The US was going to enter the war. If it was focused on the Atlantic, the Allies would win the U-boat war sooner than they did historically, and be able to build up forces in Britain far beyond what any conceivable German attack could cope with. They could win in North Africa and build up to invade Germany. All the while, Stalin would be building up and waiting to pounce.

Ironically, the victory in France painted Germany into a strategic corner because it turned them into a threat to the Soviets and the US. At that point the Germans had to neutralize the Soviets, either by diplomacy or war.

Hitler gambled that he could knock the Soviets out of the war while the US was still building and was preoccupied by the Japanese.

Waiting was a losing game because the US and Soviets had more resources to build with.

Concentrating on the west and trying to knock it out was a losing game because the US was invulnerable to Germany and a 1941 version of Sea Lion was even more impossible than the 1940 one. Hitler really didn't have any better options than to attack the Soviets in 1941 that I can see, so I suspect he would have.
 
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