By 15 May Timoshenko and Zhukov were ready to present the new plan to Stalin. Though building directly on the earlier plans, it differed in one striking respect. It now envisaged a major pre-emptive strike, as Zhukov later acknowledged, to forestall the enemy by attacking the German army before it was ready to launch its own offensive. As before, the main directional thrust was towards southern Poland, where the enemy would be destroyed by a ‘sudden blow’ on land and from the air. The advance included the conquest of Warsaw, and subsequently the destruction of German forces in northern Poland and the overrunning of East Prussia...
Worried as they were by the incessant flow of intelligence reports on troop movements together with indications (if not always consistent) of hostile German intent towards the Soviet Union, Timoshenko and Zhukov nevertheless most probably thought, like Stalin, that the German attack was not imminent. Red Army estimates indicated that the German build-up in the east had not been great in recent weeks, and that a far larger concentration of strength would have to occur before any attack took place. And, as the Soviet military leaders were only too well aware, the forces available to the Red Army nowhere approached those required under the 15 May plan, and major deficiencies were still obvious in transport and supplies. The plan also encompassed the construction of huge defensive fortifications, which were nowhere near completion. As a blueprint for action in the near future, therefore, the plan was utterly unrealistic. Most probably, Timoshenko and Zhukov had in mind an offensive at some stage in the more distant future, probably at the earliest during the summer of 1942.