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I was listening to a radio show about Operation Barbarossa yesterday, and the host said that Stalin had an extensive network of spies scattered throughout the near East, hoping to gain intelligence about the intentions of the Japanese. Stalin, in his usual paranoid fashion, was afraid the Japanese would hop across the border from Manchuko and start taking large swathes of Eastern Siberia from the Soviets. However, in October 1941, a spy reported to Stalin that the Japanese had solidified their war aims--namely, to attack the colonial possessions in the eastern and south Pacific of the major powers. Stalin, therefore seeing no need for keeping his Siberian legions pinned down for no reason, decides to transport them west, to assist in the defense of Moscow. They don't arrive until December, but that's exactly when they're needed most. These fresh troops play an integral part in knocking the exhausted and frostbitten Germans back from the gates of Moscow. But what if some tragedy had befallen the spy and Stalin never got word of Japan's war aims? What if the information never reached him and he never had his Siberian soldiers sent west? I doubt the Germans will take Moscow in the winter of '41, but I also don't think that the Russian counterattack will have the same impetus that it did in OTL. The Germans might be pushed back in the event of a counterattack-there's no way they're getting into Moscow-but I don't think they'd be sent reeling either. How does this affect the Eastern War?
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