I just ran across some accounts of Hiter's meeting with Mannerheim (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_and_Mannerheim_recording) where supposedly -there is some dispute about the authenticity of the recording- Hitler told Mannerheim that the Red Army had much more tanks than he thought and he would have thought twice about invading Russia in 1941 if he had received better intelligence.
So lets say Hitler gets more accurate intelligence estimates. What does he do and what happens next? The Red Army is only going to get bigger and is going to complete its reorganization if Hitler waits until 1942. I've seen arguments that June 1941 was the perfect time for Germany to attack, if they were going to do it. But with the added intelligence, Hitler has some options:
1) Do the historical June 1941 invasion anyway, for the reasons I alluded to above.
2) Launch Barbarossa but completely change the plans in the view of the added intelligence. This could change the date of the attack, or more likely settle the "Moscow or Ukraine" question firmly in one direction or the other, since its obvious now that the Germans can't do both.
3) Wait until 1942 but overhaul German war production and German strategy in the war against Britain so that they go in with the largest army they can. This means changes to armor production that historically happened later. It could mean trying harder to arrange peace with the UK, or at least recalling Rommel and shutting down Med operations, to maximize the fuel and aircraft used against Russia.
4) Just abandon the whole "grab a big continental empire and crush bolshevism" idea which was sort of central to Hitler's world view, and hope that either Stalin doesn't attack or any attack by the USSR can be handled.
Also see this thread from earlier this year, though I think what I am asking is somewhat different:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-1942-they-would-have-defeated-russia.450287/
There is butterfly potential on the Far East, if the Germans remember to incorporate the Japanese into their changes in strategy, though that would require a level of co-ordinated thinking that the Axis never really came close to achieving.