WI: Stalin never recovers

IOTL, Stalin suffered a major nervous breakdown just after Barbarossa began, but recovered from it in time to give the Red Army commands. How is history changed if he never recovers? Does someone in hte Red Army launch a coup d'etat against him, and if so, who? Do the generals assume operational command early enough to repel the Nazis, or does their paralysis and reluctance to act without orders lead to a German victory in the East? If so, how long does WWII last once the Germans start getting nuked?
 
He's more than likely sidelined somewhere far away or killed. And a shared leadership emerges among people like Beria, Molotov, Zhukov, and Malenkov. Of course given their mindsets (especially Beria) lots of plotting and backstabbing could be involved and Stalin's death could be a massive morale drop so Stalin could be kept alive, if only for propaganda reasons and offed if things don't improve or when the war is over after a Soviet victory.

Though feel free to correct me, if I remember correctly, isn't the thing about Stalin shutting himself away for days kind've a myth propagated by people like Khrushchev to discredit Stalin as much as possible and there is enough evidence that during the early days of Barbarossa, Stalin was heavily involved in the planning and orders and never really cut himself off from leading.
 
Stalin not recovering would discredit the Communist Party. Stavka would take over while the government reforms. The military would execute Beria in revenge for the '38 purge. In the confusion, I doubt the factories would be dismantled in time and moved eastwards. The rallying cry would still be 'For The Motherland' and Commissars would be more like morale officers than political officers. Officers like Zhukov would be utilised sooner.
Nazi atrocity, greed, lack of preparedness for a longer war, lack of consistent strategy would still curtail their victory. The war would last at least one to two years longer. If they take Moscow, they won't hold it.
Russian relations with the West would be better.
 
Though feel free to correct me, if I remember correctly, isn't the thing about Stalin shutting himself away for days kind've a myth propagated by people like Khrushchev to discredit Stalin as much as possible and there is enough evidence that during the early days of Barbarossa, Stalin was heavily involved in the planning and orders and never really cut himself off from leading.

Kind of. Khruschev misrepresented it and blew it out of proportion. Stalin's initial reaction to Barbarossa was as you said: he started issuing orders, doing paperwork, and generally being your usual workaholic. Then when Minsk fell on June 26th, Stalin realized just how catastrophic the situation was and that's when the nervous breakdown seems to have begun, with him famously confronting the STAVKA over the issue before storming out. Still, he didn't quite cease working, although the volume of work did decline, and didn't retreat to his Dacha until the 29th and he had clearly recovered by the end of the 30th.
 
IOTL, Stalin suffered a major nervous breakdown just after Barbarossa began, but recovered from it in time to give the Red Army commands. How is history changed if he never recovers? Does someone in hte Red Army launch a coup d'etat against him, and if so, who? Do the generals assume operational command early enough to repel the Nazis, or does their paralysis and reluctance to act without orders lead to a German victory in the East? If so, how long does WWII last once the Germans start getting nuked?

This is, by the way, a myth.

Chris Bellamy goes into the evidence against it at some length in his book "Absolute War".

If he DID have a breakdown and didn't recover, either he picks deputies to handle the heavy lifting while lightening his own workload substantially or if he's a walking coma case, he's effectively replaced within a few weeks as it becomes clear just how bad the German invasion is.

Stalin's team were a blood-soaked bunch of fanatics, but none of them were idiots.

fasquardon
 
Nazi atrocity, greed, lack of preparedness for a longer war, lack of consistent strategy would still curtail their victory. The war would last at least one to two years longer. If they take Moscow, they won't hold it.
Russian relations with the West would be better.

You know, as horrible as that sounds (longer and bloodier conflict with the Nazis reaching even further into Russia), it’s quite possible that the Cold War would end much sooner if it starts at all – would a communist government even survive the aftermath of WW2?
 
A lot depends on how the Politburo reacts. Do they freeze-up and keep trying to get Stalin out of his funk? Do they fall out into in-fighting? Or do they band together and come to a power-sharing agreement which post-pones any kind of power struggle until the war is won? All of these are possible. All of these have their own dynamics which could see the USSR do better or worse.

I don't buy the idea of a military coup for a instant though. The Red Army was never so politically independent minded and the purges had only solidified that.
 
But even that doesn’t exactly sound like a strongman. And I’ve read it was somewhat more than this.

As I said in the post your quoting: the earlier accounts were gross exaggerations by Khruschev, they just got repeated enough to become accepted history in the west until the fall of the USSR and scholars. But by then, so too many historians (particularly "pop" ones) still repeat it. That happened a lot: you see it with many Eastern Front questions like "if the Germans had gone for Moscow first instead of going to Kiev they would have beaten the USSR" where the ideas were established early on by German generals writing their memoirs and weren't challenged until the fall of the USSR allowed better archives from both sides, but since that took so long their ingrained enough that they still get repeated. And so what if it does or does not sound like a strongman? Sometimes Stalin the person did not live up to Stalin the Propaganda Figure. It happens.

Plus, when the Poliburo came to his location, Stalin at first thought he was going to be arrested.

Sure. But once they offered him the position as head of the State Defense Commission, he quickly rebounded.
 
. . . the earlier accounts were gross exaggerations by Khruschev, they just got repeated enough to become accepted history in the west until the fall of the USSR and scholars. But by then, so too many historians (particularly "pop" ones) still repeat it. . .
That’s the challenge of it! :openedeyewink: We have to suss our what history is based on pretty okay sources, and which isn’t, and no question that we should should embrace this challenge. And I strongly suspect both you and I are in agreement on this last point. Now, on some specifics, sure, we probably disagree. For example, that in the first immediate hours of the Nazi attack, Stalin ordered Soviet military units not to fight back hoping upon hope that it was all a mistake and the action of rogue Nazi commanders, and that Hitler would correct this error and pull them back. And obviously, that didn’t happen.

I do think it’s important to run down Stalin.

But . . . I think we can do so honestly. In fact, it’s more effective to do so honestly and to take the tact, maybe it’s not quite as bad as it looks (because frankly, it looks terrible!). Like Heinrich Himmler of the Nazis, we can run him down as a failed chicken farmer. And then we can say, okay, maybe it’s the case that he was a marginal chicken farmer, as if that is any better. Both are effective.
 
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