What if Operation Barbarossa had never happend?

>look ma, I pointed out a typo!

Fine, Ribbentrop. Happy? The fact remains that Stalin's "boundless expansionism" was surprisingly nonexistent for the first 17 years of his rule, and then only into the countries he made an agreement with Germany to enter into.

?
It's a fact Stalin was preparing for invading other countries, not defending his own. Whole Russian military was build to face enemies on their land, not Russian land.

russia became a vassel of anglo saxon hegemony and its long rough and not very fun times for germ-aust

>e, Ribbentrop. Happy? The fact remains that Stalin's "boundless expansionism" was surprisingly nonexistent for the first 17 years of his rule, and then only into the countries he made an agreement with Germany to enter into.

Its because the Soviets got BTFO by Poland in the 1920's.

Really. Its not as if Stalin thought expansionism was a bad idea, its just the Red Army had issues.

Had Hitler not invaded Russia in 1941, perhaps instead to invade England or pursue a Mediterranean strategy, he still would have eventually invaded, perhaps in 1942. In that eventuality, Germany most likely would have had much more trouble as Russia would have completed it's force reorganization and T-34's would be the primary tank in most Russian tank divisions. The Germans would still have superior tactics and training, but vastly inferior armor. Realistically, the summer of 1941 was only time an invasion was possible, even if a military victory wasn't.

>Stalin
>In charge during the Russo-Polish war.

Wrong. Nice try, but Stalin only became the General Secretary in 1922.

regent

Actually it was Germany and German army that made sure Reds will win.

Austist. I didn't say Stalin was in charge.

It was just obvious that despite its vast manpower and resources it was obvious to Stalin that the Red army was shit.

>Austist. I didn't say Stalin was in charge.

No, you just decided without any particular evidence that Stalin would continue policies that were enacted before he was in charge, despite a 17 year lapse in any real attempt to do so. It's an interesting way to make a point. That it's "obvious" that despite a setback almost a generation ago, Stalin would still be using that to influence his foreign policy, instead of much more recent events and geopolitics.

It's pretty obvious that Stalin was a political opportunist, and that there's little if any opportunism in striking at Germany, a real major power that could give him serious difficulties.

The Red Army was actually become very decent before the great purges. Tukhachevsky was developing similar strategies akin to Guderian before he was put on trial. Imagine if the Russians in 1941/42 had had German level doctrines with T-34s. Would have been a short war.

It wasn't until after the Winter war with Finland that Stalin realized he needed to reform the military along with what they had been doing. In the years prior, they had taken all of their armor and divided it up to support the infantry. Likewise, high level officers also wanted to get rid of all armor and go back to cavalry.

Not him, but that's not really correct on really any level.

Just because a grand strategic outlook is similar (and more on that later) doesn't mean that tactical and operational performance is even remotely similar. The Wehrmacht relied on giving more junior officers significant initiative and loose orders, which in turn created much faster response times than pretty much any contemporary army was capable of. It meant that things like artillery and armor support got to where they were needed when they were needed, instead of getting there too late. The Red Army never developed anything remotely similar, with tight control borne out of fear of the army turning against the Party being the order of the day.

Plus, Tucachevsky's notion of Deep Battle only retained superficial similarities to how the Germans did things. His multi-axial attacks required a pretty enormous advantage before you could reliably get a breakthrough in 3-4 places at once, as opposed to just trying to find a weak point and punching through there. You look at the actual attempts to implement it in war and they couldn't do it until 44, when the Germans were in a vast position of inferiority vis a vis the Soviets.

Zhukov retained an almost entirely unpurged junior officer corps (and of course was unpurged himself, with an extensive combat record going back all the way to the civil war), and his showing at Khalkin Gol or the other Soviet-Manchurian border conflicts was nowhere near the level of what the Germans were doing. Even had the purges not occurred, a considerable personnel inferiority seems indicated.

If the purges hadn't happened the army thrown out of balance, they would have done better against Finland, would have been much better prepared against Germany and possibly would have halted them further west than they did in 1941. Imagine if Germany had been bled without advancing past Smolensk and had taken much higher casualties in reducing Kiev. Perhaps something like Operation Bagration would have happened in 1942 instead of 1944.

>If the purges hadn't happened the army thrown out of balance, they would have done better against Finland,

And again, the largely unpurged elements of the Far East Command didn't have a performance to write home about. Did the purges hurt them? Sure. Would they have been anywhere near German quality without the purges? Almost certainly not.

And since it was logistical constraints, not tactical ones that halted the initial German advance, even a superior Soviet performance might not have actually checked the German rush at the beginning.

>Imagine if Germany had been bled without advancing past Smolensk and had taken much higher casualties in reducing Kiev. Perhaps something like Operation Bagration would have happened in 1942 instead of 1944.

And while we're at it, why don't we imagine a France that isn't pants on head retarded, used the Mechelen Incident to set up and fortify in depth in Belgium in the winter and early spring of 1940, and stopped the war dead in its tracks there.

It's a hell of a lot more probable than the chain of assumptions necessary to stop the Wehrmacht at Smolensk.

but the ebil soviets were going to invade the world truly hitler saved us xd