04-11-2005, 08:01 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-11-2005, 08:03 AM by Chuck In Oregon.)
This forum has some fine historians, but that doesn't include me. Nor do I have access to my meager resources while I'm here in Tbilisi.
"Did he know?" is a perennial question. Your instructors are proof. As I recall, there were a couple of German defectors and some higher-level intelligence that gave up the date and time for the attack and that information went all the way to Stalin. Again only from memory, I think he may have had the defectors executed. If you actually have the information, as it seems likely he did, and fail to act on it, how would you characterize that behavior?
That the Red Army may have held some manuevers near the border certainly didn't help them much when the attack finally came. I tend to dismiss that from any possible answer to your question or at least I doubt its relevance. As for why they were so unprepared, maybe executing most of his senior officers had something to do with that.
My opinion is that Stalin always knew that war with Germany was inevitable. Given their respective ideologies, was there ever a real alternative? I would love to know the definitive answer to what Stalin was doing at his dacha immediately after the invasion. I suspect that he was petrified that he would be seen as an enemy of the people for having "allowed" it to happen. He knew what happened to enemies of the people. I suspect he was very relieved when it finally turned out that the nation was turning to him for leadership instead of hanging him as an incompetent bumbler.
But those are just my own thoughts.
Chuck
"Did he know?" is a perennial question. Your instructors are proof. As I recall, there were a couple of German defectors and some higher-level intelligence that gave up the date and time for the attack and that information went all the way to Stalin. Again only from memory, I think he may have had the defectors executed. If you actually have the information, as it seems likely he did, and fail to act on it, how would you characterize that behavior?
That the Red Army may have held some manuevers near the border certainly didn't help them much when the attack finally came. I tend to dismiss that from any possible answer to your question or at least I doubt its relevance. As for why they were so unprepared, maybe executing most of his senior officers had something to do with that.
My opinion is that Stalin always knew that war with Germany was inevitable. Given their respective ideologies, was there ever a real alternative? I would love to know the definitive answer to what Stalin was doing at his dacha immediately after the invasion. I suspect that he was petrified that he would be seen as an enemy of the people for having "allowed" it to happen. He knew what happened to enemies of the people. I suspect he was very relieved when it finally turned out that the nation was turning to him for leadership instead of hanging him as an incompetent bumbler.
But those are just my own thoughts.
Chuck
