TLDR: He ignored multiple warnings from his spies and allied intelligence.
Here is a short timeline of the days leading up to the invasion:
June 18-A Soviet spy in Luftwaffe says that invasion seems imminent, Stalin replied, “Tell your ‘source’ from the German Air Force HQ to go f-ck itself. This is not a source but a disinformer.”
June 20-Stalin has left Moscow- heading on holiday to his dacha (summer home). Claims German armies massing on Soviet border are “Hitler’s bluff”.
June 21-From Japan the Soviet spy Richard Sorge reports an imminent invasion of the USSR, from his contacts in German embassy: “95 percent certain war will commence” within days. In Moscow, Stalin denounces the Soviet spymaster as “a little shit who has set himself up with some small factories & brothels in Japan.”
June 21-Soviet embassy in Berlin sends Stalin a newly printed German to Russian phrase-book made for the Wehrmacht & stolen by Communist spies; example phrases include: “Are you NKVD?” “Where is the collective farm?”
June 21- Alfred Liskow, German deserter- a former Communist- crosses Soviet border to tell NKVD border guards that an attack on USSR is planned for tomorrow. Stalin orders him shot as a disinformant.
Germany invades USSR on 22nd June
June 22- Desperate Soviet border guards signal to Moscow: “We’re being fired on. What do we do?” Response: “You must be mad, no-one can be attacking you; & why isn’t your signal in code?”
June 22-German artillery & Luftwaffe bombing are wreaking havoc across unprepared Red Army, many of whom who don’t dare fire back; Stalin has forbidden “provocative” acts.”
June 22- Stalin has called an emergency meeting of the Politburo. He still claims wholescale invasion is a provocation by German generals. “Hitler surely does not know about it.”
GustavoistSoldier on
The reason he doubted Germany would invade was because of the nonaggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union.
commissionerahueston on
“The official position of the State is that a large-scale land invasion is not possible in the Soviet Union.”
SasquatchMcKraken on
He needed until 1942 or so to be ready for an invasion so he willed himself into believing that he had that amount of time, evidence be damned. Play nice and don’t move a muscle until then and all will be well. Obviously that was the deadliest fuck-up and miscalculation in history, but even few Germans could’ve foreseen the literally apocalyptic style of war Hitler had planned for the Soviets. He said it and wrote it often, but that scale of bloodshed and barbarism is hard to imagine someone actually doing.
Snaggmaw on
I personally think its bad writing by the author. Like, i get that for the story to work the soviet Union needed to be incompetently ran under Stalin but i’ve always found it to be a massive plothole.
TheGreatOneSea on
Stalin admitting that his deal with Hitler was going to cause a one-front war against the USSR before Russia had any hope of establishing a defensive line (the old one was being moved forward, so the Soviets weren’t ready,) was dangerous to Stalin in-and-of itself: Finland had shown that Stalin was not prepared for war, so Stalin might very well have been executed and replaced by some general, if anyone had actually been planning to do so.
A German invasion would also mean Stalin’s life was effectively in the hands of Churchill: if he said that Stalin had to be punished for his role in the fall of both Poland and France before any aid was given, then Stalin would have been dead in weeks.
And because the last thing a man as paranoid as Stalin would want to accept was that his life was in others hands, it stands to reason that he wouldn’t want to accept the circumstances that would cause that either.
7 Comments
TLDR: He ignored multiple warnings from his spies and allied intelligence.
Here is a short timeline of the days leading up to the invasion:
June 18-A Soviet spy in Luftwaffe says that invasion seems imminent, Stalin replied, “Tell your ‘source’ from the German Air Force HQ to go f-ck itself. This is not a source but a disinformer.”
June 20-Stalin has left Moscow- heading on holiday to his dacha (summer home). Claims German armies massing on Soviet border are “Hitler’s bluff”.
June 21-From Japan the Soviet spy Richard Sorge reports an imminent invasion of the USSR, from his contacts in German embassy: “95 percent certain war will commence” within days. In Moscow, Stalin denounces the Soviet spymaster as “a little shit who has set himself up with some small factories & brothels in Japan.”
June 21-Soviet embassy in Berlin sends Stalin a newly printed German to Russian phrase-book made for the Wehrmacht & stolen by Communist spies; example phrases include: “Are you NKVD?” “Where is the collective farm?”
June 21- Alfred Liskow, German deserter- a former Communist- crosses Soviet border to tell NKVD border guards that an attack on USSR is planned for tomorrow. Stalin orders him shot as a disinformant.
Germany invades USSR on 22nd June
June 22- Desperate Soviet border guards signal to Moscow: “We’re being fired on. What do we do?” Response: “You must be mad, no-one can be attacking you; & why isn’t your signal in code?”
June 22-German artillery & Luftwaffe bombing are wreaking havoc across unprepared Red Army, many of whom who don’t dare fire back; Stalin has forbidden “provocative” acts.”
June 22- Stalin has called an emergency meeting of the Politburo. He still claims wholescale invasion is a provocation by German generals. “Hitler surely does not know about it.”
The reason he doubted Germany would invade was because of the nonaggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union.
“The official position of the State is that a large-scale land invasion is not possible in the Soviet Union.”
He needed until 1942 or so to be ready for an invasion so he willed himself into believing that he had that amount of time, evidence be damned. Play nice and don’t move a muscle until then and all will be well. Obviously that was the deadliest fuck-up and miscalculation in history, but even few Germans could’ve foreseen the literally apocalyptic style of war Hitler had planned for the Soviets. He said it and wrote it often, but that scale of bloodshed and barbarism is hard to imagine someone actually doing.
I personally think its bad writing by the author. Like, i get that for the story to work the soviet Union needed to be incompetently ran under Stalin but i’ve always found it to be a massive plothole.
Stalin admitting that his deal with Hitler was going to cause a one-front war against the USSR before Russia had any hope of establishing a defensive line (the old one was being moved forward, so the Soviets weren’t ready,) was dangerous to Stalin in-and-of itself: Finland had shown that Stalin was not prepared for war, so Stalin might very well have been executed and replaced by some general, if anyone had actually been planning to do so.
A German invasion would also mean Stalin’s life was effectively in the hands of Churchill: if he said that Stalin had to be punished for his role in the fall of both Poland and France before any aid was given, then Stalin would have been dead in weeks.
And because the last thing a man as paranoid as Stalin would want to accept was that his life was in others hands, it stands to reason that he wouldn’t want to accept the circumstances that would cause that either.
Lmao 🤣