Stalin’s leadership in WWII is still romanticized in some circles, but in reality, he nearly lost the war before it began.
>Purged his best officers:
1937–38 Great Purge wiped out ~35,000 officers, including Tukhachevsky, the USSR’s most talented strategist. By 1941, the Red Army was leaderless and disorganized.
>Ignored Nazi invasion warnings:
Multiple intel sources (including Richard Sorge) warned of Operation Barbarossa. Stalin called it "provocation" and refused to believe it until it was too late.
Result: Wehrmacht steamrolled to Moscow.
>No strategic flexibility:
Issued strict “no retreat” orders early in the war (Order 270, Order 227 - “Not One Step Back!”), leading to massive encirclements and losses (Kiev pocket: 600,000 Soviet troops lost).
>Micromanagement and paranoia:
Constantly overruled his generals, distrusted anyone with initiative. He wasn’t a strategist, he was a control freak.
>Disastrous Winter War with Finland (1939):
USSR lost 126,000 men trying to beat a tiny country. Revealed how crippled the Red Army was post-purge.
What Actually Saved the USSR:
>Russian Winter:
Wehrmacht was not prepared. Hitler didn’t learn from Napoleon. Frozen tanks, frostbitten troops, stalled offensive at the gates of Moscow.
>Massive geographic depth:
USSR could trade land for time. The Germans outran their supply lines & Stalin’s scorched earth helped slow them down.
>Industrial relocation:
Soviet industry was moved east of the Urals. Stalin did authorize this, and it allowed production to continue away from bombing range.
>Allied Lend-Lease:
FDR's 400,000 trucks, 13,000 tanks, aircraft, food, boots, even entire factories. Without this, Red Army mobility would’ve been garbage.
>Generals who were finally allowed to do their job:
After 1942, Stalin learned to back off. Men like Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Konev led actual strategic counterattacks like Stalingrad and Operation Bagration.
Conclusion:
Stalin didn’t win the war because he was a great leader, he won in spite of himself. His early blunders cost millions of lives and nearly handed Hitler victory. What saved the USSR was a brutal winter, endless geography, American trucks, and generals who finally got a chance to lead.
He was a paranoid dictator who got lucky then took all the credit.
Congratulations, you've unlocked normie-tier understanding of ww2.
>>17856735give us the kneejerk contrarian highwit rundown, anon
>>17856735but why does it make tankies foam at the mouth every time?
in Stalins (twisted) defence, his relentless push towards industrialization during the interwar period (yes the one which caused millions of Ukrainians to starve) is also what saved USSR during ww2.
Trotsky was a military strategist and would likely have preserved the Tsarist military, but he would be fighting ww2 with an agrarian economy.
Stalins ruthless regime also weeded out even the slightest theoretical existence of opposition or movement against the Soviet state and hardened the regime grip over the apparatus, which was a core reason why the Soviet state managed to absorb the catastrophic situation in late 1941 (the entire German strategy relied on the assumption that it would collapse, "we only need to kick in the door" speech).
Ultimately, like you're pointing out, the real question isn't how the Germans could have won the war, but rather how the hell they got as far as they did.
Their enemies were practically neutered and retarded, paving the way for the perfect storm because all the stars were aligned, but as the war progress the stroke of luck only lasted as long. The Germans depended on allied incompetence for success. Once that stopped, the Germans had no way of winning. Ww2 was a pointless gamble from the beginning.
>>17856759Trotsky was hardly some kind of agrarian maxxxer that opposed industrialisation
>>17856727 (OP)Stalin himself was a retard with a below 80 IQ, however the extreme devotion the Russian people had for him was the only reason that the USSR didn't immediately disintegrate in 1941. If the Russian leader had been literally anyone else they would have immediately had a 1917/1991 situation on their hands
>>17856759>Ww2 was a pointless gamble from the beginning.Agreed. Hitler’s entire war plan hinged on quick, overwhelming victories. Once that failed Germany was always on borrowed time.
>>17856727 (OP)>WinterCommon myth, but mud was actually more responsible for the German failure.
Winter came as a gift because it hardened the ground and allowed the offensivet o continue.
>list of reasonsYou unironically forgot the most important reason, which was that the Soviets simply adapted and learned from their mistakes. This includes Stalin.
By 1944 the Red Army had developed into a sophisticated military (from the crippled political party branch it had been when it first entered Finland).
>>17856771And yet, Stalin did not make one single mistake.
>>17856759Stalin literally just copied his industrialization plan from Trotsky. Also there is another thread up about this same topic.
>>17856771He didn’t really love the Russian people that much. He just didn’t hate them like the rest of the Bolshevik Jews, Churkas, and Latvians did.
>>17856767Not even the point I was making.
The point I was making was that Trotsky wasn't (or at least we can assume he wasn't) as ruthless as Stalin when it came to achieving rapid industrialization and collectivism. Stalin was prepared to walk over 30 million dead Soviet citizens to make it happen as fast as possible, and it was right in time for ww2. Trotsky would have picked the longer route.
>>17856783I actually agree with him.
You better argue why he's wrong. Retard.
>>17856782Killing milions of peasants due to your own economic illiteracy and fits of seething rage isn't productive to prosperity of the state.
China industrialized faster and better by rejection of Stalin's cannibalism
>>17856775>Winter came as a gift because it hardened the ground and allowed the offensive to continue.Yes, but extreme cold disables tank engines.
They had to literally start fires below the tanks to make them kick off in the morning.
Plus frostbite
>>17856838Its still preferable to tanks (or anything else) not moving at all. Mud stalled everything.
>>17856836I dont think you understand the point I was making.
>>17856782>Stalin was prepared to walk over 30 million dead Soviet citizens to make it happen as fast as possible, and it was right in time for ww2Soooo, Stalin is good because he killed 30 million Soviet citizens himself to prevent them being killed by the invading Germans?
>>17856902Literally not the point I was making.
It was that had anyone else been in power, Soviet industrialization would have been slower and consequently more unprepared for ww2.
That doesn't mean Stalin is smart or benevolent, or that the tens of millions dead from the forced industrialization and collectivism was justified or good. I wasn't moralizing his regime, it's simply an observation.
I dont know of you're just pretending to be dumb just to rattle an argument, or actually fucking stupid. I dont think I can make my point more simplified explained, but I'm sure you're going to look for a way to misinterpret it.
>>17856727 (OP)I’m sorry but I don’t buy the whole bazillion officiers purged thing. One does not unplug their state apparatus and then go on to win a world war. It’s just propaganda to discredit USSR/communism. It also doesn’t add up with their purgeless WW I performance against a much weaker Germany.
>>17856759Uh what, it was Trotsky who was the one pushing for collectivization and fast industrialization, Stalin pretty much copied his ideas after exiling him. In "The Revolution Betrayed" the only good thing Trotsky has to say about the Soviet government is about the industrialization of the country
>>1785690230 million people? Where did you get this number?
