barbarossa

Stalingrad was merely the consequence IMO as Barbarossa had led to German army being both weakened and stretched too far out.

The governments have known this clearly since the 1940s - see the Barbarossa operation.

We even warned the Soviet Union of Operation Barbarossa after breaking the Geheimschreiber code.

Early stages of Barbarossa were very successful and much of the Soviet Air Force, which had been forward positioned for invasion, was destroyed.

The war would likely be fought very differently - or not fought at all, as Hitler wouldn't be so careless with his Barbarossa plan.

The thesis of Icebreaker [1], a controversial history book by an ex-GRU officer, is that Stalin was planning an invasion of Germany right when Operation Barbarossa happened.

Spain got in the fight at the vehement request of the Papacy -- and because Muslim corsairs were raiding their coastline with substantial vigor (including the Barbarossa twins).

Nor does the war have anything to do with Barbarossa or many other historical comparisons; Russian propaganda generally avoids drawing comparisons to Barbarossa because Ukraine was at the forefront of the invasion and the historical parallels between the invaders would be too obvious.

You get the impression that though Hitler hated Russia and Russians, it was events that led to Barbarossa rather than Hitler's long-term plan -- things got away from his control real quick.

Of course the failure of Operation Barbarossa was huge, but there was a point when Stalin must have been really afraid about the future his capital (end of July 1941, before Nazi troops diverted north for Leningrad and south for Kiev, following an order from the Furer himself; his generals strongly opposed this order).

Just a few things from what I'm studying right now, plus one big one: They didn't shut down the Comintern, their official organization for subverting and destroying us, until 2 years minus about 5 weeks after Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion), while we (the US) started supplying them with equipment on credit ~3 months after (for gold and minerals before, while the first arrangement was hammered out).

It reminds me, in an encouraging way, of the way that German military planners regarded the Soviet Union in the lead-up to Operation Barbarossa.

Either scenario would be explanation for initial successes of Operation Barbarossa.

> It reminds me, in an encouraging way, of the way that German military planners regarded the Soviet Union in the lead-up to Operation Barbarossa.