Did Stalin know that Hitler was going to invade?

[LatinasAreTheFuture]

My understanding is that he definitely knew, and the choice to let hitler invade was some kind of strategic decision. And obviously Stalin didn’t trust hitler... so clearly it wasn’t a mistake.

 

[Semiprofessional Sperg]

He did go on a drunk bender/have a mental breakdown for a solid week after hitler invaded though

 

[Milkis]

Whatever his internal thoughts were, Stalin seems to have trusted Hitler in his actions.
- He repeatedly tried to join the Axis in exchange for adding Iran and Afghanistan and possibly part of Turkey to the Soviet sphere of influence that had been hashed out by Molotov-Ribbentrop.
- In the months leading up to Barbarossa, the Germans were increasingly late on their trade deliveries, eventually stopping the shipment of materials to the USSR altogether; despite this, the Soviets diligently delivered all the grain they were obliged to under M-R.
- Stalin's stated political-strategic thinking was that the Germans and Allies were capitalist powers wearing each other down, and had no resources to spare on the USSR. Don't forget that the Allies briefly made plans to go to war with the USSR over Finland, and spurned his offer in 1938 to preemptively strike Germany, so he saw them as no friends, either.
- Over the spring of '41 as Barbarossa was being staged, Stalin apparently believed Hitler's explanation for the dozens of divisions massing in western Poland and east Prussia: they were being stationed out of the reach of RAF bombers. I am not sure if he was aware that the air war over Britain had wound down in late 1940, or if he thought Germany was being struck like '43-'44, which would have made Hitler's excuse more believable.

It is said that part of the reason the Wehrmacht had such operational success between 22 June '41 and the end of the Battle of Kiev was that Stalin himself was planning to invade: the entire Ukrainian and Belorussian fronts were deployed right up against the Soviet border, with no operational reserves held in the rear. Thus once the Germans broke through their lines they were unable to mount a defence in depth. So maybe Stalin's demonstrated "trust" was more what he thought was an exercise in diplomatic maskirovka.

 

[Mister Qwerty]

Russian author Viktor Suvorov wrote a book that claimed that Stalin was planning to launch a surprise attack against Nazi Germany in July 1941 and argued that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike by Hitler as a response to Stalin's plans for invasion.

 

[BlueSpark]

He did go on a drunk bender/have a mental breakdown for a solid week after hitler invaded though

He was a Slav, though, so he would have done that anyway

 

[Salubrious]

My impression has always been that Stalin thought it would come eventually, but not before the Western Front was taken care of, as Stalin thought that Hilter would not want to spread his forces so thin by fighting in both directions. So the timing caught him off guard.

 

[Autopsy]

- Stalin's stated political-strategic thinking was that the Germans and Allies were capitalist powers wearing each other down, and had no resources to spare on the USSR. Don't forget that the Allies briefly made plans to go to war with the USSR over Finland, and spurned his offer in 1938 to preemptively strike Germany, so he saw them as no friends, either.

Hitler may very well have taken a mutually beneficial stance with the USSR were it not for the necessity to keep the army occupying the East moving or to vacate the region. Devastation in Poland and waste of resources abounded through the raping and pillaging of the countryside. This placed hard limits on how long Eastern occupation could last without more peasants to mug. Meanwhile, across Germany petroleum stores were dying up, so either Hitler had to move East again to keep the troops fed by pillaging the Ukrainian countryside and start pushing southeast of Moscow to claim the oil fields, or he needed a lasting peace and to draw these troops away from the East entirely.
Once you integrate the idea that Germany needed control of Eastern Europe as far as the Black Sea to feed, clothe, and transport German armies if it wanted to survive the pressures and embargos that would inevitably follow the war, the way Hitler moved here makes sense.

 

[Robotic Overlord]

The main problem is (again) a genuine lack of reliable sources...
How would someone know that some other person would 'know' something in advance?

Surely, there are enough people around who want to sell their 'history books' with half-truths and guesstimates.

 

[mr.moon1488]

I think he thought it was possible, but didn't think Hitler would pull the trigger so fast. Hitler thought (and rightfully so) that the USSR was eventually going to declare war on the Reich, so he decided to get the drop on the USSR before it had really consolidated anything as that gave them the best odds of winning. For the Reich, it was kind of the same situation Thebes was in during the Macedonian conquest. They could either bide their time and fight at a bigger disadvantage than what they currently had, or push out and attack while only slightly disadvantaged.

 

[Big Ruski]

If Stalin acted on getting rid of his Jews during the war before attempting to at the end of his life it would've made for better assurance

 

[Kill a Troon for Pikamee]

He did go on a drunk bender/have a mental breakdown for a solid week after hitler invaded though

It's somewhat of a soviet urban legend as I never found any definite sources for that but apparently Stalin also went on a retreat to some monks to pray when Hitler invaded, this fucked him up so much he reverted to Christianity lol

Stalin 100% didn't know because the decision to attack USSR was INSANE, ridiculous and absurd, just completely deranged.

 

[Wowcoolusername]

From what I've read, Hitler gave Stalin his word that they were friends and he would never invade. Even though he never considered them to be friends and he always knew conflict with Germany was inevitable, Stalin disregarded all the intel his higher ups gave him concerning Hitlers imminent invasion because he thought it more likely that they were feeding him false intel in order to enact a coup, rather than Hitler being foolish enough to wage a war on two fronts. Stalin genuinely believed there was no way Hitler could be (in Stalins opinion) that stupid, and I believe there's even quotes of him saying no man could possibly be so arrogant and short sighted to do so. Another quote I vaguely remember reading (could just as easily be my imagination) was Stalin said something to the effect of "Never put yourself in your enemies shoes, because you will always overestimate their intelligence."
A sightly off topic and more-than-slightly unpopular opinion, while Stalin was a horrible human being (and I dont think that could possibly be said enough, an absolutely atrocious despicable HORIBLE human being...), aside from a few notable blunders (the Hitler situation being one of them) Stalin was an absolutely undeniable genius and one of the most gifted and cunning (dare I say cunning WITHOUT EQUAL) leaders the world has ever seen. He was a short, sickly, tubby, ugly man, who spoke with an uneducated accent/stuttered, came from a poor/immigrant background, had multiple SERIOUS run ins with the law before his rise to power, and had less charisma than an old gym sock... but the man was an absolute legend even in his own time and was most certainly born to be a military/nation leader the likes of which the world had seen only once or twice before (such as my boy Big Chungus Khan) and likely will never see another man of his capabilites again.

 

[Smug Chuckler]

Do you think you can trust someone that you just had a proxy war with a few years ago?

 

[DumbDude42]

My understanding is that he definitely knew, and the choice to let hitler invade was some kind of strategic decision. And obviously Stalin didn’t trust hitler... so clearly it wasn’t a mistake.

he knew that an eventual clash with nazi germany was inevitable, some say he was already drafting his own plans to invade germany.
stalin did however assume that germany would not start an invasion while they were still at war with britain, so he didn't think it was a pressing issue. that's why the german invasion caught him so off guard.

 

[LatinasAreTheFuture]

Cool

 

[KingCoelacanth]

My understanding is that he definitely knew, and the choice to let hitler invade was some kind of strategic decision. And obviously Stalin didn’t trust hitler... so clearly it wasn’t a mistake.

No. Stalin and Hitler reached a non-aggression pact that heavily favored the USSR (as in the USSR would receive a lot of territory compared to Nazi Germany). Stalin thought the deal was great and that he really won one over on Hitler, but Hitler had no plans of honoring the pact so the pact favoring Stalin didn't matter to him.
After dividing the land between them, Stalin moved defensive installments and troops to the new boundary of the USSR. When the invasion happened, Stalin was sure that it was just a misunderstanding and ordered his troops not to repel the invading Germans. This led to many troops being captured, warplanes and tanks being destroyed and countless factories being lost, with the remaining factories hastily disassembled and put onto trains to be moved further East. The Germans were essentially unopposed for the start of their operation, but then got stuck in the mud.

 

[millais]

Soviet espionage and military intelligence had accurately predicted the start of the invasion down to the day. On some points at the Polish border, the Soviet officers on the ground could even see with their own eyes the German forces on the opposite side obviously forming up on their jump-off points and deploying heavy weapons, bridging equipment, etc in plain sight in the week leading up to the invasion.

But Stalin himself disbelieved all the information he was receiving.

 

[BScCollateral]

Khrushchev's autobiography states everyone thought it would happen eventually, but the timing surprised everyone.

 

[biozeminadae1]

He was a Slav, though, so he would have done that anyway

Except he wasn't... he was Georgian.

 

[draggs]

Stalin the most paranoid motherfucker in history and the one dude he trust was Adolf