Editing Operation Barbarossa (section)

==Soviet preparations==
{{see also|Soviet offensive plans controversy|2006 Soviet war documents declassification}}
[[File:Жуков и Тимошенко, 1940 год.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Semyon Timoshenko]] and [[Georgy Zhukov]] in 1940]]
In 1930, [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]], a prominent military theorist in [[armoured warfare|tank warfare]] in the [[interwar period]] and later [[Marshal of the Soviet Union]], forwarded a memo to the Kremlin that lobbied for colossal investment in the resources required for the mass production of weapons, pressing the case for "40,000 aircraft and 50,000 tanks."{{sfn|Clark|2012|p=56}} In the early 1930s, a modern operational [[Military doctrine|doctrine]] for the Red Army was developed and promulgated in the 1936 Field Regulations in the form of the [[Soviet deep battle|Deep Battle Concept]]. Defence expenditure also grew rapidly from just 12 percent of the [[gross national product]] in 1933 to 18 percent by 1940.{{sfn|Clark|2012|p=55}}

During Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the late 1930s, which had not ended by the time of the German invasion on 22 June 1941, much of the officer corps of the Red Army was executed or imprisoned. Many of their replacements, appointed by Stalin for political reasons, lacked military competence.{{sfn|Glantz|1998|p=26}}{{sfn|Glantz|2011|p=55}}{{sfn|Clark|2012|p=57}} Of the five Marshals of the Soviet Union appointed in 1935, only [[Kliment Voroshilov]] and [[Semyon Budyonny]] survived Stalin's purge. Tukhachevsky was killed in 1937. Fifteen of 16 army commanders, 50 of the 57 corps commanders, 154 of the 186 divisional commanders, and 401 of 456 colonels were killed, and many other officers were dismissed.{{sfn|Clark|2012|p=57}} In total, about 30,000 Red Army personnel were executed.{{sfn|Rayfield|2004|p=315}} Stalin further underscored his control by reasserting the role of [[political commissar]]s at the divisional level and below to oversee the political loyalty of the army to the regime. The commissars held a position equal to that of the commander of the unit they were overseeing.{{sfn|Clark|2012|p=57}} But in spite of efforts to ensure the political subservience of the armed forces, in the wake of Red Army's poor performance in Poland and in the Winter War, about 80 percent of the officers dismissed during the Great Purge were reinstated by 1941. Also, between January 1939 and May 1941, 161 new divisions were activated.{{sfn|Glantz|2011|p=22}}{{sfn|Clark|2012|p=58}} Therefore, although about 75 percent of all the officers had been in their position for less than one year at the start of the German invasion of 1941, many of the short tenures can be attributed not only to the purge but also to the rapid increase in the creation of military units.{{sfn|Clark|2012|p=58}}

Beginning in July 1940, the Red Army General Staff developed war plans that identified the ''Wehrmacht'' as the most dangerous threat to the Soviet Union, and that in the case of a war with Germany, the ''Wehrmacht''{{'}}s main attack would come through the region north of the [[Pripyat Marshes]] into Belorussia,{{sfn|Glantz|2011|p=15}}{{sfn|Glantz|2010a|p=21}} which later proved to be correct.{{sfn|Glantz|2011|p=15}} Stalin disagreed, and in October, he authorised the development of new plans that assumed a German attack would focus on the region south of Pripyat Marshes towards the economically vital regions in Ukraine. This became the basis for all subsequent Soviet war plans and the deployment of their armed forces in preparation for the German invasion.{{sfn|Glantz|2011|p=15}}{{sfn|Glantz|2010a|pp=21–22}}

In the Soviet Union, speaking to his generals in December 1940, Stalin mentioned Hitler's references to an attack on the Soviet Union in ''Mein Kampf'' and Hitler's belief that the Red Army would need four years to ready itself. Stalin declared "we must be ready much earlier" and "we will try to delay the war for another two years".{{sfn|Berthon|Potts|2007|p=47}} As early as August 1940, British intelligence had received hints of German plans to attack the Soviets a week after Hitler informally approved the plans for ''Barbarossa'' and warned the Soviet Union accordingly.{{sfn|Waller|1996|p=192}} Some of this intelligence was based on [[Ultra (cryptography)|Ultra]] information obtained from broken [[Enigma machine|Enigma]] traffic.{{sfn|Budiansky|2001|loc=Chapter 6}} However, Stalin's distrust of the British led him to ignore their warnings in the belief that they were a trick designed to bring the Soviet Union into the war on their side.{{sfn|Waller|1996|p=192}}{{sfn|Roberts|1995|p=1293}} Soviet intelligence also received word of an invasion around 20 June from [[Mao Zedong]] whose spy, Yan Baohang, had overheard talk of the plans at a dinner with a German [[military attaché]] and sent word to [[Zhou Enlai]].{{sfn|Faligot|2019|p=38}} The Chinese maintain the tipoff helped Stalin make preparations, though little exists to confirm the Soviets made any real changes upon receiving the intelligence.{{sfn|Faligot|2019|p=38}} In early 1941, Stalin's own [[intelligence service]]s and American intelligence gave regular and repeated warnings of an impending German attack.{{sfn|Waller|1996|pp=196–198}} Soviet spy [[Richard Sorge]] also gave Stalin the exact German launch date, but Sorge and other informers had previously given different invasion dates that passed peacefully before the actual invasion.{{sfn|Roberts|2011|p=155}}{{sfn|Hastings|2016|pp=110–113}} Stalin acknowledged the possibility of an attack in general and therefore made significant preparations, but decided not to run the risk of provoking Hitler.{{sfn|Waller|1996|p=202}}

[[File:RIAN archive 2410 Marshal Zhukov speaking.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Army general (later Marshal) Zhukov speaking at a military conference in Moscow, September 1941]]

In early 1941, Stalin authorised the State Defence Plan 1941 (DP-41), which along with the Mobilisation Plan 1941 (MP-41), called for the deployment of 186 divisions, as the first strategic echelon, in the four [[Military districts of the Soviet Union|military districts]]{{efn|name=western military districts Soviet Union}} of the western Soviet Union that faced the Axis territories; and the deployment of another 51 divisions along the Dvina and Dnieper Rivers as the second strategic echelon under [[Stavka]] control, which in the case of a German invasion was tasked to spearhead a Soviet counteroffensive along with the remaining forces of the first echelon.{{sfn|Glantz|2010a|pp=21–22}} But on 22 June 1941 the first echelon contained 171 divisions,{{sfn|Glantz|2011|pp=16, 219}} numbering 2.6–2.9&nbsp;million;{{sfn|Glantz|2001|p=9}}{{sfn|Glantz|1998|pp=10–11, 101, 293}} and the second strategic echelon contained 57 divisions that were still mobilising, most of which were still understrength.{{sfn|Glantz|2010a|pp=22–23, 51}} The second echelon was undetected by German intelligence until days after the invasion commenced, in most cases only when German ground forces encountered them.{{sfn|Glantz|2010a|pp=22–23, 51}}

At the start of the invasion, the manpower of the Soviet military force that had been mobilised was 5.3–5.5&nbsp;million,{{sfn|Glantz|2001|p=9}}{{sfn|Glantz|1998|p=293}} and it was still increasing as the Soviet [[military reserve force|reserve force]] of 14 million, with at least basic military training, continued to mobilise.{{sfn|Glantz|1998|p=107}}{{sfn|Glantz|House|1995|p=68}} The Red Army was dispersed and still preparing when the invasion commenced.{{sfn|Sakwa|2005|pp=225–227}} Their units were often separated and lacked adequate transportation. While transportation remained insufficient for Red Army forces, when Operation Barbarossa kicked off, they possessed some 33,000 pieces of artillery, a number far greater than the Germans had at their disposal.{{sfn|Hanson|2017|p=386}}{{efn|Historian [[Victor Davis Hanson]] reports that before the war came to its conclusion, the Soviets had an artillery advantage over the Germans of seven-to-one and that artillery production was the only area where they doubled U.S. and British manufacturing output.{{sfn|Hanson|2017|pp=386–387}} }}

The Soviet Union had around 23,000 tanks available of which 14,700 were combat-ready.{{sfn|Kirshin|1997|p=385}} Around 11,000 tanks were in the western military districts that faced the German invasion force.{{sfn|Mercatante|2012|p=64}} Hitler later declared to some of his generals, "If I had known about the Russian tank strength in 1941 I would not have attacked".{{sfn|Macksey|1989|p=456}} However, maintenance and readiness standards were very poor; ammunition and radios were in short supply, and many armoured units lacked the trucks for supplies.{{sfn|Seaton|1972|pp=91–93}}{{sfn|Hastings|2012|p=140}} The most advanced Soviet tank models—the [[KV-1]] and [[T-34]]—which were superior to all current German tanks, as well as all designs still in development as of the summer 1941,{{sfn|Glantz|2011|p=23}} were not available in large numbers at the time the invasion commenced.{{sfn|Seaton|1972|p=93}} Furthermore, in the autumn of 1939, the Soviets disbanded their [[Mechanised corps (Soviet Union)|mechanised corps]] and partly dispersed their tanks to infantry divisions;{{sfn|Glantz|1998|p=109}} but following their observation of the German campaign in France, in late 1940 they began to reorganise most of their armoured assets back into mechanised corps with a target strength of 1,031 tanks each.{{sfn|Glantz|2011|p=22}} But these large armoured formations were unwieldy, and moreover they were spread out in scattered garrisons, with their subordinate divisions up to {{convert|100|km|abbr=off}} apart.{{sfn|Glantz|2011|p=22}} The reorganisation was still in progress and incomplete when Barbarossa commenced.{{sfn|Dunnigan|1978|p=82}}{{sfn|Glantz|1998|p=109}} Soviet tank units were rarely well equipped, and they lacked training and logistical support. Units were sent into combat with no arrangements in place for refuelling, ammunition resupply, or personnel replacement. Often, after a single engagement, units were destroyed or rendered ineffective.{{sfn|Sakwa|2005|pp=225–227}} The Soviet numerical advantage in heavy equipment was thoroughly offset by the superior training and organisation of the ''Wehrmacht''.{{sfn|Rayfield|2004|p=315}}

The Soviet Air Force ([[Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily|VVS]]) held the numerical advantage with a total of approximately 19,533 aircraft, which made it the largest air force in the world in the summer of 1941.{{sfn|Glantz|2010a|p=28}} About 7,133–9,100 of these were deployed in the five western military districts,{{efn|name=western military districts Soviet Union}}{{sfn|Glantz|2010a|p=28}}{{sfn|Mercatante|2012|p=64}}{{sfn|Clark|2012|p=76}} and an additional 1,445 were under naval control.{{sfn|Glantz|1998|p=13}}

{|class="wikitable floatright" style="text-align:right;"
|-
|+Development of the Soviet Armed Forces{{sfn|Meltyukhov|2000}}
|-
!
!1 January 1939
!22 June 1941
!Increase
|-
|Divisions calculated ||131.5 ||316.5 ||140.7%
|-
|Personnel ||2,485,000 ||5,774,000 ||132.4%
|-
|Guns and mortars ||55,800 ||117,600 ||110.7%
|-
|Tanks ||21,100 ||25,700 ||21.8%
|-
|Aircraft ||7,700 ||18,700 ||142.8%
|}

Historians have debated whether Stalin was planning an invasion of German territory in the summer of 1941. The debate began in the late 1980s when [[Viktor Suvorov]] published a journal article and later the book ''[[Icebreaker (Suvorov)|Icebreaker]]'' in which he claimed that Stalin had seen the outbreak of war in Western Europe as an opportunity to spread communist revolutions throughout the continent, and that the Soviet military was being deployed for an imminent attack at the time of the German invasion.{{sfn|Uldricks|1999|pp=626–627}} This view had also been advanced by former German generals following the war.{{sfn|Smelser|Davies|2008|p=243}} Suvorov's thesis was fully or partially accepted by a limited number of historians, including [[Valeri Danilov]], [[Joachim Hoffmann]], [[Mikhail Meltyukhov]], and [[Vladimir Nevezhin]], and attracted public attention in Germany, Israel, and Russia.{{sfn|Uldricks|1999|pp=631, 633, 636}}{{sfn|Bar-Joseph|Levy|2009|p=476}} It has been strongly rejected by most historians,{{sfn|Uldricks|1999|p=630}}{{sfn|Humpert|2005|p=72}} and ''Icebreaker'' is generally considered to be an "anti-Soviet tract" in Western countries.{{sfn|Roberts|1995|p=1326}} [[David Glantz]] and [[Gabriel Gorodetsky]] wrote books to rebut Suvorov's arguments.{{sfn|Mawdsley|2003|pp=819–820}} The majority of historians believe that Stalin was seeking to avoid war in 1941, as he believed that his military was not ready to fight the German forces.{{sfn|Bar-Joseph|Levy|2009|p=477}} The debate on whether Stalin intended to launch an offensive against Germany in 1941 remains inconclusive but has produced an abundance of scholarly literature and helped to expand the understanding of larger themes in Soviet and world history during the interwar period.{{sfn|Kshyk|2015}}