That’s pretty much where I come down. I posted the information precisely because most people have never seen it, and there may be a grain of truth in it. Like dfwgator said, Staling was probably looking a few years down the road — 1943 perhaps — figuring that Germany would be bogged down fighting an attrition battle in Northern France. Only that didn’t happen.
The interesting thing was the Red Army dispositions (close to the frontiers) as opposed to building a “defense-in-depth” as you would logically expect. That could have been simply a function of incompetence, or a fear of a military coup. Keep your more competent military units as far away from the seat of power as possible. Recall that Republican Spain had Francisco Franco essentially exiled to the Canary Islands and most of their better military formations were in North Africa — away from Madrid. Did France view that as an offensive threat to their overseas possesions? I don’t know, but probably. Professional military & intel-types are “paid to worry.”
Anyway, it’s interesting to kick this stuff around!
I agree with you that one reason for moving forces to the frontier was fear of a military coup. Since the beginning of the USSR, up to its fall, the political class was always very reluctant to have forces near Moscow.
However, from military point of view, there exist a simple justification to position forces far forward. We would call it a show of force or a trigger line...you cross here and you are going to have to fight us. This is a demonstration of political resolve and may not necessarily be a good tactical or operational decision, but politics always trumps military decisions.
Finally, and a point I failed to mention before, in order to conduct offensive operations against the best trained army in the world, you need to be prepared to fight them. That requires a lot of training (in those days it would be the integration of mobile forces-tanks, mechanized infantry, with artillery and air power). The red army had yet to develop this capability prior to operation Barbarossa. Additionally, you must have very mobile reserves to be used for deep attacks against enemy targets of opportunity. This all requires tremendous planning and setting aside vast amounts of fuel, equipment, and ammunition. This was never done, because the Red Army did not have the necessary large amount of resources committed to such an undertaking in 1941.
Regards,
OC