Having perused the article, there is much that I am agreement with the so called revisionists, as stated by Strauss: in the 20's and 30's the USSR was considered the pariah of the modern world. Indeed, in my opinion, among the modern world, the USSR probably had better relations with the United States during the terms of Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Both of these administrations were very pro socialist. President Hoover's assessment strikes me as true about the FDR administration being pro soviet.
Where I digress with the revisionists is that Stalin had plans for offensive operations before the German invasion. I do believe that Stalin would exploit the war in the west to expand soviet power, but realistically, you do not decimate your army up to 4 years before contemplated offensive operations as Stalin did.
Had Stalin had intentions of offensive operations, he would have done the following: used more secure codes for communications (he did not), not purged his generals, not allowed his air force to be destroyed on the ground, allowed the red army to actively develop offensive operational doctrine of combined arms, and given army commanders more trust by not relying on the political commissars. As proof of my contention, i ask you: when did the red army develop its offensive operational doctrine? The answer is after operation Barbarossa, and the cost was millions of lives lost learning the doctrine (on live fire two way ranges). I think what they revisionists en masse fail to state is that Stalin was a psychopath, even more dangerous than Hitler. Yes, they accurately give the numbers of the red terror, but they don't seem to discuss how every remotely potential threat to Stalin's hold on power was liquidated (to use the soviet term).
Yes, the revisionists are correct imho that Hitler was compelled more by his own foolish propaganda to execute operation Barbarossa more so than any kind of military necessity. Militarily, that one decision doomed his regime; most military history people agree on that point.
Yet, ironically, western historians are pretty much ignorant how paranoid, evil, and brutal Stalin was. I think this is because the victors in the war wrote the history books, FDR was the U.S. president, and many of the historians have socialist sympathies.
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!