My little theory is that Stalin knew too, and knew the areas Hitler would target. Areas that had a lot of a certain kind of people that both Hitler and Stalin despised.
Possibly, but one cannot discount the fact that from the moment Stalin gained control he systematically eliminated any and all who were against him. He was more paranoid than Herod the Great was about those around him. for over 20 years Stalin had been systematically eradicating any and all highly educated people who were against him.
This turned out to be a major problem for Stalin, because he had very little highly educated individuals to improve his military. By the time Hitler attacked Russia, Stalins military was not much better than Polands. he did catch up, but not for awhile. He depended heavily upon GB and the US to supply the military hardware he needed to fight Hitler.
What stopped Germany was their over extension of the war. There were fighting the West inn the air and on the sea, along with fighting us in Africa, and then with attacking Russia, he was fighting the East. Their supply chains were so stretched out that it was but a matter of time before they started suffering on all fronts. Add in the fact that Russia had one of the coldest Winters in their History. Hitlers mechanized military was not able to even function in the cold. (I give that credit to GOD for the weather)
Even with all that, Stalin knew he needed to change his image with his people, so he did what every totalitarian regime does when things are going bad, he found a new scapegoat. Who better to blame things on than Hitler and his Nazi machine. So Stalin started a successful propaganda campaign to demonize the Nazis as the most evil vile humans on the planet.
He did this by having his propaganda ministry borrow from the Nazi’s propaganda machine. Stalin began using the same propaganda Hitler used against the Jews, only against the Nazi’s. If you look back at the propaganda, you will notice how they replaced the words and images of “Jews” with the word and images of “Nazis”, along with using propaganda photos of what He himself was doing against Poland and only showed what the Nazi’s had done.
The people of the Soviet Union bought into the propoganda hook line and sinker, and the citizens joined the cause against Hitler to fight for the motherland. Thus Stalin turned the people he was eradicating into human shield to make Hitler’s army waste bullets. Hitler mechanized machine was already bogging down due to the historic cold Winter.
Even his famous Luftwaffe was almost completely shutdown because the temperatures were to cold for planes to properly fly. Even when they could the cold limited their ability to be as effective as they were on the Western front.
It would have been better for history if we just limited the supplies we sent to Stalin by just giving him enough to slow Hitler down, but not enough to push him back. If Hitler was allowed to stretch himself out till he almost destroyed the Soviet Union. Once Hitler gained control of Russia, awe could have forced him to defend his new won territory in a similar fashion that he had to fight against Frances underground.
Look at the facts, Hitler’s supply problems began early in the war, as he drastically underestimated what they needed to supply a world wide military force. It was a big problem early in Rommel’s inability to keep supplies coming in his war in Africa. Germany was becoming so stretched that there would still be no way for him to fight against us as we were getting stronger every day. Our technology started outpacing Germany’s and Japan’s ability. Especially since even before we landed in Normandy we were destroying his ability to keep his factories going by espionage inside Germany lines.
The attrition was taking it’s toll on both Germany and Japan. The war may have lasted longer in Europe, but even so, it would have just given us the chance to then drop the Bomb on both Germany and Japan. Thus ending both wars simultaneously and we would have defeated Germany and Japan. Then we would not have had Stalin to worry about, because Hitler would have decimated his ability to ever be a problem again.
Then we could have had Patton take a right turn on into Russia to mop up what would be left of Germany, since it was already Summer, and Japan would not be a problem so all our effort would be against what was left of Hitler, and Communism would have been a footnote in history.
Unfortunately, History its what it is, and we are left wondering what would have been if our country wasn’t run by a bunch of Socialists under FDR. Since FDR would never have even considered the idea of backstabbing his buddy Stalin as Patton wanted to.