Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "Soviet Architecture. How Stalin's Grand Palace Became Khrushchev's Swimming Pool #stalin" video.
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Ushanka Show, you are correct. The USSR outnumbered Germany in almost every military resource on the day of the invasion. Germany and her allies (Finland, Hungary, and somewhat later, Italy) had about 3.5 million men available. They had between 2500 and 3000 tanks, and the Luftwaffe had 2500 aircraft committed to the invasion. By comparison, there were over 5 million men on the front or had moved there in the first few days of the invasion. They had 23,000 tanks. Only about 30% were effective tanks like the T-34 and KV-1, but that was still over 6,000 tanks. It was the same with aircraft. There were about 22,000 combat aircraft available of which about 5,000 could be considered modern.
The problems that caused the near loss of the war were myriad. The immediate problem was Stalin ordered the army not to respond to the attack. He believed that they were just border incursion and he didn't want to provoke Germany. Because the Germans cut almost all means of ground communication, Stalin wasn't getting current news about the scale of the invasion, and it took 40 hours before the army was told to counterattack. The long term problems were poor leadership all the way down to junior officers, poor logistics and communications, poorly trained troops, and poorly maintained equipment, leading to what should have been effective resistance turning into routs when tanks failed to work, trucks broke down, and artillery ammunition was found to be about 70% defective.This all showed up during the invasion of Finland, but Stalin refused to believe the performance of his military was poor, and actually purged more of his best generals in reprisal.
By 1942, Soviet propagandist began to write history the way they wanted it written, portraying frail Russia fighting back against overwhelming odds. American communists who, right up until the day of the invasion, were engaging in antiwar marches and trying to stop lend lease to Britain, changed their signs to say the US should immediately send aid to the USSR, and the war had suddenly become a great anti-fascist crusade rather than war of British imperialism. Many of these communists were university professors, and they were ordered by Moscow to write histories of the valiant Soviet struggle against the fascists. Many of their histories influenced other non-communist historians. By the end of the war, the Soviets had succeeded in the literal rewriting of history. Just google The Historians’ Group to see how effective the communists were at shaping history post-war to the needs of the Soviet Union in Britain alone.
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