Schedule Ri: Fill & Download for Free

Because Stalin was getting a plentiful and often conflicting warnings before. The dates come and gone without attack. This was only one of dozens of different dates given to him and Zorge was not exactly a most trusted asset as his info was proven multiple times to be false priory. People often misunderstand this times.Stalin was sure about upcoming Hitler’s attack from as early as 1934 and mention it many times in his speeches. So he was not a naive idiot caught with his pants down. He spent best part of 1930s in desperate attempt of crash industrialization at all cost correctly believing that only that will be able to save the country and its inhabitants. In his own words to comrades in early 1930s he said “ we got no more than 10 years to industrialize country in a way that anybody else took centuries. Nobody will give us such luxury, if we will fail [industrialization] it will be the end of our state, our country and all of us”. As such any methods to build, gain technology and knowledge was good enough for him.So contrary to most opinions country was well prepared, USSR of 1930 and USSR of 1940 was really a centuries apart. What gone wrong was a timing. Stalin was 1.5–2 years off and Hitler was willingly betting on it. Rearmament and crash industrialization was scheduled to be completed by 1942–43 and there was simply no way to speed it up. Most of 1930s and 1940 Stalin spent trying to delay Hitler in any possible way to give himself extra time while country was changing 24/7. Conflict in Spain, Poland etc have to be looked through this prism. Main thing which IMHO gone wrong was completely surprising to anyone french cowardice, which freed Hitler to dealt with Stalin much earlier than expected and with negligible losses. Stalin expected Hitler to stuck there for at least a couple of years and was betting on it. Imho quite reasonably. Also he was doubting that Hitler would be mad enough to start invasion without any winter clothing or gear preparation with CANCELLATION of key military programs and actual demilitarization of industries post France fall. Correct, Hitler was crazy enough to be so sure of fast victory that he scaled down military production and went in unprepared for anything longer than a few weeks. Stalin on his side was acutely aware that Germany was not ready and therefore bet that Hitler was only bluffing while raising the stakes to get more concessions. By early 1941 plentiful reports of incoming invasion come through. Problem was that Germany war production figures and new orders was conflicting with it, dates constantly moved and nothing happened. Part of the issue was a Hitler himself who arbitrary moved dates plenty of times. But how Stalin was supposed to react? To start mobilization was equivalent to starting war plus it was an extremely costly undertaking in itself which proven false would literally bankrupt the economy. Example of 1914 when it was a German declaration of war as a reaction to RI mobilization was too fresh. So he started a policy of covert preparation but amid flurry of political statements, designed only to delay inevitable. He actually made a miracle of preparation from scratch creating a most modern huge war industry on par with the best and more importantly rebuilding infrastructure for a needs of war. For example in RI most of railways was a single gauge which created a huge logistics difficulties and eventually it was a shortages caused by transport collapse that triggered a Revolution. Stalin literally rebuild and expand USSR railways to double gauge enabling him to move later huge quantities of gear over enormous distances swiftly. It was a really much undervalued but a mammoth undertaking. List can go on and on, but main point is: he hoped that it was another false alert and he will be able to drag more time. Incidentally armies got a coded warning telegram 24 hours before on Sat 21th but not everyone acted on it in time left.