Rich wrote:Not when you've got may be 100 hundred divisions facing 18, with no armour, no motorised, very little air force, no elite divisions and no paratroopers.
Yes, you do.
The Soviets could easily have deployed another 100 divisions by the end of August.
No, they couldn't. Beside, Germany wasn't in France in August. Any large scale deployment will result in German reaction too.
Plus Soviet defence doctrine was to attack. The Soviet union was supposed to be permanently ready to go on the offensive because that was their defence strategy. Part of the catastrophe of June 41 was that the Soviets were deployed to attack.
This post is confusing, you are arguing for an attack or not.
They must have intelligence that Germany had redeployed its forces westwards. Deploying from East to West or vice versa took a lot of time. Germany failed to be ready even for May 41. Stalin should have attacked as soon as it appeared that France might be in trouble.
The point was a large scale offensive needs time, you don't invade Germany at a very short notice. Germany also was pretty much outmatched in east in ww1 and yet Russia suffered humiliating defeat at Tannenberg. Numbers aren't everything.
Of course it was an option. Of course another option was rather than attacking 18 probably second line infantry divisions they could wait until Germany had amassed a combined army of four million men, 3000 tanks and over 4000 aircraft. In particular giving time for Germany to absorb its new acquisitions, get them producing for the German war economy and add Yugoslavia and Greece to their empire. Yes that was an option too. A bloody stupid one!
You know, what hindsight is, rich?
EDIT : Also, from where are you getting this 100 div vs german 18 division number.
In may 1940 Germany had 15 division in East and 29 Division in Germany i.e. 44 Division to act without interfering with French operation. USSR managed to have around 50 divisions for Poland in September 1939 and considering that Red Army more than doubled from September 1939 to June 1941, I doubt they had amassed 100 divisions let alone 200 divisions without abandoning all of their defences in all other fronts other than Germany. A scenario which is not possible in real life.
My sources are :
1. David Glantz "When Titans Clashed"
2. David Porter "Order of Battle The Red Army in WWII"
3.
Number of German divisions by front in World War IINote : the decrease in German manpower for east in June is precisely because there was no intelligence suggesting any attack from East. If there had been those 44 Divisions would had been there.