Winter War Thawed Out

What if the Winter War never happened. The Soviets and Fins don't fight each other. The Red army bugs are not fixed before Barbarossa. What happens next.

 

What Red Army bugs were fixed at the time of Barbarossa? For all I know the 'bugs' you may be referring to have to do with wintertime war, whereas Barbarossa was launched on Summer...

 

I don’t see any different outcome.

 

I agree that the outcome of the Winter War had little to do with the Soviet opposition of Operation Barbarossa. It may have impacted the winter counter-offensives that the the Soviets made later in the war, but I don't see any change in Barbarossa.

 

For Hitler the Winter War was the final proof that the Red Army was weak and would not be of any real opponent if war should break out between Wehrmacht and Red Army. Whether this truly resulted in Hitler starting the operation in 1941 can be discussed but it definitely affected his thinking.

For Stalin this was an important wake-up call and he made some important changes to the Red Army ( like better rank system etc ) and also the Red Army learnt important lessons in fighting in winter which the Germans faced in winter 1941-42.

 

Much of the red army bugs were fixed. Organization, doctrine, equipment, deployment, need for combined arms, effective communication on the field (radios etc.), production of many divisions (mechanized, motorized, armoured, etc.), improved tactical training program for troops, and renewed emphasis on coordination of larger units. All changes initiated by August of 1940. Now none were completed by the time Germany attacked, but they were on their way. What if they did not start these changes for they did not believe they needed to (as what would happen with no winter war)?

 

Actually the more "interesting" theme I think would be that the Red Army would at least succeed in taking Northern Finland which in late 1939 definitely would wake the Allied leaders to sending troops to Norway and maybe Sweden to protect the iron ore sources. This way the military conflict between the Allied and Russians could not be stopped and Stalin himself might be forced into a longer war in the Nordic countries´ area.

 

YEAH I GUESS IF IT WASNT FOR THOSE BAD WINTER THAT KILLED A LARGE % OF GERMANS THAN THERE WOULD BE EVEN MORE CARNAGE OF THE EASTERN FRONT