Oops , fixed . Thanks ! <| sep |> Have you seen the purges in the military Stalin ordered ? The reason the earlywar USSR was so less effective against Germany was because Stalin had purged such a large amount of experienced commanders and officers . Nope , it was because soviet army didn ' t finish reamament . Had Hitler attack a year later he would ' ve failed tremendously . You overestimate skill of those purged soviet generals and underestimate the importance of gears of war . The reason Germany lost , and still would lose without Stalin , was fighting a two front war without the defenses to hold out , not having the offensive capabilities to securely conquer , and lacking the massive economic power that would be needed to maintain history ' s largest war . USSR was ready to crumble actually and if it was Russian Empirestyle army , they would ' ve been defeated in 194142 , almost as fast as France . Instead , everything was diverted to the war effort even before the actual war , Soviets were rearming themselves , factories were being built , when the war began many were moved to Siberia and propaganda and terror was preparing people for the total war . Just on the fact that earlywar Russia was completely outclassed in terms of leadership by officers . You do realise , that vast majority of those purged officers never were on par with german ones in the first place ?