Operation Barbarossa - who knows ?

[Ricky B]

Sounds like the book by the Russian writing as Suvarov, I believe the name used was. All I can say is it was a bunch of bunk, if you look at the actual Soviet deployment they had large forces throughout the country, not all within 50 km. The Soviets had called up some reserves earlier in the year, which were all deployed back inside the Russian borders, not in Poland.

Just look at it this way, the Soviets lost around 300,000 men at Minsk in the first big encirclement, while losing more at Smolensk - there is no way the bulk of their army was on the border.

Not sure what you are looking for on Soviet strategy - pre-attack or post? Pre-attack they deployed a reasonable potion of their forces near the border, nowhere near enough to attack Germany - Rumania was a different matter, and the Soviets had already taken Bessarabia from them.

Post attack, they seemed to fight to buy time for reserves to form up, and counterattacked as much as possible.

This is a very simple summary of how I see it, a lot more details are out there, depending on what you are looking for.

Regards,
Rick