ABSTRACT
When German troops invaded Poland, the Soviet Union was ill prepared to fight a major war. Although military expenditures had increased dramatically during the 1930s, and the standing army was expanded in 1939, Soviet weaponry was inferior to that of the German army. The time gained through the pact with the Nazis was critical to the development of Soviet defences, particularly after German forces had with little resistance overrun much of Western Europe by the summer of 1940. To strengthen its western frontier, the Soviet Union quickly secured the territory located in its sphere of interest: Soviet forces seized eastern Poland in September 1939, entered Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in October 1939, and seized the Romanian territories of Bessarabia (later incorporated into the Moldavian Republic) and northern Bukovina (later added to the Ukrainian Republic) in June 1940. Only Finland resisted Stalin’s programme of expansion, first by refusing to cede territory and then by putting up a determined defence against the Red Army invasion in November 1939. Although the Soviet Union finally won its original demands in March 1940, the Soviet-Finnish War – also known as the Winter War – pointed out grave deficiencies in Soviet military capabilities that Hitler undoubtedly knew about.
