The short answer is that Nazi Germany fielded more troops on its border with the Soviet Union because it was preparing for the invasion while the Soviet Union was attempting to maintain the peace and not provoke Hitler into attacking. Additionally, the Soviet’s shocking losses in the initial moths of the war further hampered Moscow’s ability to deploy a superior number of troops.

Hitler laid out his intentions to invade the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1940, plans were finalized in December of that year, giving the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe several months to shift forces from other theatres of war and strategically place them on the Soviet border. The uprising against the pro-Nazi government in Yugoslavia did require additional shifting, causing a two month delay in the commencement of Operation Barbarossa. Even with this temporary setback, Nazi high command was still able to redeploy forces back to the Soviet border for the new June start date. This would have significant ramifications later in 1941, but that is the subject for another discussion.

Throughout the eight to nine month period in which the German high command prepared for Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet government was doing its utmost to adhere to and maintain the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. There main factor behind the Soviet’s desire to remain at peace with Nazi Germany was Stalin’s acute understanding of the advantageous position the Soviet Union had been provided by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Since the signing of the agreement in 1939, the Soviets had incorporated Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and part of Poland into the Soviet Union at a very minimal cost and sat ideally by as one capitalist empire was destroyed (France) while another was struggling to survive (the United Kingdom). So long as the British continued the fight against Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union would sit ideally by while two Western powers wore each other down. Additionally, Soviet thinking at the time believed that not only would British and German war exhaustion increase Soviet security, but may provide an opportunity to spread Soviet influence westward.

This desire to remain on the sidelines, combined with Stalin’s paranoid mistakes, prevented the deployment of additional troops to the Nazi-Soviet border during late 1940-1941. Stalin ignored thousands of reports, including those from trusted Soviet spies with access to top-level foreign government officials and documents. Stalin’s response to many of these reports was to order the arrest, and sometimes execution, of those who risked their lives to rely information about the invasion back to the Soviet Union.

Part two of why the Soviets had difficulty deploying a numerically superior force to counter the Nazi invasion is the result of significant losses suffered in the first few months of the conflict. The invasion by Nazi Germany caught the Soviet Union completely by surprise, despite the thousands of warning. To make matters even more difficult for the Soviet military units deployed on the front lines, Stalin initially believed that the invasion was merely a provocation by the Nazis, and refused to allow the Soviet military to respond in force. By the time the Soviet government received to formal declaration of war, Soviet forces were being overrun by an organized German assault. Within the first week of the conflict, the Luftwaffe had gained air superiority by destroying one quarter of the entire Soviet Air Force, while the Wehrmacht encircled entire Soviet divisions, leading to the capture of around 300,000 soldiers and 2,500 Soviet tanks. Additional blame can be attributed to Stalin for the failures of the Soviet Military, as around 36,000 Soviet officers had been executed, arrested, and/or dismissed during the 1937 purge of the military. At all levels of command, the majority of Soviet officers were inexperienced and unqualified for their respective ranks. While the Second World War would produce some great Soviet Generals, German commanders were shocked at the ineptitude of the Soviet forces the faced in the early stages of the conflict.

German military strength outnumbered that of the Soviets on the eve of Operation Barbarossa as the result of Stalin’s desire to not provoke Nazi Germany whilst Hitler prepared for the invasion and the Soviet’s numerical deficiency was compounded by the losses it suffered early in the conflict.

Sources:

· Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942-1943, by Antony Beevor

· Bloodlands: Hitler Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder

· The Library of Congress World War II Companion, edited by David M. Kennedy