When I read about the Eastern Front in World War 2 it is the most maddening thing in the world how seemingly every possible source was screaming at Stalin that the Germans were about to attack and that they should prepare themselves right now to absorb and counter such a blow, but he seemed intent on writing off such information as some kind of conspiracy to trick the USSR into a war with the Nazis. It's so frustrating and seemingly illogical I wonder if it's quite the whole story sometimes.

It's one of those things that I've kind of assumed had very bad effects on the Soviet Union's ability to react to the invasion and might be one of the reasons for the shocking losses of men, materiel and territory in the first year of the invasion, but I also remember hearing the same thing about the military purges in the years leading up to the war and how recent historiography has shifted away from the notion that the purges were particularly damaging to the Red Army or account for much of why the Germans were able to advance so quickly. I wonder if the same thing applies to Stalin's response, or lack thereof.

So how badly did Stalin's refusal to believe the information given to him actually effect the initial Soviet war effort, and were there any major steps that could have been taken that seem like they could have significantly helped if he did believe a German attack was imminent? I know that a lot of his actions, ie the advance into Poland and the Baltics, as well as the Winter War, were undertaken specifically because he foresaw a German attack eventually and needed to shore up the main vectors of attack, has Stalin's overall refusal to believe that a German attack was about to come been overblown and that he may actually have taken some pretty major steps to deal with that eventuality?