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This article will discuss the response of Stalin to the invasion of his country by German forces in 1940. The Soviet leader will be shown to have responded very slowly to the Nazi invasion and indeed that he ignored warnings that the Germans planned to attack his country. Stalin's response to the Nazi invasion has perplexed historians for many years. It seems that the Soviet Leader had placed his trust in Hitler and this almost led to the defeat of the Soviet Union. The article will show that Stalin's response to Hitler's invasion was slow and disorganized especially in the first days of the war. Stalin's response was so slow and ineffective because he had made the fatal mistake of trusting Hitler. However, Stalin was to take charge of the situation and he made changes to his military and diplomatic policy that at first slowed the German advance and then stopped it before Moscow in December 1941.

==The Molotov–Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact==

After the Nazis rose to power in Germany in 1933, relations between Germany and the Soviet Union, as the two sworn enemy regimes, began to deteriorate rapidly, and trade between the two countries decreased and almost froze. The Soviet Union had generally good relations with the Weimar Republic.<ref> Boobyer, p 198</ref> Following several years of tension and rivalry, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union eventually began to improve relations in 1939. German economy thrived by exporting manufactured goods and industrial equipment around the world in exchange for importing raw materials. On the other hand, the USSR was still an agrarian state. While it was rich in natural resources, it was struggling to transition to an more industrial economy. The Soviets were forced to purchase and import more than half of the necessary factory machinery from the United States. The pact was appealing to both Stalin and Hitler because they were both at odds with the West. Driven by their mutual resentment for the West, USSR and Nazi Germany interests briefly aligned and they moved towards German-Soviet cooperation and an alliance.