The Soviet Union defeated the Nazis in spite of Stalin, and also because we provided them with the supplies to do it. Stalin even admitted as much.
The Soviet Union won the war despite Stalin too. 3 years before the war he purged his entire officer corps. When the war came there was nobody with any real experience. For the first 2 weeks of Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the USSR, Stalin couldn’t make a decision to save his (or his countries) ass. Stalin was good at throwing “flesh waves” at the Germans, giving every third man a rifle and telling the ones without to grab a rifle off a dead soldier when he fell. You want strategy? Look to people like Marshal Zhukov. Incidentally, Stalin hated Zhukov because he was as popular as Stalin himself. It was only that fame that kept Stalin from killing him.
CC
I didn’t see the word “despite”. Mea culpa.
CC
Stalin was with the Nazis before he was against the Nazis. In his defense though, who would have thought that Hitler would be foolish enough to invade Russia? Thank God he did though.