WI No Great Purge and Hitler killed in 1940?

[PolishMagnet]

So I'm working on a premise for a timeline where Hitler's generals depose/kill him in 1940, and I was wondering how I could get the Soviets to intervene. My first thought is that it wouldn't happen, due to the Great Purge. What could happen differently to give the Soviets more readiness and thus be prepared to intervene in a collapsing Germany?

My idea is that there's a short period of turmoil after Hitler's death (competing factions) which gives the Soviets and Western Allies a chance to sweep in and defeat Germany.

 

[Aghasverov]

Getting rid of Hitler doesn't seem that difficult... there were plenty of plots against him, practically from the beginning. All it would take would be for one of them to succeed...
The other part, no Great Purge, is more problematic. You have to get rid of Stalin, or remove the causes of his paranoia - the 2nd option of course creating sort of a "Not-lin" butterflying away either the assassination of Sergey Kirov (which REALLY seemed to heighten The Boss's paranoia) and/or the suicide of Nadezhda might be good places to start...

 

[TDM]

I agree it's hard to see Stalin being there and there being not purges at some point. So maybe have the purges happen earlier allowing the red army more time to recover more in time for this. Similarly you could also have a Red army have a lacklustre performance earlier on that kick starts re-building and re-planning as well*. One of the reasons that Germany went in 1941 was to strike while the iron was hot in terms of the red army being in pieces.


*in both cases though I think the red army is going to need some luck in terms of who's left to lead and implement this. One of the big problems with the purges was not just lots of dead officers but that junior officers being very quickly moved up the ranks to fill those now vacant spots (especially as political suitability and factional allegiance was often the metric used to do so).

 

[PolishMagnet]

Getting rid of Hitler doesn't seem that difficult... there were plenty of plots against him, practically from the beginning. All it would take would be for one of them to succeed...
The other part, no Great Purge, is more problematic. You have to get rid of Stalin, or remove the causes of his paranoia - the 2nd option of course creating sort of a "Not-lin" butterflying away either the assassination of Sergey Kirov (which REALLY seemed to heighten The Boss's paranoia) and/or the suicide of Nadezhda might be good places to start...

Would it be more likely for Stalin and Allilyeva to reconcile/get counselling before her death, or for a reconciliation after an attempted suicide? It's been said that Stalin was affected by her death, so would a failed suicide be a good push for him to treat her right?