If you’re going to do that though, and you’ve seen what the Blitzkrieg did to the Poles and the French, don’t you plan for a defense in depth?

Exactly. It’s a half-assed fig leaf.

Try just about any actual memoirs from high ranked Red Army officers (that is, not ghostwritten crap), they won’t even bother to explain the matter, just casually drop transparent evidence in pre-war parts.

If you read Grigorenko (engineer/fortification commander, defected in Brezhnev era), you get «[reviewing fortifications] I have seen specifically our attacking forces, not advancing enemy whom we are mow down with our fire. Only naive people who think that is the main purpose of fortified areas. No, fortified areas are built for a more reliable preparation of the offensive», etc.

If you read Starinov (saboteur back from Spain, loyalist to the end), you are treated with notions like «We don’t need mines as much as minesweeping supplies», etc.

The big picture is the opposite of enigmatic: Red Army “will be the most offensive army of all armies ever”, per Army manual. This was toned down only after repeated and catastrophic demonstrations that counterattacks don’t work as a substitute for proper defense no matter what, not even with a superior force.

That’s an interesting historical tidbit about the mustard gas.

In reading up on Operation Sea Lion, one thing that stood out to me is how poorly prepared the Germans were to deploy their much-feared fighter-bombers against ships:

The track record of the Luftwaffe against naval combat vessels up to that point in the war was less than impressive. In the Norwegian Campaign, despite eight weeks of continuous air supremacy, the Luftwaffe sank only two British warships. The German aircrews were not trained or equipped to attack fast moving naval targets, particularly agile naval destroyers or motor torpedo boats (MTBs). The Luftwaffe also lacked armour-piercing bombs or aerial torpedo capabilities that were essential to defeating larger warships. The Luftwaffe made 21 deliberate attacks on small torpedo boats during the Battle of Britain, sinking none. The British had between 700 and 800 of these vessels in service, making it a critical threat if the Luftwaffe could not deal with the force. Only nine MTBs were lost to air attack out of 115 sunk by various means throughout the Second World War. Only nine destroyers were sunk by air attack in 1940, out of a force of over 100 operating in British waters at the time. Five were sunk while withdrawing British forces from Dunkirk despite large periods of German air superiority, thousands of sorties flown, and hundreds of tons of bombs dropped against them. The Luftwaffe’s record against merchant shipping was also not impressive. It sank only one in every 100 British vessels passing through British waters in 1940. Moreover, most of this total was achieved using mines.

2. If the Germans, despite their navy being crippled during the Norway invasion and a chronic shortage of transports, had managed to cross the English Channel and land in Britain, the British plan was to hit them with mustard gas on the beaches.

Preparations for potential chemical warfare in the Italian theater later on during WWII led to the discovery of chemotherapy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_John_Harvey

3. German attempts to knock out the Royal Navy would have been stymied by their lack of long-range bombers or fighters in 1940-1941. If only Zepplins were bullet-proof.

But think — we know for a fact that Stalin wouldn’t have invaded until sometime after June 22, 1941. And if his strategy was to wait until his enemy was exhausted, well, that wasn’t terribly likely until some time after the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union.

If the Germans had devoted all their efforts to invading Britain, it’s likely they could have done it sometime before summer ’41. And once invaded, it’s unlikely the British would have posed much more resistance than any other Europeans did. Britain is a small island, and it wouldn’t take that much of an army to hold it once you crack the nut.

Then the Germans could have safely invaded the Soviet Union.

Of course, the stupidity of the highest levels of the Reich argue against that — the switch to targeting the British cities just when the RAF was on the ropes, etc. And what the Americans did to the Japanese at Midway the Germans could have done to the Royal Navy, without any need for carriers.