> Without Stalin at the helm, would they have entered into the Hitler-Stalin pact? That is, without the Soviet Union's support for Nazi Germany, would the war h

> Without Stalin at the helm, would they have entered into the Hitler-Stalin pact? That is, without the Soviet Union's support for Nazi Germany, would the war have happened as it did? Somewhat unlikely. The pact was just about gaining time, for both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Both sides knew war was inevitable, they just didn't know exactly when. The war wouldn't have happened "as it did" -- that's a tautology: "if you changed something, things would have been different". But if your question is "would war have happened at all?" then the answer is "yes". The Nazi political system required war, couldn't function without it, and it was spelled out in Hitler's writings from way before the war. Lebensraum, reparations/vengeance for WWI, extermination of inferior races, all of that requires war. And given the conditions of the world at that time, almost inevitably a highly destructive war.