Yeah that's such a goofy what-if full of myths I don't even know where to start with it. If anything I believe WW2 would have started earlier, maybe even with the UK joining the Axis. It's true Stalin was more cautious than Lenin, but that's one of the reasons why WW2 was delayed like it was. Stalin kept getting ambassadors like Kollontai to mediate hostilities with western Europe. Lenin in the 30s would have put the fear of god into western Europe. I really believe they were more afraid of him than of Stalin or Molotov or Kalinin.

I also do not understand at all why this writer would say WW2 would have started later if the Molotov–Ribbentrop wasn't signed. That pact delayed the war by at least a year. This writer seems to believe the pact kicked off the war. Yeah wars start with ceasefire agreements. Ok, christ.

also yeah great man theory, I know, but it's interesting to think about

What a lib ass hypothesis lol

Stalin was fully in support of executing anti-semites

The German revolution of 1919 failed while Lenin was alive (he died in 1924)! Not after his disability or death. The fascists already won in Germany before Stalin even took power.

Lenin would have made a similar non-aggression pact with a technologically and militarily superior neighbor while he electrified and industrialized. Lenin would have also tried to get the west to ally against Hitler, and would have also likely been unsuccessful.

As a result of this difference, it’s plausible Lenin would have been much more reluctant to make a pact with the Nazis, meaning that WW2 would have started later, and the invasion of Poland wouldn’t be grounds for starting the war.

The Molotov-Ribbentropp pact was mostly a measure to buy time while Stalin moved the USSR's war-relevant industries eastward to protect them from a German invasion he fully anticipated (cf. Hitler being dumbfounded and terrified that his troops found railroad tracks in Russia that were not on any of their maps). I don't know how anti-semitic Stalin really was in his later years, there's some plausible doubt on the "doctor's plot", but even if we buy that, these weren't Stalins later years, these were the 1930s when it was absolutely clear what the nazi war machine was aimed at, which was the Soviet Union. Stalin had asked the UK and France about pre-emptively attacking Germany for a whole year, but the UK had declined. I doubt Lenin would have fared much better in persuading them, he was during his lifetime equally feared and reviled among the western powers. Would he have made the same desperate decision as Stalin? IDK, but he would have faced the same strategic challenges as Stalin and it's likely he would have come to similar conclusions.

That’s assuming the Nazis would have come to power in the first place, though, and that is questionable. Lenin was in favor of international revolution, whereas Stalin favored building socialism in one country.

There were plenty of attempts at a socialist revolution in Germany and some of them had direct backing from the USSR. Germany just had too many class collaborationists, too many reactionaries with too much backing from a revanchist ruling class that was not as absurdly incompetent as the Romanoffs, and the more radical workers weren't as tightly organized as the bolsheviks and actually jumped the gun on several attempted insurgencies. All of them happened while Lenin was still alive. As with the war preparations, Lenin would have faced the same conditions as Stalin and i don't see much reason to make different decisions, viewing Germany's socdems as the left wing of fascism like Stalin did wasn't a far-fetched conclusion after all the chauvinist, anti-communist, imperialist and class collaborationist crimes they had committed in the 1910s and 1920s. Lenin doesn't strike me as the man who'd keep repeating something that had failed over and over again.

Maybe the purges would've gone differently under him, i think Stalin did go overboard there, but purges in and of themselves were a neccessity in the early USSR, Lenin regularly had purges conducted to fight careerism, corruption and incompetence among the party ranks. Stalin was fed a lot of false intel about supposed coup attempts by German spies, and he unfortunately was very prone to fall for such red herrings, maybe Lenin would have been more careful and measured in that situation. Which would have led to the USSR and the Red Army in particular having more experienced personell to work with, which may actually have made a difference during WW2, bringing swifter victory at less Soviet casualties. That's possible. A lot of such small things are possible. But i don't think they would've tipped over to any significant alteration of history as we know it.

and the invasion of Poland wouldn’t be grounds for starting the war.

This literally saved millions of Jewish lives ffs. The soviets moving into Poland secured the lives of 3 million jews who would otherwise have fallen under nazi hands.