> Did they really anticipate to be greeted as liberators?

In a nutshell, yes. They apparently believed their own bullshit, which is hard to grasp but that seems to be the case. More and more evidence of extremely unrealistic timetables and tons of under-estimations regarding supply lines and required resources are surfacing. Initially the theory was that this was part of some grand plan but more and more the picture that emerges is one of extreme optimism compounded by old materiel, demotivated troops and outright incompetence.

That doesn't mean that this is over, but it could have been a whole lot worse at this point in time. Unfortunately the future is still wide open.

There's a bit of a history of this; notably, the Germans really did seem to have extremely unrealistic expectations of progress vs the Soviet Union in WW2. At least in that case there was a lot of drinking their own koolaid going on; the anti-Soviet propaganda was so intense that the leadership started believing it.