Naomasa298

As they say... he failed to prepare, so he prepared to fail.

Excalibur

Arrogance was the main reason of his fall in Russia.
- unfinished campaing on west.
- attacking a huge country with a huge pople base and with huge will to resist.
- terrible local weather conditions.

Hitler also did a huge mistake with Ukraine. Huge part of Ukraine (today about 50 million people) were willing to join his fight against Soviets. Soviets experiments on Ukraine caused 2-10 million of deaths by hunger just before ww2 so they were willing to join the Germans, this could totally change the result of Russian campaign.

Germans missed a huge opportunity to get part of Soviet army on their own side, they missed opportunity to get a huge support in the huge and rich part of Soviet state and they missed opportunity to get a huge manpower used for the terrible eastern condition. Arrogance...again.

Black Dog

Hitler was NOT fighting a 2 front war. That's another of those myths that continue to breed no matter how hard you stamp on it.

In June 1941, Britain was in no state to fight on mainland Europe. We never were without help from the Commonwealth and from the USA. Britain's military capability at that point was very limited. The most we could manage was the defend Britain from a German landing here.

Our air force was attacking German cities, yes, but with relatively limited success. Besides, the Blitz utterly failed to destroy our cities and industry, and German production figures for aircraft and U-Boats did not suffer. In fact, they rose and continued to rise even until late 1944.

The Royal Navy had its hands full protecting the vital convoys, and the German Navy was, at that time, winning that particular battle.

Hitler ruled almost all the European mainland. He was fighting no-one else.

Hitler's attack on the USSR came within 18 miles of winning. Hitler gave the "halt" order in late 1941 because he feared that the army had overstretched its supply lines, and winter was coming on. Erich Von Manstein wanted the army to push on into Moscow, and was dismayed by the stop order. Stalin, meantime, was enduring what some said was a nervous breakdown, and was planning to flee to Siberia.

Many citizens of the USSR actually saw the Wehrmacht as liberators from Stalin's oppressive rule. Many had no reason to love him at all.

Had Moscow fallen, I doubt very much that the USSR would recover, and had the Germans not treated the conquered in the USSR so badly, they'd have had a large pool of men to replenish their armies.

As it was, the brutal treatment Soviet citizens got increased support for Stalin's regime, and the "halt" order before Moscow gave the Red Army plenty of time to re-organise and hence put Germany into a war of attrition she could not win, given the USSR's huge human resource pool. After 1941, Germany would never get so close again.

MonomachmosIV

fair treatment of the locals would have went a long way. Russian boys impressed into the Soviet forces had 2 choices- starve in a German POW camp or be shot by your own for cowardice. It's not full-proof, but look at the cooperation of the Baltics who were treated much better (for racial-ideological purposes) than the Russians and their minorities. It's the greatest illustration of the absurdity of the ideology and arrogance of Hitler that they didnt take better advantage of the Ukranians- who probably despised Stalin and the Comintern at the very least because of the very recent Holdomor famine. Great Russia couldnt have forced everyone to cooperate.

Jake10

Even though Britain was clearly on the defensive, surely taking over her would have freed aircraft and resources to go against Russia. I agree, the conduct of the Nazi army didn't help, but taking over Moscow would not have meant winning the war, just as Napoleon found out.

Young Guard

One of the reason is weather, Hitler knew that he had to conquer the Soviet Union before winter arrives, sadly the Nazi invasion failed to conquer the Soviet Union before winter arrives. Many soldiers from both sides died during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union due to the weather.

Black Dog

What the battle against Britain did do was to delay the start of Barbarossa. Imagine if it was launched a few months earlier! Germany may have made it to Moscow after all.

Yes, the war against Britain wasted aircraft, but that was not, in 1941, much of a problem, since German aircraft and tactics were vastly superior to Soviet. Some German aces got scores upwards of 400 kills over the USSR. The Red Army's tactics were almost suicidal at that point. This changed, of course.

The Soviet system was heavily centralised, and centred, also, upon Stalin himself. Stalin was absolute dictator and rarely allowed anyone to argue against him. Zhukov being one of the few. In short, it was run by cowed, scared yes-men. Over time, Stalin learned to listen to his generals and to let them run the show, (in complete contrast to Hitler, who did the very opposite), but it cost millions of lives for him to learn that particular lesson

As for the invasion of Britain, I don't think Hitler's heart was in it. Adler tag and other episodes were very badly organised and patchy. Although of course the RAF didn't know it, Hitler had already "postponed indefinitely" Sea Lion in July 1040. It's debatable how many men occupation may have cost Germany: we're only a small island, but there's quite a few of us

Jake10

One thing that we need to keep in mind about air power is that it's not just a question of planes. Yes, Germany could manufacture more planes, but the real advantage that the RAF had was that the pilots who were shot out of the skies often landed safely on British soil. Nazi pilots, on the other hand, never flew again in the war. This is what I mean by resources. Had Hitler taken over Britain he could have feed all the pilots being held in England. He could have started the war a year later and made it to Moscow without the British headache to worry about.

redcoat

Logistics again
The German army went into the Soviet Union knowing beforehand that it would have to strip the surrounding countryside bare of foodstuffs and animal fodder in order to be successful, so even if the death squads hadn't followed the army, the locals would still have been quickly reduced to starvation levels.

redcoat

The Battle Of Britain didn't delay the invasion at all, neither did the attack on the Balkans.
The spring rains in Eastern Europe were late in 1941, so the unpaved roads in this region were a sea of mud until just before the actual attack, so any earlier attack would have had to be postponed anyway.