re: #377 TedStriker

Had Hitler not personally intervened in the planning of and execution of Operation Barbarossa, it would have been entirely possible that the Germans could have won, or at least made out like bandits before suing for peace, in their theatre of WWII.

That’s often argued but looking at the nature of the German economy and their lack of natural resources (see “The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy” by Adam Tooze). They were receiving critical war resources from the Soviets right up until a couple of hours prior to the invasion and never fully replaced those supplies.

I think it is far more accurate to say they lost WWII before they even started it. Essentially there was no way they could win a war against their European neighbors if they invaded the Soviet Union and, ideologically, there was no way they could not invade.