70th Anniversary of D-Day

[Anomalocaris]

Germany really fucked up attacking Russia. I think they would have been fine if they had stopped at Europe. They also could have gotten lots of Africa too. But, as morbid as it sounds, their greed did them in and we are all better off because they simply went too far.

I wonder if Hitler thought it would go the same as it did for WWI.

Germany and Russia clashed in WWI as well and the Germans virtually overran Russia (the Brusiliov Offensive being the only time Russia got in a good punch) and Germany did this while fighting France and Italy on other fronts. Maybe Hitler thought, "hey, France is down, Britain is isolated, the Italians are on my side, and Stalin has weakened his own military with his purges. Why wouldn't this work?"

Before anyone says, "yeah, but the Russian Revolution..." that didn't happen until after the Russians had lost their war. While I'm not an expert in the details of the Russian Revolution, from what I've studied of the first world war, it seems like the revolution happened because of the Tzar's defeat, not the other way around.

Just goes to show you that past wars are not necessarily an indication of how future wars are going to go.

You have to understand when Hitler invaded Russia, German intelligence thought the entire Russian army was only half as large as it actually was on the day the Germans invaded. The German army was skille, experienced, and confident it could destroy the Russia army as it thought to exist in a quick 2 month campaign.

Initially the Germans confidence seem well justified because everything was going according to plan and Russia divisions, corps, and armies were being brought to battle and destroyed as fast as the plans called for.

It was only 3 month into the attack that the confidence began to ebb. By september the German army had already brought to action and destroyed as many Russian divisions as the Germans had thought Russia possessed, and yet still photo reconnaisance show as many additional Russia divisions were being moved to and deployed to block German adavnce on Moscow.

When the Germans began their attack on Moscow, 3 month of campaign had reduced the actual fighting strength of German army in Russia to 30% of where it was on the day it invaded Russia. Yet the Russian army before Moscow blocking them was almost exactly as strong as the what the Germans thought the entire russian army had been on the day it invaded.

So it was in september the German senior leaders began to understand just how much bigger a task defeating Russia was, compared to what they had imagined.