Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-10975360-20131208111308/@comment-3398633-20131209030904

Once again, the Russians lacked good generals with the rare exception of a few. The Germans had a host of legendary generals, yet Hitler wouldn't let them lead their troops properly, always demanding certain locations be conquered instead of listening to his commanders. Stalin was the same, though unlike Hitler, Stalin had a host of terrible generals thanks to his purges before the invasion. The Germans were only 50-100 miles away from Moscow, and up until Stalingrad, the Russians were in full retreat. Leningrad was under siege, and the Russian military was poorly equipped. The only that saved Russia from defeat was Hitler's stupidity, the large number of citizens fleeing the Germans and joining the military, and the Russian winter, which the Germans were woefully unprepared for. German supply lines were stretched thin, but since there was no one to fight elsewhere with the exception of the British, who themselves were under siege, the Germans were able to focus most of their effort on the Russians.

If Moscow fell, then Stalin would have been forced beyond the Urals, and would be stuck in an under-industrialized region, which up until the 1950s, was the backwater frontier of the Soviet Union. People were sent there to die. Additionally, the Germans had three million troops in Russia, just a drop in the bucket to the 18 million that actually fought in the entirety of WWII. Plus, Germany wasn't the only nation fighting in Russia. Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungury, Slovakia, Italy and Croatia also sent tens of thousands of troops, who played an unsung role in supporting and occupying German offenses and lands conquered. Romania alone had 100,000 soldiers in Russia, and altogether, the Axis forces totaled more than four million well-trained and equipped troops. The Russians had only three million and they had to pick rifles off of their dead companions since the Soviets couldn't equip them all.

If Hitler prepared his troops for the winter ahead of time, planned his logistics better, and let his generals do their jobs, Hitler would have conquered Russia. Its no dispute. Even historians have acknowledged that fact. The Germans were just unprepared. And remember, Germany could have occupied Russia without any issues from the population. Why? Hitler didn't want Russia for its resources, he wanted if for Ayran "living space". You can't exactly have living space with another fifty million people already inhabiting it. The Russian population was just a temporary issue that Hitler planned to exterminate. In the long run, Russia would have been depopulated if Hitler won, so attrition from the locals was simply a minor bump along a very long road. And because the Slavic people were regarded as "sub-human", any Russians left in the country would have been used as slave labor as the Nazis had the habit of doing.

Numerous blunders on Hitler's part gave Stalin the time needed to move his factories beyond the Urals and outproduce Germany. Also, though Russia had a large population, it was still spread out across a very large region. The USSR had 170 million citizens, while Nazi Germany had 98 million within the lands it directly controlled. This doesn't include the other lands they conquered, as well as the huge number of collaborators that sided with Hitler. Germany was going to win, Hitler was simply fighting on too many fronts, and made the mistake of provoking the United States, who unlike the Soviets, was already outproducing everyone else. Hitler gave Roosevelt a reason to openly enter the war and supply all of Hitler's enemies, which if the US had not done, the British wouldn't have recieved tanks and destroyed, and the Soviets the tons of food they needed to fight Germany. In the end, Hitler had the ability to win, he simply failed to realize his limitations and weaknesses.