I'm not so sure the Germans were so much mightier or stronger. They were just smarter going around the Maginot Line and still fudged up the Dunkirk thing and the Russia thing and the Battle of Britain.
The French had the larger military, but technologically, Germany had the edge. Tactically, as well. Mantsein was the reason that they bottled up the allies at Dunkirk - that guy was a military genius. Thankfully, Hitler was an idiot, lol. He stopped his tanks and troops from ending the war right there (phew), even though the resistance was beginning to stiffen from the French, in particular, who covered the retreat of the British.
They never could have won the battle of britain, though, imo. Yes, the Luftwaffe had superior numbers, but the fuel problem, along with Goering, did them in. They also failed to understand how the radar and watching system worked, but when you really break it down, the Spitfire was just better than the Me-109, and that's the matchup that decided the battle. Sure, the Me-109 could climb higher, but what really matters in a dogfight is maneuverability, and the Spitfire just owned any plane that the Germans had at that time. The better fighter for the Luftwaffe was the FW-190. Now that would have been scary, to have had it in the Battle of Britain.
As for Barbarossa, it never could have succeeded. Now, again, Hitler stopped himself by continually delaying the start of the operation by a few MONTHS
to wrap up things in the Baltics, and, considering how far the Germans got even after the substantial delay, they might, and this is a BIG might, have been able to take Moscow, but I'm not so sure, especially given what happened at Stalingrad. The Russians had the psychological edge over the Germans in terms of city fighting. The soldiers of the Wehrmacht were terrified, and the Russians were fanatical fighters, so I don't know. Only the SS could have fought their way through to victory in that situation, imo, but even if they'd captured Moscow - who cares? The factories that had been moved to the Urals hadn't been touched, and they never had the manpower to be able to conquer all of Russia, or even defend the European Russia that theoretically would have been under their control. They would have been stretched WAY too thin, in my estimation, but thankfully, we'll never know the answer to that, lol.
Aside from the delay, what also did the Germans in was, again, Hitler's critical decision to encircle the Kiev Pocket, instead of continuing on to Moscow. There was almost NOTHING between the Germans and the Russian capital at that time, and so that was the critical mistake. Encircling said pocket was meaningless, because half a million troops is like pocket change to the Russian Army, and they hadn't even brought in their reserves from the east yet. Sorry for the essay, I'm a WW2 buff, lol.
You don't invade Russia - ever. How hard is that to figure out, lol? There are simply way too many soldiers, far too much space, your supply lines are stretched way too thin, Russian industry can out-produce us, and we're not even factoring in the horrible weather conditions that are made worse by the fact that many roads still aren't paved, lol. NATO and the US Army, today, even at full strength, could never do it. Trust me. You don't mess with Russia, lol. If you like this stuff, though (which I'm assume you do), I think that you'll highly enjoy this series. It's called Soviet Storm: World War 2 in the East, and was originally produced for Russian TV in 2011. I've watched almost every world war 2 program that's available, not to mention all of the books, lol
, and even I learned some things, haha, so if you have some time, enjoy
. Here's the first episode -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A6UWkK2U4s
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Topic: Which versus debate is silliest or most obvious? (Read 18412 times)