Had Hitler lost his marbles when he ordered the attack on Russia? Or do you think that he really thought that the Germans could actually Enter Russia and defeat her? :thumb:
Whether Hitler had any marbles to start with is open to conjecture, and if the old song is to be believed, he was at least short of one! Standing back to look at the timeline, the Battle of Britain was lost to Germany and Operation Sealion postponed, but he was sure of one thing, at that time Britain stood alone and while she was able to defend herself, she was in no position to mount any serious attack on Fortress Europe. To the German high command this was the main aim of the attack on Britain, to ensure that any threat from Britain was neutralised and they would be fighting on one front at a time. Any threat from Russia during his campaigns in the west had been removed by the non-aggression pact, so he was still only fighting on a single front. It was Mussolini's bad handling of his own Mediterranean campiagn which drew the Germans into another front in North Africa. Hitler’s big mistake wasn’t in opening the Eastern front, but the timing of Operation Barbarossa, he should have gone in the spring instead of the autumn. His supply lines would then have been more able to transport the impedimenta of war without the roads becoming mud and then the onset of winter halting any movement at all before any secure location could be taken where there would be shelter. Russia knew their history, particularly of how Napoleon was defeated by a Russian ordered withdrawal, scorched earth and the Russian’s greatest ally; the weather. Hitler should have taken note of it (maybe he did) but the High Command were so convinced that Blitzkrieg would succeed and he would be in Moscow before the snow started to fall. Although the Russian fightback against the German invasion was somewhat disjointed to begin with, largely due to “Uncle Joe’s” purges of his army hierarchy, the ordered withdrawal of his forces towards Siberia while their fighting strength was built up was exactly the same method which was employed to defeat Napoleon. And once the army had been handed over to Marshal Zhukov the German invasion was doomed, although it would still take a couple of years. Hitler’s appearance of being “not quite with it” really started after von Stauffenberg’s Valkyrie Conspiracy, the plot to assassinate him. While it was reported at the time that he was not seriously hurt in the bomb blast, some have since postulated that it hastened the onset of the symptoms of what appeared to be Parkinson’s disease.
If the same was to happen once again under the same circumstances the odds will favour the Germans, but only because of the success that they had had in their previous campaigns, i don't believe Hitler had lost his marbles at this time, i honestly believe he thought that he could take Russia by surprise, and not giving them notice was all to his advantage, i guess the weather helped him lose his marbles ... :der:
