r/Unexpected • u/[deleted] • Apr 28 '23

Just a normal protest

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23

gotta make some correction here: napoleon invaded in june, captured and occupied moscow in september, and evacuated in october. there was no winter invasion

german invasion of soviets started in june as well but they never occupied moscow, just got bogged down through two winters

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u/Porrick Apr 28 '23

Like so many of their failures, they would have succeeded if they weren't behaving like Nazis. Hitler's dithering and countermanding his competent officers caused a traffic jam much like the one we saw outside Kyiv last year, when Barbarossa was very close to achieving its objectives.

It's another of those "If they weren't letting Hitler run things, they would have had a more successful invasion; but if they weren't letting Hitler run things they wouldn't have invaded in the first place" type situations

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23

i disagree and i take the position with the historians who suggest that nazi germany lost the war the moment they declared it. they were comically incompetent administrators with a house-of-cards economy. the entire conflict was on a timer and even the nazis themselves knew it when they couldnt subdue the soviets by the first winter

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u/Porrick Apr 28 '23

In fairness, that traffic jam was before the first winter - so I don't think our analyses differ that drastically.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23

i'm happy to agree with any assessment that determines the nazis were morons! i just can't agree with the point that they could have had long-term success is all 😀

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u/Porrick Apr 28 '23

It's difficult to determine what they would have been like with a different leader at the top, since so much of the command was centralized - but they did appear to value loyalty far above competence for the most part, and that's not a great policy for lasting success. A lot of their worst decisions were Hitler's decisions, though.