How close did Hitler really come to defeating Russia in World War II?

Question:

How close did Hitler really come to defeating Russia in World War II?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: About as close as I am to marrying Brad Pitt tomorrow ;)

Operation Barbarossa was a colossal failure. The only thing the Germans managed to do was capture some industrial areas and some natural resources in places like the Ukraine. That, and really tick off the Russians.

Hitler was certain that his forces could advance and take Moscow, but he was delusional (surprise!). He actually had generals who warned him it was folly to turn on an ally. They advised him to win the war in the West, take control of Great Britain, get everything under control, and then turn on the USSR. Like so many other times, Hitler ignored his advisors, and went ahead with his harebrained schemes.

Hitler seriously miscalculated in three areas: the size, strength and dedication of the Red Army; the time it would take him and the amount of supplies he would need; and the weather.

Hitler and the German High Command thought the Red Army was only about half of its actual size, and they thought they were poorly trained. They figured the Red Army would suffer a spectacular defeat, which would in turn demoralize the entire country, and the USSR would fall neatly into their outstretched hands. Not so. The Red Army was huge. They weren't experienced or well-trained, but they had an awful lot of troops to throw at the Germans. The Wehrmacht was, without a doubt, the best trained and equipped fighting force at that point in the war, but they underestimated the Red Army's willingness to fight to the death to defend their country.

Another miscalculation was that Hitler thought victory would be swift, and that they wouldn't need a lot of supplies. His supply line was very long, which is always a disadvantage, as it takes a lot of time to move stuff around. He expected it to all be over with by the end of the summer or the early fall--he had no idea how long it would drag on.

The final miscalculation was the weather. The summer of 1941 was pretty warm, which was good for the Wehrmacht. Things looked really good at the beginning. The Germans were able to completely surprise the Russians, and the Russians took heavy casualties. They quickly got in gear, however, and started dishing out as good as they were getting. Hitler never dreamed it would drag on to wintertime. That happened to be a very bad winter, and his army simply wasn't equipped to deal with the snow. The Red Army, on the other hand, was at least accustomed to the bad weather.

Part of the result of the defeat of Barbarossa was that Hitler had managed to open an Eastern Front, and he didn't have enough troops to defend it. He tried again to gain a foothold in the USSR the following year, during the Battle of Stalingrad. Again, he miscalcuated how bad the weather would be, how many supplies he would need, and most of all, the spirit of the Russian people. The Red Army suffered a lot of casualties, but so did the Wehrmacht. However, the Russian people, the civilians, put up a brilliant defense of their city. They fought like crazy. I read somewhere that the Axis suffered approximately 3/4 of a million casualties--Stalingrad basically made it impossible for Hitler to win anything after that. He ended up conscripting old men, little boys, and troops from occupied countries who hated him and generally surrendered as soon as an Allied soldier walked by. He completely screwed himself.

Someone said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Hitler attacked the USSR and was repulsed, and then he turned around and did exactly the same thing the following year, and failed for exactly the same reasons. Apparently he never figured out how to learn from his mistakes.