Hitler's Tactical Mistakes

First of all I would like to address the issue regarding if invading Russia was the correct move for the Axis power’s army. Let’s reflect a bit about the whole situation that they faced at this point in war.

At this point the Axis power’s faced a serious problem; they lacked a constant supply of oil. In order to solve this problem they had two viable options, they could either invade Russia or they could try to take control Libya, Egypt and other Mediterranean countries that could serve as an oasis to them.

Let’s go ahead and explore both options:

First we take a look at invading the Mediterranean. They would need to regroup and Rommel would’ve received massive reinforcements in order to try to overrun Egypt, the Suez Canal and finally the Oil Rich countries of the Middle East. This would provide some sort of an oasis that would serve as a base for the Axis Powers.

Then we have the attack on Russia. This represents a mayor challenge to the Axis powers, since Russia is so huge and winter is close, they would need to overrun the Red Army and take Moscow in less than a couple months if they wanted to succeed.

Both of these options offered a solution to the oil problem and had potential to defeat one of Germany’s enemies. The difference was that Russia represented a bigger threat to the Reich than the close-to-collapse Great Britain; this was the main reason why attacking Russia made more sense.

After outlining the situation that the Axis powers went through we can take a look at what happened during the actual invasion of Russia.

The German army was probably the best army in Europe at the time; meanwhile the Russian was probably the worst. Although the Russians outnumbered the Germans by a vast majority, the Germans were better equipped, trained and led.

Since Russia was so huge, the German army would be divided into three groups. The first would advance through the Baltics and towards Leningrad; the second one would move all the way south and take the wheat and oil fields, while the third would push through the middle towards Moscow.

The problem relayed on the fact that there was not enough Panzer and other resources to fulfil all the objectives. One of them had to be prioritized, in this matter Hitler’s Generals provided great advice. They argued that taking Moscow was crucial to the operation since that would neutralize all Russian efforts to regroup and reorganize.

Hitler, on the contrary, thought that taking Ukraine and the Oil fields was more important, he spoke from a historical perspective were Napoleon had invade Russia and took Moscow only to fail miserably and have to retreat.

Hitler decided to take action and invade Ukraine and the Oil Fields; this proved disastrous to their campaign in Russia and was the biggest mistake they made.

While taking Moscow was deceive and would have forced Russia to surrender they moved all the way through Ukraine and ended up getting pinned down by the massive forces that Russia had gather to the north.

The last blow to this campaign happened on December 5^th of 1942 when the Russian army launched a massive counteroffensive and caused multiple causalities to the Nazi army and forced them to retreat and never threaten Moscow again.

We can then conclude that Hitler’s single and biggest mistake was overestimating and being really optimistic regarding their ability to take Ukraine and then seize Moscow. What would have happened if he would have followed his generals advice is left up to speculation?