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At the centre Operation Barbarossa should never have come close to being a victory; the Germans got as far as they did because of Red Army and Soviet incompetence, not German prowess. Holds JHJames Holland Read this korrent →

• Similar wording Germany had already lost the war by the beginning of December 1941, once one enemy had become three in six months. Holds JHJames Holland
• Similar wording On the scale of Barbarossa the operational level of war decides everything: it does not matter how good your commanders at the front are if the backup is not there. Holds JHJames Holland
• Similar wording It was not the street fighting in Stalingrad that destroyed the German Sixth Army, it was the encirclement that followed. Holds JHJames Holland
• Similar wording Generalship and bravery can move the Second World War by months, but it was a war of numbers, and past a certain point its outcome was already inevitable. Holds JHJames Holland
• Similar wording The fall of France in 1940 was half German operational brilliance and half French failure and incompetence. Holds JHJames Holland
• Similar wording Britain and France's refusal to negotiate seriously with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939 was the great missed opportunity to snooker the Third Reich. Holds JHJames Holland
• Similar wording Russia's 2026 summer offensive failed: it took almost no ground while losing more soldiers than Russia can recruit. Holds POPhillips P. OBrien
• Similar wording The familiar narrative of the war — useless Britain, the world's best German army beaten only because Hitler was mad — is an artefact of how the world looked in the 1970s and 1980s, not of how it looked in 1939. Holds JHJames Holland