re: WWII buffs: let's talk about Germany's biggest strategic blunder

Interesting perspective. I can send where you're coming from but to be honest, from a military capability standpoint, Spain would have been even more of a burden on the Germans than their Italian Allies were. Spain had just come out of a bloody civil war and was in no position to make any serious contribution to Germany.

And speaking of the Italians, I believe they actually were the Germans biggest blunder. I base my opinion on the fact it was the Italians collapse in North Africa that made it necessary for the Germans to divert much needed resources to the Med theater. On top of this it was also due to the Italian fiasco in Greece and Albania that forced the Germans to divert resources to the Balkans and more importantly pushed back the original start date of Operation Barbarossa from May to June. This delay meant that the Germans reached Moscow in a full blown Russian winter wile the Russians had time to bring reinforcements from Siberia along with evacuating a huge chunk if it's industrial capacity the safety of Urals. Had operation Barbarossa kicked off at the start of May as was originally intended, the Germans may have actually been able to take Moscow and force the Soviets to sue for peace. But by delaying it for that key month, they wasted any chance if victory they had.