re: So Britain and France declared war on Germany for invading Poland

Exactly. We were outnumbered and turning on our recent allies would have been a very tough sell to the US Army and their families back home. There was a lot of anger and unrest over the initial plan to ship the European Theatre troops to the Pacific en masse, causing the Pentagon to drop the idea. Now imagine telling them, "these guys who were our allies for 3 1/2 years are now our enemies," The American GI was no fool and wouldn't have stood for it. Neither would the American public and their representatives in Congress.

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The summer 42 campaign drove towards the Caucasus and needed to secure Stalingrad and the Volga to protect the flank of Army Groups A & B.

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They didn't even need to take Stalingrad to secure their goals. Dumbass Hitler wanted the city for the symbolic nature of taking the city with Stalin's name.

Taking Stalingrad made total military sense, rivers are basically the only defensible terrain in southern Russia and as positional warfare set in Army Group B desperately needed to anchor their line on the Volga and Don. In the end Soviet bridgeheads over the rivers ended up becoming an absolute disaster for the 6th army when defended by low quality axis allies.

Why don't we declare war on Mexico and invade them... We can invade all the way to Oaxaca. The border from the Gulf to the Pacific is only 150 miles. We could erect that wall in a weekend, especially with all the Mexican POW's working 20 hour shifts.

It's perfect. Viva LaRaza!!!