Today is the 81st anniversary of the launch of Operation Barbarossa

Should've started in March. Guess the madman figured overwhelming numbers would speed the advance up?

And the Ukrainians welcomed the German.

Hitler delaying for a month due mopping up Italy's failures made one helluva difference. Locals everywhere welcomed the removal of Stalin's yoke.

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Hitler delaying for a month due mopping up Italy's failures made one helluva difference. Locals everywhere welcomed the removal of Stalin's yoke.

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The war lasted multiple winters lmao

A month earlier, and he may have been able to take the factories around Moscow before they were moved to beyond the Urals

I thought they actually started at the ideal time because of spring rains in Russia messing up the dirt roads

The German war machine wasn't ready to invade a month earlier. Realize that some of the invading infantry divisions had to use French military artillery because the German war machine could not produce enough.

Also, it was quite muddy that spring. Things dried out enough to support cross-country wheeled and track vehicle movement only in late June. An early start to the invasion would have seen the German mech units being immobilized in mud. Most roads in Russia were mud roads and mud tracks. The road from Minsk to Moscow was the only paved road.

This "Early Invasion" debate point is brought up every year, and every year, we discuss it.

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Hitler was also heading right for Moscow in the summer but turned his armies at the last minute to the more "strategic" cities south and north. He was advancing like 50 miles/day at one point and had decimated all of Russias Air Force. If he kept going on course, Moscow would have fallen in a matter of days.

Once he finally headed his army for Moscow, the Wermacht got within 20 miles. Two million people had evacuated Moscow...they thought it was over. But it didn't matter.

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The turn south by Guderian led to the complete encirclement and destruction of the Southwestern Front which had been holding up most of Army Group South's advance, in no way was it a poor operational decision. You also cannot assume Army Group Center would have had the same success if they continued driving towards Moscow. Guderian's attacked the weakest part of the Soviet line, the Central Front, while the bulk of AGC faced the much stronger Western and Reserve Fronts.

Also the few divisions on the northern flank that got closest to Moscow in December was so severely depleted they had absolutely no hope to continue advancing or hold the ground.

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Not Greece... Romania. Hitler had to take his oil fields back before the invasion. It delayed Barbarossa by five weeks...

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Who took the Romanian oil fields? The Germans had to deal with both Mussolini’s issues in Greece and the Yugoslavian coup which threatened to undermine Germany’s security in the Balkans and Southern Europe. Security of Germany’s access to those oil fields certainly being a contributor but Romania was firmly allied with Germany already

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Hitler was also heading right for Moscow in the summer but turned his armies at the last minute to the more "strategic" cities south and north. He was advancing like 50 miles/day at one point and had decimated all of Russias Air Force. If he kept going on course, Moscow would have fallen in a matter of days.

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Moscow was not merely days away from falling. Much is made of this decision but it did reap great rewards in destroying Soviet armies in the south. There is no assurance Moscow would have fallen quickly and no guarantee that reaching Moscow and taking it would have led to significantly greater strategic success. Furthermore, the push on Moscow could have been called off when it became evident that winter conditions and overextension had stymied the advantages and to allow the Germans to consolidate their gains and fortify their overstretched positions in preparation of winter and counterattack. The decision to press the attack on in spite of the apparent unfavorable conditions and to ignore the advice of commanders on the ground that withdrawal to defensive positions for the winter was advisable was a decision separate and independent from that to redirect armies en route to support Army Group South’s efforts. The biggest and most unavoidable problem the Germans faced at this time was the fact that large quantities of fresh forces from Siberia were en route to be thrown against the exhausted and overstretched Germans. These Siberian forces also just so happened to be highly skilled and prepared for winter fighting. The collapse of the Soviet armed forces was fool’s gold as they had bent but not broken and had large quantities of reserves that were just arriving to be thrown against a now exhausted German army in conditions they were wholly unprepared for and in forward positions vulnerable to counterattack.

Had they secured Moscow prior to this certainly they’d have been in better position to withstand Soviet counteroffensives but it was no guarantee and would have come at the expense of Army Group South, leaving the Soviets much stronger on the southern front.

In summation, it was a very complex and uncertain affair with some knowable tradeoffs and many unknowable tradeoffs with every decision.

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Half the German army froze to death and the other half retreated or were killed/captured by the Russian attack.

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This is not accurate. Army Group Center withstood the massive but clumsy Soviet counteroffensive and were able to stabilize the front, though at great cost, in part because local commanders disobeyed orders to stand firm and to not withdraw to more defensible positions. Guderian was sacked by Hitler during this period for doing just that. He was a major proponent for not redirecting forces away from Army Group Center to assist Army Group South and yet also sought to halt the advance on Moscow and withdraw to defensive positions for the winter, illustrating that while he viewed Moscow as a more important strategic goal than the destruction of the Soviet armies in the south, he still recognized that it was more prudent to press advantages yet favor prudence over going for broke on Moscow at all costs.

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t wasn't D-Day that ended Hitler's campaign.... It was Barbarossa

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The invasion of the USSR was the whole point of the war for Hitler. The war with the West was an unintended consequence and one that Hitler felt could be brought to a negotiated end once the Soviet Union was vanquished. The war was not lost for Germany at this point though it certainly made it far more dangerous. It was truly lost by the most inexplicable decision to bring the United States openly into the war. This decision guaranteed Germany could not win, just like it did in WWI. The situations were manageable otherwise but totally lost once the U.S. was introduced.

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It's one of the greatest military blunders in history

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Militarily it was spectacularly successful. You may argue that politically or strategically was unwise, but from a military perspective it was an incredible and unprecedented success.