re: What was Hitler’s worst blunder?

Bombing pearl harbor

I'll also say that in Operation Barbarosa, he failed to secure the much needed oil fields by bypassing them to try to capture Stalin's namsesake city...Stalingrad.

Also, this cost him time. He was well on his way to Moscow before the winter.

Also, once Stalin realized Japan wasn't going to attack from the East, it probably wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Stalin pulled his troops from the East and the war was pretty much over at that point.

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And there is my point, Hitler OK'd it and allowed it.

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But you’re simplfying down to Hitler, which makes me think you don’t know much about German history. Do you really think if 99% Germany disagreed with him that he would have ever come to power and keep it? The Nazis were fricking elected into power.

The Nazi Party predated Hitler joining it. Lots and lots of people had these thoughts before Hitler publicly expressed them. They encouraged Hitler every step of the way (at least until Stalingrad) to take it further. Hitler was fricked in the head, but people even worse and more creative than him put Nazism into horrifyingly effective practice that Hitler himself wasn’t capable of. Sorry, but the German people have a lot to answer for Hitler’s rise to power. Tons weren’t being held hostage and Hitler was a dream come true for them.

It wasn’t that he attacked Russia. He had them played and was already moving on them before they knew what was up. His mistake was his treatment of the Russians. They didn’t like their own government but Hitler was determined to exterminate them as part of his plan. Embrace the Russians civilians and keep moving forward when conditions were good and he was set. Just listen to Ghosts of the Ostfront. All you need to know

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Declaring war on the USA. Before Pearl Harbor Hitler really wanted to get America involved in the war as an excuse to attack and spread to the states. Eventually he got his wish and it turned out really really bad for him.

But the real answer is trying to fight the Russians in the winter was the beginning of the end for Hitler. Up until that point Germany seemed unstoppable.

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This is the largest blunder I believe, but it stems from his impatience I think. Looking back, that dude was so geeked out on AMPH that he was irrational and impatient, thankfully. If he would have stretched this out two or three more years we may have a very different outcome, but bc he was banging pharma meth daily I think his patience went out the window and thankfully he did too. It is scary that 90% of the Reich's casualties were handed to them in the last 11 months of the war...

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besides going full retard and invading the Soviet Union.

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While it’s true that invading the Soviet Union could be considered his greatest blunder, it’s a little known fact that there is a good chance he realized war with the Soviet Union was inevitable. In fact, there is ample, albeit controversial evidence the Soviets were planning an invasion of a Germany slated for July of 1941. One main thing that points to this is the massive cauldron battles the Germans were able to achieve early on that netted massive numbers of entire Soviet Armies swallowed up. These Soviet armies were massed at the border with Germany. But they were not in defensive positions, rather they were massed in a manner to move. This points to the Soviets having an offensive rather than defensive stance at that time.

One thing that’s often overlooked is that while the Red Army of 1941 was reeling from both Stalinist purges in the 30s that had crippled it’s officer corps, and humiliation at the hands of the Finns only months before, the Soviets were already in the process of rebuilding and rearming the Red Army to possibly unleash it westward. And one need only look at a map of Europe to realize who sits directly west of the USSR at that time.

So, to understand Hitler’s thinking at that time, one has to look at things from his perspective. While it’s true Hitler did indeed want to build his “Thousand Year Reich” by conquest in the east, namely at the expense of the Soviet Union, he also was faced with the traditional Germanic worry of hordes of Slavic barbarians streaming west like a massive swarm of locusts. He knew, or thought he knew, that at that time the Soviets were not really ready. The Red Army was still weak he thought. The Red Air Force was still made up of mostly obsolete aircraft, which he was correct. But he also knew that the Soviets were rapidly redressing their problems.

So basically, it’s arguable that Hitler was faced with a question of
(A) do I Strike now while I have the chance?
Or
(B) Do I do nothing while the Red Army is rebuilt and ready for Stalin to unleash it upon Germany?

Now, we having the benifit of hindsight know full well the outcome of things. But remember, Hitler did not. So we have to set aside what we know and instead look at what did Hitler know at that time? Once you do that, you get a better understanding of what went into Hitler’s decision to invade the Soviet Union.

(And for the record, I think it can be argued that it was as big, or even bigger decision to declare war on the US following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. While it’s possible to see at least some logic in his decision to invade the USSR, I cannot find any logic in his decision to bring the US into the European War. If anything, Hitler should have viewed the war between Japan & America as a good thing to keep the American occupied in the the Pacific instead of helping the allies in Europe.)

There was an excellent professor in the history department at LSU in the 90's, Dr. Stan Hilton, who taught a class on WWII. He was retired military, very apolitical; it was a great class.
Two of his points:
Hitler defeated himself by invading the Soviet Union late in the fall of 1941. Hitler did so against the advice of his generals because he thought the sheer will of German soldiers could overcome the effect of Russian winters.

Point two: Hitler had no strategic military training; he was a liberal arts school drop out, enlisted man from WWI with almost zero world travel under his belt. Therefore his expert career officers could not convince him of the vast superiority of the manufacturing capability of American industry. He declared war on the USA against their advice.

Hmm... a power crazed socialist nut who thinks man controls the climate and underestimates the value of the US industry. Sure glad we don't have to worry about that anymore.

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besides going full retard and invading the Soviet Union.

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His ultimate goal was to invade and conquer the Soviet Union. He had been talking openly about it since the 20s. To him, invading the Soviet Union wasn't a mistake, and it very well could have succeeded if not for one essential blunder.

Had Hitler not ordered the panzer divisions of Army Group Centre south to assist in the capture of Kiev, it's quite possible the German army enters Moscow before the October rains begin. Now whether or not that would have been the end of the conflict is another matter entirely. Just over a century before, Napoleon successfully captured Moscow and it did nothing for him in his war against the Russians.

Doing a lot of methamphetamine.

Do you know Hitler had a fear of horses?

Probably killing all those Jews