Documentary on the Battle of Stalingrad

[Winston]

Check out this long documentary about the bloodiest war in history between the Nazis and Russians at the Battle of Stalingrad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQisasW1d3Q

I can't believe Hitler was dumb enough to start wars with Russia, Britain and the USA all at the same time, against his generals' advice. I wonder how WWII would have turned out if he had not taken on so much and listened to his generals.

[globetrotter]

We can all thank our lucky stars that Hitler was a horrible military strategist.

All he had to do was NOT attack Russia and Western Europe stays fallen.
All he had to do was kill the BEF in place and England surrenders.
All he had to do was launch an invasion of England and the USA is f***ed.

[Winston]

We can all thank our lucky stars that Hitler was a horrible military strategist.

All he had to do was NOT attack Russia and Western Europe stays fallen.
All he had to do was kill the BEF in place and England surrenders.
All he had to do was launch an invasion of England and the USA is f***ed.

What is the BEF?

Even if he did all that and won the war, still, he had parkinsons disease. So after he died, it's likely his empire would have fallen apart. Germany doesn't have enough men to occupy all those countries forever. If not, a revolution would have restored liberation.

After Alexander the Great died, his empire fell apart too.

Who knows. Or maybe the Nazi empire would have lasted for centuries, like the Mongolian Empire did?

England is lucky it had that channel. If Hitler had captured England before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, it would have been difficult for the US to come in and win.

I wonder though, how did Japan manage to occupy and control a huge country like China? No one has the manpower to hold such a huge piece of land right? That would be like ants trying to occupy your neighborhood.

[Winston]

Another thing I don't get is, since both China and Russia are huge countries, why was Japan able to capture China so easily and quickly, but when Germany tried to do the same with Russia, it turned into a long bloody war of futility?

[thanatho]

A few things:
1. Hitler needed air superiority in order to launch an invasion of Britain, or the British navy would've torn the invaders to shreds.

2. Britain was not as big of a threat as they were with massive U.S. aid after Pearl Harbor, so to focus solely on Russia wasn't a bad move.

3. Hitler's ally Italy was, for lack of a better word, awful at invading. They failed to invade Libya and had to be backed up by the Nazis.

4. After Hitler declared war on Russia, he gained enough ground to the point where his plans of capturing Stalingrad before winter were more than achievable, unfortunately Italy was in desperate need of help after being beaten in Greece by rebels, which halted the advance in Russia by 3 weeks (Hitler needed to divert forces to Greece, forces that would have otherwise gone to the Eastern front)


As for Japan, they didn't exactly control the massive country of China, more or less Japan pushed the Chines inland and only controlled the coast where most of the major cities and shipping were. The Chinese were in exile farther towards the center of China. China was in the midst of civil war during this time between the Communists and Republican government, so invading China with such a strong, disciplined force was not a problem.

[gsjackson]

BEF was the British Expeditionary Force, the British army in Europe early in WWII. The Germans had them routed in 1940 and probably could have finished them off, but allowed them to escape, most of them from the port city of Dunkirk.