On this day: 1941: Hitler invades the Soviet Union

German forces have invaded the Soviet Union.
In a pre-dawn offensive, German troops pushed into the USSR from the south and west, with a third force making their way from the north towards Leningrad.

At 0500 GMT, an hour after the invasion began, the Nazi Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, went on national radio to read a proclamation by Adolf Hitler promising that the mobilisation of the German army would be the "greatest the world has ever seen".
(...)
Germany is thought to have committed a massive force of more than three million men, supported by more than 3,000 tanks, 7,000 guns and nearly 3,000 aircraft.

They are nonetheless vastly outnumbered by the Red Army which has about nine million men under arms with another 500,000 in reserve.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/22/newsid_3526000/3526691.stm

It was Hitler's big mistake, and if he'd waited a few years, the world might have looked different than today.

?a land war in asia with open ended committments to get to the oil of the caspian basin?
Wasn't that war just a huge tax that germany couldn't afford to pay, and for
what? liebensraum, "our expanding way of life", democracy through force.

Sweetheart: funny as hell !!!

And it was more than hitler. The media attempt to create an illusion of irresponsibility,
that bush or hitler is leader, and everyone else just following. And this republican
narrative of patriarchal leadership is a lie that covers the masses of people who were
responsible... all of whom made the mistake by supporting it.

So you can seek to close the debate by pinning the tail on the convenient scapegoat,
or accept the much less palatable truth, that nazism rose worldwide, and is still
a strong force behind ameircan politics, the white supremecists and their ideology,
and how this ideology is similarly behind another land war in asia for the caspian basin.

;-)

The Soviet invasion lost Hitler the war, and was a desicion made by shere groupthink. Proof that fascism isn't endurable as a system, but inevitably overstep and reach too far.