Okay, here goes...
Why Germany failed in Operation Barbarossa.
As said earlier, Hitler got sidetracked into a Balkans campaign (thanks to Mussolini), which caused a delay of several months for the invasion of Soviet Russia. This narrowed the time for effective campaigning in 1941 considerably. The German plan called for Russia to be defeated before the onset of winter, as it would simply be too cold to wage a war. They had learned from Napoleon...
After the rapid succes in Poland and the western campaign, Hitler was convinced that his armies could subdue the Red Army before the winter, even if the time available was shortened.
What they failed to take into consideration were the vast expanses of the Russian plains. The distances that needed to be covered were gargantuan and even though the German supply train was able to cope (one of the things they did was adjust the Russian railroads to the European guage) and the German army cut swathes in the Russians, whom then surrendered by the hundreds of thousands, the main prize, Moscow was just too damn far away.
A toughened resistance was to be expected as they neared the capital and this is exactly what happened, even though the Germans made it to where the Moscow tram lines ended. That's how close they came before what the Russians called "General Winter" kicked in.
Because the Germans had planned and anticipated Russia to be defeated before the winter would arrive, they had made next to no provisions for winter clothing for their troops. None had been ordered and so few were distributed (the Americans made a similar mistake in 1944, resulting in the US Army losing more men to frostbite than to hostile action during the Battle of the Bulge, the Ardennes offensive).
The result was sadly predictable. A frozen German army was unable to defend itself against a desperate Russian counter attack and so they were thrown back. Unable to dig into the frozen earth, they had no means of creating new defensive positions, even when winter clothes did arrive, so they were thrown back even further.
It's a common mistake to think that the German army was bad at winter war, when in fact they excelled at it. They learned from the mistakes of 1941 and had some of the best winter clothing from the middle of the war onwards. The term "Hitler weather" was coined by the western Allies to indicate, cold and miserable weather, because they knew that their airforces would be grounded, while the German Army would be far better prepared for war in atrocious weather.
So, the Germans had been pushed back from the gates of Moscow, with heavy losses. Yes it was defeat, but not one that was insurmountable. The losses suffered by the German army were as nothing compared to the losses suffered by the Russians and in 1942 the Germans renewed their efforts once again.
The campaigning in 1942 saw the German army once again cutting through the Russian lines like they weren't there. This time however Moscow was no longer considered a target. The focus had switched to the south, with Hitler dreaming of conquering the oil fields of the Caucasus.
The Germans crossed the river Don and then the spearhead of the German 6th Army was aimed at a town that sat on what was one of the most crucial supply lines of Russia, the river Volga. This town was Stalingrad.
The Germans reached the outskirts of the city and reached the banks of the Volga outside the city. Even though Stalingrad hadn't been taken, Hitler's armies overlooked the Volga and a major strategic objective had been reached: No ships sailed up the Volga. The German guns in effect had the river locked.
Had this status been maintained, the Russian army would soon start to feel the sting of losing the supplies coming up the Volga. This would have been a major blow to the Russian war industry. It's all well and good to build tanks, but they won't do much if they have no fuel. It would have been possible to bring the oil from the south up by truck, but a supply train of trucks that long would have used up more fuel than it could deliver (the reason the Allied advance through France and Belgium came to a shuddering stop in the fall of 1944). Ships sailing up the Volga was the only practical way of getting the fuel to where it was needed.
Then Hitler made one of his classical mistakes. Had the town been called Volgograd as it is known today, he probably would have left it alone. But since the town bore the name of Stalin, the Boss, Hitler attributed great symbolic value to the city and ordered it taken, at all costs.
So Germans did what the Germans did best: Blitzkrieg (which funnily enough isn't a word that the Germans came up with, it was dreamed up by English reporters).
During earlier campaigns, the German Luftwaffe, or airforce, had been able to subdue cities by bombing them. This did not really destroy any military presence in the targeted city, but rather it caused large amounts of civilian casualties, something that most governments could not cope with, forcing them to surrender.
However, Stalin was of a different order. A dictator similar to Hitler, he cared not for the civilians that died during the Luftwaffe's bombing raids. He ordered the city defended and gave his famous "not one step back" order; anybody that retreated, would be shot by the NKVD.
In the end, the only result of the severe bombing was that the city was turned into a sea of rubble, which made excellent defensive positions. Once the German 6th Army started moving into the city, they were effectively fed into a meat grinder (something the Russians would experience when they moved on Berlin).
The battle for Stalingrad turned into a drawn out fight, lasting through the autumn and into the winter. The city was almost overrun by the Germans at a number of occasions, but the Russians managed to hang on by their fingernails, just long enough to allow a massive build up of troops to the North and South of the city.
Then the Russians attacked. But instead of attacking the city itself (like the Germans expected them to do), they attacked far to the north and south of Stalingrad, where the lines were held by low grade Axis troops (Rumanians etc). The lines were broken easily and two giant Russian armies were pouring into the German rear areas. The northern pincer swung south, the southern pincer swung north and the two armies met, cutting off and surrounding the German 6th Army in Stalingrad.
As they year before, because the lines had been broken and because the ground was frozen solid, German troops could not create new defensive lines and so the rest of the German army was pushed far away from Stalingrad.
The result was the siege of Stalingrad, ending with the surrender of the 6th Army. The first time Germany lost an entire army.
While the Germans in Stalingrad were being starved to death (Germany did not have enough transport planes to supply a a surrounded army, something that also played a factor in the cancelation of Operation Seelöwe, the invasion of Britain), the Russians kept attacking the Germans that had been forced into the open, pushing them back several hundred miles.
Skip forward a bit and the by the end of the spring of 1943 the German had managed to stop the Russian advance and they had consolidated their new front. Around the town of Kursk in the Ukraine, a giant saliant was sticking into the German lines like a thumb.
So the Germans came up with Operation Zitadelle, an attack on this saliant, in which most of the Russian mechanised forces were gathered. Two huge armies would attack the base of the saliant, one from the north and one from the south. This would cut off the forces in the saliant from their supply lines, allowing the Germans to destroy the bulk of the Russian army piecemeal.
It was a good plan. The Germans had concentrated massive amounts of artillery and tanks, as well as hundreds of thousands of infantry. But still the plan went wrong. The plan had been leaked to the Russians by western spies.
So the Russians fortified the saliant and once again the Germans walked into a meat grinder. The great Kursk offensive had been bled white.
The loss of life after this battle and Stalingrad meant that the Germans had lost the strategic initiative on the Russian front and they would never regain it. The new troops that had been sent to replace the casualties of the previous years were not comparable to the men they were to replace. Their training was far shorter and they did not have the experience of the original troops. The German army in the east was a shadow of what it once was.
Despite this and despite being on the defensive from then on, Germany still had outstanding general officers and many tactical successes were won, but they could not stem the tide of the Red Army which was now out for blood.
Okay, next question:
How come the Germans did not have enough transport planes to effectively invade England? (ignoring losing the battle for air superiority)
And don't worry, this one is not as long winded as the earlier question.
