| Hitler's mistake
The question is what should Hitler have done instead. Doing nothing would have been equally crazy. After conquering France in 1940 he tried to invade Britain but gave it up, couldn't get command of the seas or even local (UK) control in the air (Battle of Britain).
The mistake was more likely going one step too far and precipitating the world into war in 1939. Once he went beyond bringing all (well almost all) Germans into the Third Reich - occupying Bohemia and Moravia and then making a pact with Stalin and partitioning Poland between them he stepped well beyond the ethnic issue that had some legitimacy, laying bare his fantasy of world domination and must have known that Britain and USSR (and even USA) would eventually combine and overwhelm him.
The astonishing thing was how close he appeared to come to knocking out the USSR using the blitzkrieg tank strategy, coming within 30 miles of the Kremlin and next autumn reaching Stalingrad seemingly unopposed. "Appeared" because as Napoloen found out to his cost even if he occupied Moscow it wouldn't have ended the war. Like the Russian Czar before him, Stalin was planning a long war. |