I just had to comment on this even though it is off topic from WW2.  You do know who was President during the 80s in USA?  You do know what war he started that led to this huge jump?  Let me just answer that... Ronald Reagan and the war on drugs.  Now, I am going to get back to WW2 but I wouldn't mind discussing that in another thread.

Some nice info on troop and weapon strength.  With Germany gone it was easy for Russia/Soviets to shift most of their units to the east for the attack on Japan's holdings.  I was just thinking Japan should have attacked Russia first causing Russia to be in a two front war.  After Russia collapse they then could have focused on USA.  I suppose everything is easier to look at in hindsight but there were plenty of military blunders during WW2.  I gotta go for now since a friend just came over but I'll be back in this thread after work.

Yeah, the moment of 'realization' is a corker.  I suspect there were a few guys who probably did have a moment like this just on law of averages.

it is silly to say some country won the war because of this or that but surely there is no doubt if the usa,canada,aus etc was not what it was then the uk would have gone to the germans no doubt,you could say the weather won the war for the allies in all honestly

and if the uk and france didn't have their dirty fingers in the middle east already like someone said the germans would have taken all the oil no problem and then you have a whole heap of trouble

i think hitler and the nazis got a bit over confident personally,they should have done a deal with the russians and taken western europe completely,they lost the war themselves with their decisions early on because one thing is for sure no one could match them in europe,

they should have had better diplomacy with others around the world too becuase i bet they would have had alot more supporters if they had been a bit more clever in the politics

I actually watched a History Channel Battlefield Detectives episode that dealt with the Battle of Britain.  Fact is the Germans were losing incredibly high numbers of planes in the battle.  There were numerous disadvantages the Germans had besides England using radar.  England had a very highly advance early warning system that included people watching in key areas for incoming planes near the coast.  They also had transmission lines near all of these outposts to be able to alert a central air defense network to be able to dispatch planes within minutes to be able to intercept.  They even did computer simulations with data thinking England would be depleted.  However, the simulation showed Germany the one to be screwed over in the end with air numbers.  The main German fighter ME109 also had a limited ability to defend German bombers due to range limitations.  Basically, if they were to engage then they had a chance of not being able to return to airfields in France.  Also one final disadvantage the Germans faced was the ability to inflict massive damage on English planes that were on the ground.  England had a simple but highly effective way of protecting each aircraft stationed.  It basically was 4 planes divided by walls so that instead of having all your planes lined up for easy bombing only one plane usually was destroyed and the others suffer little if any damage.  Now, if Germany didn't attack Russia and focused on air and sea power (hunting the convoys even better) then they would have a serious chance against England.  England wouldn't be able to compete against hundreds of ME 262 and German bombers if they were to focus on jet engines more and crank out the air power even more.  England was also said to almost started having food shortages if the US convoys didn't come to the rescue.  So being able to stop the convoys should have been more of a concern than communism.  I have a book called Warplanes of the Third Reich and it is a very good read and shows excellent illustrations.

thats right,there is no doubt the air battle for britain was significant and was the germans first failure i think,i can't remember what was going on in the eastern front then,and with pilots from all over the world and supplies from anglo/commonwealth countries,saved from her empire days,i doubt you can say that too often in history

i've seen docos on battle of britain too and it is a real fight for survival,the raf wouldn't even let the poles fight until it was desperate and they were very exprienced and good,just had them sitting around,that is classic england but they got there in the end

if you believe the stories we were on our knees and last breath with supplies so if help wasn't coming from the ex colonies,i 'm not sure we would have held

of course occupying other countries is never going to end well and especially with nazi policies,it seems hitler didn't compromise or listen to his very clever generals on the ground when he needed to,it was crazy times in europe and i guess hitler would always fail in the end but he could have shaped a different europe if he wasn't so bonkers at the time

The real issue about Hitlers stupidity is how far he went in adding undue burden to their ambitions. If not for Hitler, they could of won the war in some cases, or at least prolonged it for another 3-4 years.

Hitler's biggest blunder wasn't in day-to-day tactical decisions (although they were huge), but rather his desire to fight everyone at the same time. No matter the might and technical brilliance of the German military and weapons, there is simply no intelligence in taking on the Americans, British and Russians at the same time. He essentially guarenteed that all other large industrial powers were against the Axis powers.... Much to his demise.

Had that not been the case - either by Germany staying with the Molotov-Ribbentop pact, or convincing Japan to focus not attack Pearl Harbor would of made for a vastly different scenario. That is not to speak of Hitler's other massive blunders like prolonging the initialization of Operation Barbarossa, the Kursk Offensive, taking Stalingrad, or forcing Rommel to commit suicide.

Alternatively, you could have other scenarios that would of been even more woeful for Hitler... Such as Stalin not being as tactically inept as Hitler was at the start of the war. With a few different moves, Russia could have severely changed the results of Operation Barbarossa, likely resulting in a much more fierce defense and capitulation of one or more German Army Groups.

Operation Barbarossa went off pretty well for the Germans at first.  The first winter hindered their progress (with other winters to follow that were even worse) but it wasn't till about the time of Stalingrad and closing near Moscow did the Germans start to falter. 

Haha I don't think Italy or France will get many votes, maybe Japan though. 

Italy was a bandwagon jumper...and France got defeated in June 1940 so not much to talk about there :)

I voted USSR because I love Russia. Minus the whole communism/stalin thing...

That is the key. The initial stages totally destroyed Russian defenses. Unfortunately, Hitler made the huge tactical blunder of supressing the Ukranians that had suffered immensely under the Soviets. Rather than use their help against the Russians, he treated them like the Jews and Gypsies, which meant that man and materiel was diverted to supress them instead of getting them to help fight the Russians.