Originally posted by Disturbed Deliverer
The weather in Russia is too extreme for anyone to invade. If at any point you get bogged down in a Russian winter, even the oil in your tanks freeze.
That's bull. As someone already pointed out, the Mongols successfuly invaded Russia with complete ease.
Look at the deomgraphics of the world back then, the population back then was far more sparse than it is now. It was far easier for a group to exert its dominance over a wide area than now. Besides this was at a time when the popualtions of the areas the Mongols counted would be a few million perosns. Today it would be closer to a billion.
As for it messing up equipment, it was only because of lack of spare parts due to Germany being bombed, and simply not being designed for the Cold. Tanks can operate fine in that weather, especially modern ones.
If we're talking about 1941 Germany was barely being touched by any bombing. IF we are talking after then you'd be interested to find out that Germany's production of war material actually increased under allied bombing. This was mainly due to the genius of Speer's orginisational skills.
The Germans didn't have winter clothing with them when they invaded. Had they, there wouldn't have been such losses during the winter, and they would have continued where they left off. There wouldn't have been any Stalingrad.
They still would have been beaten back with or without winter clothing. Stalin shipped in 500 000 Siberians who not only had great winter equipment they were also used to the frozen conditions. Not to mention of course the superiority of the T-34 in Russian conditions.
Not to mention part of the reason Germany couldn't supply its forces was that it was under intensive bombing raids from other allies, and split on two different fronts.
How about lack of manppower as well, you can build as many weapons as you like but you need the soldiers to use them.
It still really came down to the Battle of Moscow, in which the Germans could have won.
Well, that is debatable at best. Could they have taken Moscow probably however there timing was interrupted with the invasion of Yugoslavia and some big operations in the early months of Barbarossa,
However the fall of Moscow wouldn't have led to the defeat of the USSR.
The same basically applies to Napoleon. He terribly underestimated the Russian winter, and wasn't prepared for the Russians burning everything in their retreats. Had he had modern means of transporting supplies, it wouldn't have been a problem.
Ahem so, he didn't this was almost 200 yaers ago. If anyone had modern eqyipment back then they would hvae taken over the world.
