Thanks, I appreciate that :)

and once the initial maneuvers of the invasion were over Germany was pretty much running on fumes manpower-wise.

And, ironically, fuel-wise

once the initial maneuvers of the invasion were over Germany was pretty much running on fumes manpower-wise.

Germany's main problem wasn't manpower (at this point), it was materiel. Germany's generals (mostly) wanted to go as quickly as possible to mitigate this. The problem was their ancient supply train running on ~350,000 ('supply trucks') and 2.75 million horses. In their glee to send the army attacking everyone they could around themselves to fuel their extremely inefficient economy with more loot, they got into a cycle of needing to be fast, but having no reserve of fast moving vehicles to facilitate that.

And to be clear, I am not a 'pro-Russia' person, I've just read everything I could on the issue, and I've never read a way for Germany to get out of Russia that didn't involve them making zero mistakes.

I'm just extremely wary of people saying 'Nazi Germany could have won if...' and the reason would require them to not be fascist and racist, and we start to sort of legitimize Nazi Germany. The fact was they were always going to pick stupid fights, because fascist governments always do. And they idea that they could somehow *hold *Russia while also constantly picking fights with everyone else is insane.

Seriously, they had an awful economy, their logistical train was terrible, the leader of each area would just outright lie about their capabilities (see Goering's Stalingrad Airlift)

If you want to talk about what 'Nazi Germany could have won if...' how about: - If they didn't expend time, resources, and their own souls making literal mobile gas chambers for the civilians of the Soviet Union ('Accordingly, it was a partially secret but well-documented Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations and repopulate the land west of the Urals with Germanic peoples, under Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East) The Nazis' belief in their ethnic superiority pervades official records and pseudoscientific articles in German periodicals, on topics such as "how to deal with alien populations."; if they didn't alienate every single ally they could have had by invading smaller neighbours as a stop-gap for their crumbling finances; if they weren't constantly fighting Partizans and Resistance members (thanks Grandma!); I read (but can't find the article) that British Intelligence credits Nazi Germany's sadism and want for torture as key reasons the Nazi's lost the information war, as their Information networks were terrible.

So yes, anyway, there wasn't a way it was going to work unless they un-became Nazi Germany.

It is true, if they hadn't done Nazi things and had actual allies they could have done better, for sure.

There would be no way to stop. The German economy was really messed up by the Nazis. They essentially had no exports because they were producing mainly materiel for the war and were under an embargo anyway.

That means they had no way to get money besides literally taking it from conquered countries. The problem is, you can only loot once. This created a vicious cycle where they became more isolated and needed to conquer even more.

Honestly, before nukes existed, the Nazis could have been defeated by an embargo. But it would have cost more lives. Invading Germany saved lives and the nukes saved even more lives in Japan.

If you’re brainwashed by your own propaganda, attacking both superpowers probably feels like a good idea

Operation Bruhbarossa

In their defense, they kicked the everliving shit out of one world power (France) already

It wasn't close. Plenty of countries hadn't joined in yet. Only European countries and allies were fighting directly.