As for Finland the talk about meat wave tactics is pretty much bullshit as well. What happened is that Soviet troops had to follow fairly narrow roads across the ice, and this made them and their logistics vulnerable to be ambushed. The Soviets still won.
Not to mention conscripts armed with bolt action rifles vs a nation of hunters and fishermen with SMGs.
The Soviets already had SMGs but they didn't issue them in significant numbers because of the potential logistics issues of supplying that much ammo.
Ironically it was their widespread use of SMGs that led the Germans to introduce their assault rifles because the fire power of PPSh-41 is amazing at close range.
Mistaken. The Germans had better technology but not to the point of giving them an advantage on the battlefield. Even German military tactics had already been developed by Russian militaries. The Germans underestimated the Russians. Just look at the T34.
The better German technology didn't matter enough to make a difference. They are still digging T-34s out of swamps and with a bit of cleaning and replacing fuel and lubricants and the damn things start. German tanks often wouldn't start on the Eastern front when they were brand new.
Some might argue that not a lot has changed.
The Germans copied the mechanisms of Soviet rifles to finally achieve a semi automatic rifle worth a damn, and they directly copied the 120mm mortars the Soviets had. They would pick up and use Russian PPSh-41 SMGs too.
The only area the Germans were superior was with anti tank rockets but Soviet tanks were better for the anti armour role anyway.
In terms of machine guns the SG-43 was not a bad weapon and the DP-27 weapons were decent weapons too, while the Maxim machine gun was heavy they also have heavy machine guns which the Germans lacked. In terms of aircraft mounted weapons the Shkas was an outstanding rifle calibre machine gun as was its replacement UltraShKAS...
The Soviets started the war with obsolete T-26 tanks and Polikarpov I-16s, but much better platforms were actually in production when the Germans attacked in 1941.
Yak-1s and MiG-3s and LaGGs were not a lot worse than what the western air forces had at the time and the Yak-3s and La-5FN and La-7s and Yak-9s were some of the best fighters anywhere.
Hitler ignored the intelligence reports. I thought the Russians had much less than they did. The poor performance of the Russians in Finland gave a misleading impression of Soviet power.
And to make matters worse, the idiot declares war on the United States on two fronts.
Hitler knew that if he was going to take on the British and the Americans that he needed the resources of the Soviet Union, and if he could take it all he could join up with the Japanese in the far east.
The Japs beat the Russians in 1905 but the Soviets beat the Japs in 1939 and they weren't that bad in the Spanish civil war either.
Hitler had a low opinion of the Soviets because he was a nazi fool who thought all other races were genetically inferior to Germans... the sort of thing that is common in the west regarding the Russians and Chinese and other nations around the world.
If Hitler had been so anti-Russian and paranoid, today Germany would dominate the world because it would not have had a conflict with Stalin, and if they went to war it would be in a safer scenario for the Germans. He could have even left the Soviets alone and stayed with the Wes, but hey, he was a good domestic politician but very stupid in geopolitics.
If he was smart he would have claimed to love the Russian people and that Stalin and communism was what he was fighting and that he would invade the Soviet Union to liberate the country from evil, but he was no smart, he was evil and couldn't help himself...
The irony is that it wasn't Russia that made Germany suffer before during or after WWI, it was the western allies, but he seemed to have gotten it into his head that the Soviet Union was the problem and he had to destroy it... hence the genocide of 25+ million dead Soviet citizens... how could they be nice to nazis after that?
The western allies lost a tiny fraction of that number in the conflict so they let nazis run their moon rocket programme and allowed nazis into HATO and western pharmaceutical companies.
The real advantage in that area was that every German tank had a radio.
Very true, but ignores the fact that communication is more than just having radio, you need radio discipline and also the enemy can listen or jam radio traffic too.
When you train with radios and communication and that doesn't work in the field you can have problems going to flags and operating in formations.