Reddit reviews The German Economy in the Twentieth Century (Routledge Revivals): The German Reich and the Federal Republic

Look, if you thought the out of the way industrial center of Stalingrad was a difficult fight then Moscow would have been an apocalypse. The Soviets had the place trenched and defended on a scale that would have eaten and spit out entire army groups. It was a preface for what would be prepared for Kursk. We look back on the sewers of Stalingrad as the apex of urban warfare hells? Imagine all the subway tunnels in Moscow. There was in no possible conception a way for the Soviets to lose Moscow unless it was the Germans getting supplied by the US and even then its a big if. Also, "Japanese assaults in the East". Do you...what...what? Did you forget that the Japanese had tried that, got stomped because the IJA high command had deluded itself and had to sign an accord with the Soviets? They were also far more preoccupied with China and couldn't have been arsed to spare the men. It was actually the fresh recruits from that non-front that revitalized the Soviets (where did you think Zhukov was the first months of the war? Gulag?).

Also as a note, Germany stumbled into a lot of luck to get as far as it did. The French and British spent the previous two decades in detante and reducing military expenditures (Germany on the other hand put 10% of its domestic budget towards the military). They sat on their hands when Hitler had all of his forces in Poland and then proceeded to act with all the speed of a geriatric panda when Germany took weeks to switch focus and bring it down on them. As sad as it is to say, the Germans were much more willing to bite the bullet and fight than the Franco-British Alliance. This gave the Germans all the initiative and they used it to its fullest.

On the Soviet front there are two huge reasons benefiting the Germans in their successes. The first is that the Soviets were still in the process of moving their defensive positions to the new borders after Hitler and Stalin had split the continent. Thus when Germany invaded much of the Red Army was in disarray and able to be outmaneuvered fairly easily. Secondly, the Soviets had also decided to embark on one of the most ambitious and comprehensive rearmament and upgrade programs. This left them with not enough of the new stuff and not enough replacements for the existing material. People will often say "oh, Germany should have waited a year!" or some other such bollocks but the fact of the matter is that the timing of Barbarossa was one of the few things they got right. It was the Red Army at its weakest and they couldn't afford to wait. Their failure laid more in the fact that the Germans did very little in the way of studying Soviet tactics and thus were wildly surprised when they ran into the third echelon of Soviet forces (Deep Battle dictated that they be three echelons deep, the Germans expected two, smashed those two, then got roundly stalled when they ran into the third).

Also, the Germans were still using horses for transport. Good god that was a terrible way to try and supply an army whose supply was expected to run in the hundreds of kilometers.