Thanks AdmSmith, that was a fascinating post. Of course, Hitler wasn't a strategic thinker, or a tactical thinker, he was a politician. Historically, in his lifetime, Germany had wasted an enormous effort in battle in the Russian Empire; Napoleon had done the same over a century before that; and Herodotus left us with an account of how the Persian Empire tried the same thing in some of the same geography and couldn't even catch their (pre-Russian) adversaries before they had to flee the winter.
And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. ;-)