Personally, I think Hitlers first and biggest mistake was not going south to seize the oil fields.
The thing is, had Hitler taken Moscow, would Stalin have survived politically, and literally? I think there was a great chance he would have been deposed, and maybe more level heads would have abandoned Bolshevism.
> Personally, I think Hitlers first and biggest mistake was not going south to seize the oil fields.
It was a big country and factories had been moved east to the Urals. Taking Moscow wouldn't have meant the end of the war for Hitler any more than it had for Napoleon. But a lot of North/South communication ran through Moscow. If the Germans went south, their supply lines to the oil fields would have been vulnerable to attacks from the North. Some scholars think it would have served the Germans better to just take Moscow, driving a wedge through the middle of the country, and worry about the South later.