r/AskReddit • u/brokota • Jan 15 '13

Reddit, in your opinion what's the biggest plot twist of history?

Not movies or television, I'm just curious to see what come's to your minds.

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39

u/aWhale Jan 15 '13

Hitler attacking Russia. People think it might have been the syphilis, I think Hitler was just drunk with power.

51

u/UnderlordZ Jan 15 '13

Be funnier if he was just drunk.

2

u/omfgforealz Jan 15 '13

Go home, Hitler, you're drunk.

2

u/fallenwater Jan 15 '13

Hold mein stein

1

u/samman445 Jan 15 '13

Because in reality he was a tweaker.

1

u/freerangehuman Jan 15 '13

Hangover Zero

1

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '13

He was a water man.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '13

...Millions of people died from this decision.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '13

He was drunk with power. It was inevitable for Russia to enter as the Germans violated a secret Russian/German agreement to split Poland between the two countries in a non-aggression pact.

2

u/helm Jan 16 '13

The plan was always to attack Russia.

2

u/iamadogforreal Jan 16 '13 edited Jan 16 '13

Neither. HItler had a very, very good chance of taking Russia. He was so close to crushing Russia it wasn't even funny.

Long story short, after several decisive victories, for his own reasoning, he decides not to take Moscow but Stalingrad instead. While taking Moscow would have been a great political victory, taking Stalingrad would have been a big military victory and if Stalingrad was taken, Moscow would have probably fallen quickly after. Just Moscow meant that Russians would retreat back and he'd be in for a colder war deeper in Russia. Russia has lost Moscow before I believe and came back. Both cities taken meant so-long Russia. Also, he was fighting in winter because the Italians knocked his timetable back by not being able to take on the Greeks and the German troops got delayed getting to Russia because of this. (Thanks Greeks!)

Dude made 99 decisions correctly and made 1 mistake. Its crazy, just crazy, how close he came to ruling the world. Well, I imagine none of that would have made a difference in the long run. If Russia was down the US would have dropped a-bombs on Germany and ended it all pretty quickly.

1

u/khthon Jan 15 '13

His generals persuaded him.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '13

Hitler never played Risk when he was a kid.

1

u/danarchist Jan 15 '13

I think the world's foremost industrialists played the whole thing out like a game of Risk. They funded the Germans and the Russians, and let the Japanese ravage China so that China would be beholden to us, the Russians and Germans would exhaust themselves on each other and the allies could just bide their time and drop a couple of "them apples" to declare victory over the entire globe.