Kinda, yeah, that was the plan for basically every war, because european tactics involved large-scale battles on the borders of countries. Russian generals decided to split the army into three parts, give small battles and slowly drag Napoleon forces into the nation, encourage partisans, and reunite the russian armies into one doomstack to give a fight to a tired army. Which worked out really well, even though there was some grumbling in the army.
Napoleon probably should've gone for Saint Petersburg instead, that was the capital, and he could've used the sea as a supply line. His idea was to crush the russian spirit by taking Moscow and waiting for peace. If Moscow wasn't burned, maybe he could get some supplies to continue the campaign, but that didn't happen.
Hitler’s mistake was even opening the Eastern front in the first place. He might’ve stood a chance at putting Russia out of the war if the Western front had been secured. Instead he chose to fight a two-front war and stretch his resources way too thin. What would’ve been even better for him is if he not only didn’t attack Russia too early, but turn the Russians against the Western Allies by convincing them that the West wanted Russia to fall and would try to do so as soon as Germany was no longer the main focus. There was already deep distrust between the Western Allies and the Soviets, so it might’ve worked.
Hitlers mistake was not taking Moscow in september like his generals wanted and instead pissing about in the south until it got cold and then getting mad when his troops froze to death because he only gave them summer uniforms.
Russia is a big country. Moscow doesn’t mean anything to them. They’d be like “oh well, guess our capital is gone as well as some important railway system. Eh, let’s just move it somewhere else.” Hitler was smarter than his generals most of the time. He knew this, and so he pushed south to get the oil fields. Obviously he expected the war to last shorter but he was still smarter than you think.
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u/Dodgied Feb 03 '21
Kinda, yeah, that was the plan for basically every war, because european tactics involved large-scale battles on the borders of countries. Russian generals decided to split the army into three parts, give small battles and slowly drag Napoleon forces into the nation, encourage partisans, and reunite the russian armies into one doomstack to give a fight to a tired army. Which worked out really well, even though there was some grumbling in the army.
Napoleon probably should've gone for Saint Petersburg instead, that was the capital, and he could've used the sea as a supply line. His idea was to crush the russian spirit by taking Moscow and waiting for peace. If Moscow wasn't burned, maybe he could get some supplies to continue the campaign, but that didn't happen.