most amateur of historians

as Opana pointed out they assumed there would be a 1917 style collapse once the red army was destroyed. So there wasn’t any need for this type of serious planning.

it was assumed that the bulk of the red army was positioned near the border, and could be destroyed in kesselschlacht. The remainder of the army would tried to fight them off back to the border and break through to relieve the kessels. Any forces not destroyed in the fighting to relieve the border troops would be drawn forward where they could similarly be rounded up. Any reserves in Russia proper would be hard at work revolting and killing their Jew communist overlords.

as far as gambles go it was a good gamble but they lost. Supposedly hitler told Jodl in winter 41/42 that the war was lost. However it was reasonable to keep clinging to the hope that the soviet government would collapse and it’s a miracle it didn’t in 42-43 as everyone starved.

they did all this planning you speak of after the gamble was lost.

 

It was honestly a reasonable assumption and a great gamble for Hitler personally. Especially with the Stalin officer purges, and the fact that most of the fighting would take place in Soviet colonies like Ukraine. And they just got beat by the freakin Finns….

Of course gambling with an entire nation and empire is unreasonable and the odds aren’t good enough for the potential consequences.

but think about it from hitler POV. If he wins, then he is king of the world basically. If he loses, then his miserable junkie life would be a little shorter. Hitler didn’t care about the Germans or anyone… and he had won every gamble he made so far, when his officers said no don’t invade Poland, don’t invade France… and this time he actually had the support of his generals!

very few dissenting voices on this one compared to Poland and especially France. Everyone in the world thought the soviets would lose, even Stalin!

and then those rail cars needed for the railroad advance end up in the urals hauling all Russian war industry to safety….

 

Can't say for sure, but I've never seen any reference to tankers larger than contemporary BBs. Some of the latest tankers like the Cimarron class were close to the size of the oldest/smallest/WWI era battleships.

 

One lucky break was that the Russian track gauge was wider than the German, so regauging mainly meant drilling new holes in the ties 89mm inboard of the original ones and respiking the rails. Converting to a wider gauge would have required replacing ties with longer ones and extending the ballast and substructure that supports the track.

In 1941 the Germans captured several million able-bodied Russian soldiers, but they mostly let this potential labor force starve or freeze to death if not executed outright.