How were Napoleon's invasion of Russia and Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union similar?
1 Answer
Both operations overstretched the supply lines and didn't take into account the adverse climatic conditions.
Explanation:
Russia was and still is a big country!
To invade such enormous country demands a lot of manpower, transportation and logistics. This means that your army has to operate with a lot of soldiers and very far from its starting point. You need to feed your soldiers and, for Napoleon, feed your horses or, for Hitler, have fuel for your tanks! This means that you need to bring a lot of food/fuel to your soldiers on the frontline that can be hundreds of kilometers from your depots.
In both cases the transport can run into ambushes from partisans, be delayed by lack/damage of roads or presence of natural obstacles and so limit the operative capability of your frontline troops.
Also, Russia is famous for its most formidable general...General Winter!
This means that Russian soldiers know and use the winter cold to their advantage while French or German see it as a terrible enemy because of their lack of warm clothes and cold resistant hardware (the lubricant oil of the German tanks froze solid so that they became useless in battle!).
Both Napoleonic and German invasion forces disregarded the 2 more basic variables of the battlefield: distance and climate!
