John Mearsheimer

And there was also quite a bit of resistance in September 1939.

Internally or you mean... Internally.

Internally, for sure.

Yeah.

People had doubts.

They didn't think the Wehrmacht was ready.

And given the fact that World War I had just ended about 20 years before, the thought of starting another European war was not especially attractive to lots of German policymakers, including military leaders.

And then came France, 1940.

In the run-up to May 10th, 1940, there was huge resistance in the German army to attacking France.

But that was eventually eliminated because they came up with a clever plan, the Manstein Plan.

If you look at the decision to invade the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941, which is the only case where they fail, they succeeded in France, they succeeded in Poland, they succeeded at Munich in 1938.

Soviet Union is where they fail.

There's hardly any resistance at all, right?

Yeah.

I've always had the sense they came terrifyingly close to winning.

You can make the opposite argument that they were doomed, but I'm not terribly comfortable making that argument.

I think the Wehrmacht by the summer of 1941 was a finely tuned instrument for war.

And the Red Army was in quite terrible shape.

Stalin had purged the officer corps.

They had performed poorly in Finland.