@EmuGod:
Hitler wasn’t really after the oil in the Caucasus as must as the Lebensraum (living space for you non-German speakers) and for the wheat fields there. He has oil from the Ploesti fields in Romania.
and where did the russian get their oil from?
Moscow was a great idea because it would have made the Soviets lose even more precious equipment and men in their fight to hold it, which most likely would have been futile during a full scale blitakrieg. Remember that the Finns were helping the Germans in order to regain their lost lands from the Russo-Finnish War in 1939. Napoleon lost because he was not prepared for the harsh winter, something the Germans could have prepared for.
For the winter:
@F_alk:
I think the major point for failure was the late beginning of the campaign due to the the help the italians needed in the balkans.
The germans were not prepared for the winter, they were overconfident.
The support of the Finns was neglectable, as Leningrad was never taken.
The support of Hungary, Italy and Romania was neglectable, as their troops were even worse equipped, and “it wasn’t their war”, so their morale was worse.
The equipment was “more precious” for the germans, so they couldn’t afford a huge losses unless they would have brought down the soviets with that battle. Something they thought they had achieved…. and waited for the soviet government to collapse every day…which it didn’t. Taking moscow wouldn’t have done a bit.
The russians had huge losses in the first blitzkrieg phase of Babarossa, but being able to trade space for time that didn’t matter that much.
“More losses” wouldn’t have brought them down, IMO, but the battle needed for that would have weakened the germans quite a bit.