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Comment by behnamoh | Hacker News Reader

> I don't understand how they expected to sustain the advantage against Google's infinite money machine.

I ask this question about Nazi Germany. They adopted the Blitkrieg strategy and expanded unsustainably, but it was only a matter of time until powers with infinite resources (US, USSR) put an end to it.

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I know you're making an analogy but I have to point out that there are many points where Nazi Germany could have gone a different route and potentially could have ended up with a stable dominion over much of Western Europe.

Most obvious decision points were betraying the USSR and declaring war on the US (no one really had been able to print the reason, but presumably it was to get Japan to attack the soviets from the other side, which then however didn't happen). Another could have been to consolidate after the surrender/supplication of France, rather than continue attacking further.

Lots of plausible alternative histories don't end with the destruction of Nazi Germany. Others already named some, another is if the RAF collapsed during the Battle of Britain and Germany had established air superiority. The Germans would have taken out the Royal Navy and mounted an invasion of Britain soon after; if Britain had fallen there'd have been nowhere for the US to stage D-Day. Hitler could have then diverted all resources to the eastern front and possibly managed to reach Moscow before the winter set in.

Huh? How did the USSR have infinite resources? They were barely kept afloat by western allied help (especially at the beginning). Remember also how Tsarist Russia was the first power to collapse and get knocked out of the war in WW1, long before the war was over. They did worse than even the proverbial 'Sick Man of Europe', the Ottoman Empire.

Not saying that the Nazi strategy was without flaws, of course. But your specific critique is a bit too blunt.

they had more soldiers to throw into the meat grinder

They also had more soldiers in WW1.

They withdrew in WW1 after the revolution.

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