For Decades I Thought Hitler's Germany Made the Most Irrational Decisions to Lead to their Defeat

    The two huge mistakes, as I though of them, were invading the Soviet Union (Russia), and killing their concentration camp workers rather than making them work more for the state.

    Based on some reading lately, like Peter Frankopan and the Silk Road, or even Yuval Harari with Nexus. The latter had less of this.

    The problem of Germany's Third Reich nationalist movement leading them to break the detente with Moscow and gassing the Jewish prisoners and the others?

    Food. Hunger.

    The Germans were hungry. They needed thrich wheat and sustenance of the Ukrainian and Russian steppes. When they failed to acquire enough food to survive, so the Germans under their Fuhrer did very extreme and irrational things.

    Invade a giant that had allowed to swallow up vast amounts of Europe and Africa, and then attempt to eliminate the forced labor that they had been inhumanely exploiting and subjugating.

    Food, glorious food. As the Oliver musical says, as my sisters used to sing back in the Elm Heights 1970s.

    Memories, glorious memories. And some of my friends' parents survived the Holocaust while others' survived the Germans or Japanese forces themseleves.