Actually, the USSR could’ve been a gold mine for the Nazis if they’d played it better. They came across a lot of folks who viewed them as liberators, which would’ve given them more troops, and had Hitler perhaps gone after the USSR first after Poland, he could’ve potentially brought France and even Britain in on his side by playing it off as a crusade against communism.
Precisely. Although Hitler’s decision to invade the USSR proved to be absolutely disastrous, the Axis armies could have actually succeeded had three great errors had not been made:
1) Failure to capture Moscow in the summer when it was doable. Hitler decided instead to divert his armies to the South and encircle Kiev. Which could have waited IMHO.
2) Failure to provide winter clothing, equipment and gear to endure the ferocious Russian winter. Hitler was a great student of Frederick the Great. But if he wanted to invade Russia, he should have studied Napoleon instead and learned from his mistakes.
3) Failure to treat well the native populations who initially treated the German armies as liberators after decades of brutal oppression under the Soviet Communists. Dumb move. It created huge legions of partisan armies operating behind German lines cutting off their transportation and supply routes among other things.